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As the years advance I’ve become increasingly aware of the books I read as a child that have exerted an influence on my life. Would I have just returned from my fourth tramp through the African bush, for example, had my imagination not been fired by a vivid account of the bond that developed between a man and his dog as they hunted big game in the South African veld? Among the many seeds sown in my childhood, Jock of the Bushveld fell on richly fertile ground.

In the late nineteenth century the discovery of gold in the Transvaal brought fortune hunters from every corner of the globe. Among them was a young man named Percy FitzPatrick who had abandoned a dull job to seek adventure in the gold fields. But work was scarce; after attempts at prospecting and store-keeping, he became a transport-rider. At that time supplies for the mines were carried overland from the coast: huge spans of fourteen or sixteen oxen hauled heavily laden wagons along rutted tracks, through thorny scrub and grassland, across broad rivers, through swamps infested by tsetse fly, and finally up a precipitous escarpment to the mining camps beyond. Apart from essentials such as tea, sugar and salt, the wagons brought only those goods that fetched high prices in the gold fields. To provide meat for his team of drivers, the transport-rider had to hunt for it along the way. For this task, a good dog was essential.

Enter Jock, the runt of a litter of six puppies born to a mean but plucky bitch named Jess. With his crumpled little face, bandy legs and stump of a tail, he was dubbed ‘the Rat’ and threatened with extinction. But the Rat’s tenacity, courage and touching dignity had won Percy’s respect and he decided to adopt him. He began the dog’s education at once, training him to obey his every command. (I was so inspired by this description of canine obedience that I tried out Percy’s methods on my recalcitrant poodle puppy with, I must confess, a resounding lack of

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As the years advance I’ve become increasingly aware of the books I read as a child that have exerted an influence on my life. Would I have just returned from my fourth tramp through the African bush, for example, had my imagination not been fired by a vivid account of the bond that developed between a man and his dog as they hunted big game in the South African veld? Among the many seeds sown in my childhood, Jock of the Bushveld fell on richly fertile ground.

In the late nineteenth century the discovery of gold in the Transvaal brought fortune hunters from every corner of the globe. Among them was a young man named Percy FitzPatrick who had abandoned a dull job to seek adventure in the gold fields. But work was scarce; after attempts at prospecting and store-keeping, he became a transport-rider. At that time supplies for the mines were carried overland from the coast: huge spans of fourteen or sixteen oxen hauled heavily laden wagons along rutted tracks, through thorny scrub and grassland, across broad rivers, through swamps infested by tsetse fly, and finally up a precipitous escarpment to the mining camps beyond. Apart from essentials such as tea, sugar and salt, the wagons brought only those goods that fetched high prices in the gold fields. To provide meat for his team of drivers, the transport-rider had to hunt for it along the way. For this task, a good dog was essential. Enter Jock, the runt of a litter of six puppies born to a mean but plucky bitch named Jess. With his crumpled little face, bandy legs and stump of a tail, he was dubbed ‘the Rat’ and threatened with extinction. But the Rat’s tenacity, courage and touching dignity had won Percy’s respect and he decided to adopt him. He began the dog’s education at once, training him to obey his every command. (I was so inspired by this description of canine obedience that I tried out Percy’s methods on my recalcitrant poodle puppy with, I must confess, a resounding lack of success.) The Rat had soon grown into a handsome dog with a coat of burnished gold and bright dark eyes which turned to beady black when he was roused. (A watercolour of Jock by E. Caldwell, together with many brilliant line drawings, adorns my 1911 copy of the book, and has remained an indelible image from my childhood.) It was time to put the months of training to the test. So with Jock at his heels, Percy set off into the sun-baked veld carrying only a rifle, a cartridge belt and a water-bottle. He was as much a beginner as Jock, and during their early hunts together they both made mistakes. But Percy was left in no doubt that in Jock he had found a dog of incomparable worth, a fact proved time and again during the many thrilling and often dangerous encounters with big game which are so vividly described in the book. Jock’s skill and intelligence enabled him to outmanoeuvre a wounded animal, and once he had brought it down and fastened his teeth into part of its anatomy, nothing would induce him to let go. Despite being tossed and shaken like a rat, thrashed along the ground, struck at by razor-sharp hooves and wicked horns, he hung on grimly until Percy was able to deliver the coup de grâce. Some may argue that the contest was an unfair one: that a man with a gun and a clever dog exercised an unfair advantage over his quarry. But the veld was vast and the game elusive, swift of foot, occasionally downright hostile and frequently invisible. Percy would often know by Jock’s behaviour that they were within yards of an animal, but so perfect was its camouflage that he was quite unable to see it: ‘Twice Jock slowly turned his head and looked into my eyes, and I felt keenly the sense of hopeless inferiority.’ This blindness would persist until the swish of a tail or the flick of an ear brought the animal into sharp relief. Sometimes a routine hunt would take an unexpected turn. During one long and tortuous pursuit of a wounded buck, Percy became hopelessly lost, a mistake which in the immensity of the veld – then still home to lion and leopard – could have been fatal. On another occasion, a stealthy stalk along a dry watercourse landed him in the middle of a herd of impala. ‘There were a few minutes of complete bewilderment, a scene of the wildest confusion’ before the terrified animals began to leap in every direction. In ‘the whirlpool of racing and plunging’ beasts, Percy and Jock became separated and Percy had to return to camp alone, leaving his beloved dog exposed to the perils of the night. The veld itself could be treacherous: Percy and some friends once found themselves trapped by a bush fire in a narrow gorge. In desperation, they burnt an area of grass large enough to afford them protection and then retreated to its centre, Percy clutching Jock in his arms. ‘Then down on the wings of the wind came the other fire, and before it fled every living thing’, their staring eyes and frenzied forms glimpsed fleetingly through the smoke – among them a black mamba, the most deadly of snakes, which ‘came sailing out of the yellow grasses . . . and passed between us, giving a quick, chilly, beady look at each – pitiless and hateful – and one hiss as the slithering tongue shot out’. Fainting with heat and exhaustion, Percy records his intense relief when ‘our burn divided [the fire] as an island splits the flood, and it swept along our flanks in two great walls of living, leaping, roaring flame. . .’ Percy’s career as a transport-rider ended abruptly with the death of his entire team of oxen from disease. Years later, he relived his time in the veld by recounting his adventures with Jock to his children. Hearing him tell the stories, a family friend – Rudyard Kipling – persuaded him to commit them to paper. Thus was born this classic among animal stories, a book declared by Theodore Roosevelt to be ‘the best and truest story of a dog that I have ever read, and I think I have read them all’.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 9 © Caroline Chapman 2006

   

About the contributor

Caroline Chapman’s first biography, of Lady Elizabeth Foster, was published in 2002. Since then she has been searching for a new subject.

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