FOLLOWING FOUR-LEGS
An unexpected hitchhiker raises the bar on travellers’ tails
‘D ON’T feed him and, at the end of the day, send him home. But you must know he doesn’t listen.” We had been warned. But the bounding, amber creature leaping ahead of the hiking party, all legs, muscle and sweptback ears, was unstoppable. Hmm. It was an unorthodox hike to be accompanied by someone else’s dog, but hey. If the owner wasn’t fazed, who were we to object?
And so it happened that we had a mute but enthusiastic guide for the first of a four-day mountainous trail through a cattle farm. Up and over boulders, down and around, he nimbly led, panting in wait at peak points and digging idly for moles on the flat while we toiled up from behind, heavy with packs, like poorly designed snails.
But you try telling a Rhodesian ridgeback that “doesn’t listen” to go home when, like you, he’s climbed up hill and down dale for seven hours and all he wants to do is crash on the nearest sleeping bag. So, at the end of day one, in the relative comfort of the overnight cave, we tried hard not to feed him. As we empathised with his fatigue, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for forcing the goinghome issue. “Agh, let him stay for heaven’s sake,” said the one whose sleeping bag the exhausted creature had chosen to warm.
With the corporate resolve weakening, someone may even have slipped him a rusk.
Next morning: “He can’t have been that hungry, he rejected the leftover rice.”
“He’s a Rhodesian, not an Asian ridgeback. What do you expect!”
Four days, many kilometres and ascents later, Fido, as he’d become in the absence of any other identification, was not only still with us, but an integral member of the party. He shared cheese sandwiches, energy bars, biltong, chocolate and anything else that was going — including sleeping arrangements. Each night he’d spread his notinconsiderable bulk around the variety of companions’ bed rolls as the fancy took him. It has to be said, my night with Fido on board was considerably warmer, but completely immobilised. His weight, probably the same as mine, kept me tightly pinioned at the legs till dawn. It seemed cruel to wake him.
Throughout the entire expedition, the dog’s zeal was infinite. While the rest of us moaned and groaned like stuck pigs when the terrain became tough and uncompromising, he was, like, “Bring it on!” A sherpa in training.
Come the final descent on the last day, at a point where the ground dropped steeply into a distant valley, our trail-blazing ridgeback was positioned on the crest of a rock, gauging the way ahead, pointer-like and silhouetted against the sky. Magnificent! Suddenly, a shout from behind caused his head to spin a 180°. We all turned to follow his gaze.
A herdsman on an aging donkey was coaxing 100 head of cattle in our direction. Like a mountain goat, the dog sprang about, aiding and abetting, or perhaps confounding, the manoeuvre, chirping at the donkey and alerting the rest of us illbalanced, pack-bound two-leggers to get out of the way.
Clumsily, we scattered off-piste, flattening ourselves out across vertical rock surfaces for safety.
We did it just in time, as moments later, in one long, loud, lowing flow, a continuous river of cattle, big brown eyes rolling and forelocks stumbling, passed on by, headed, presumably, for greener pastures. We were left breathless to follow in their cow-patted footsteps.
To recover our stability, a tea stop was called. Out came the travelling kettle. His duty nearly done and with the end in sight, Fido chose the opportunity to take a well-earned nap. Once again, his cultural heritage was cited when, in the pose of the sleeping dog, he laid his head in the lap of the Zimbo in the party. “Takes one to know one!”