Woof!

When he landed in Cuba, Columbus discovered "a dog that didn't bark." Barking, like kissing and sending Christmas cards, is a social habit fostered--for better or worse--by civilization. Wild dogs never bark, and among primitive peoples even house pets and hunting dogs seldom speak above a dignified growl.

Africa's underslung, cafe-au-lait Basenjis ("bush things") are no exception. For generations they have tracked game for chiefs in the Belgian Congo, emitting only an occasional soft "groo," plaintively yodeling during the mating season, but never barking. Last week, however, in London's Trinity Hall, at the annual show of the British Basenji Club, a barkless Basenji barked. It was the end of 6,000 years of canine taciturnity. "My breath simply went," gasped Acting Club Secretary Veronica Tudor Williams. "Quite a bombshell," muttered the permanent secretary.

As tidy as house cats (they lick each other clean after a hunt), and so smart that fanciers claim that a chilly Basenji will grip a shovel in his teeth and heap coal on a dying fire, Basenjis were once favored pets at the courts of Egypt's Pharaohs. In 1936 a pair of them were brought to London. In a decade their number increased to 75 (worth about -L-250 each).

One of them, Chanza of Sunnyshane, was suddenly worth less last week just after he opened his mouth at the Basenji show. The hall was filled with a devastating hush, followed by hysterical female titters. "It was a most unfortunate noise," announced harassed Miss Williams, "but hardly a bark. It was a sort of woof." But TIME'S London bureau checked the question carefully with earwitnesses. Chanza, they reported, had definitely barked --"a wuffly bark," but a bark nonetheless.

Club Secretary Norman Cutler read the verdict: "There is only one thing to do," he said. "Chanza must never be allowed to breed.".

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