Africanis

The Africanis is the aboriginal dog of southern Africa — not a bred breed but a landrace shaped by four thousand years of living alongside herders and villagers.

History

Its ancestors came south with pastoralist peoples out of north-east Africa, and dogs of this outline appear in southern African rock art and in the earliest European accounts of the region. It was never selected to a standard; what shaped it was survival, and South African researchers who named and documented it in the 1990s argue that this is exactly what makes it worth conserving.

Temperament

The breed is known for being watchful, self-possessed and undemanding, attached to its household without being clingy, and reserved rather than showy with strangers.

Care and training

It needs regular exercise and space, and it thinks for itself in a way that rewards patience over drilling. The short coat needs almost nothing.

Health

Natural selection rather than a closed studbook has left it notably hardy, with good resistance to the parasites and diseases of the region. These are patterns for the landrace rather than a forecast for one dog; the measured facts are in the panel.