Althea Hofmeyer and her Doggy Adoption 'tail'!

From rural Limpopo to the Sunshine Coast.

I have this wife Althea, you understand. A thing of great delight and beauty – but possessed of an unhealthy overdose of canine obsession. There she was, driving through rural Limpopo doing research in teacher development, when she chances upon this thing in a mealiefield, recognizable to only the expert eye as a dog. Flea- and mange-ridden, skeletal, toothless from trying to eat stones it appears almost beyond death’s door. Research must take second place, for now.


Stop one. The local supermarket. Only one thing on the shopping list. Chicken necks. Stop two. The general area where she spotted the thing. No sign of it so she drives around the area, tossing frozen chicken-necks randomly into the middle distance. The locals decide that this Mlungu is mad. Can we blame them? The children pounce gleefully upon the chicken necks. Back to the supermarket. This time, housing as well. A small blanket, a vuvuzela box (yes, it’s 2010), more chicken.
This time she finds the dog. Has some difficulty getting it into the vuvuzela box (the notion of a kennel is foreign to mealiefields) but wins in the end. Each day she calls me in Jo’burg to report on progress. She is becoming attached to the thing. I am gentle, but firm. We already have a veritable menagerie of adoptees, there are countless more waiting for her to chance by. Will there never be an end to this? With calm but devastating logic I point out every possible disadvantage in bringing the thing to the big smoke. The noise, the traffic, more refined dogs sure to spurn it. The more convincing I think I am the more I realise I will, with an elegant inevitability, lose.


But then, success. The evening before her return my logic wins the day and she assures me that she will bid it a fond farewell and return dog-less. The next evening I get home and (yes, you saw it coming) there is the thing. Having never seen a more decrepit animal I realise – with some relief, I must admit – that the vet will put it down first thing in the morning. We discuss why despatching him might be for the best. Amongst other considerations it looks about 14 and near the end anyway. I am gentle with my wonderful wife as she leaves for the vet the next morning. I call half an hour later, compassion in my voice. “Are you ok, my love?” “Yes”, she declares, with ominous delight in voice, “he’s not 14, but about 4. The vet is going to save him. The vet and I have called him Madiba for his noble demeanour – Diba for short”. In my view the vet has spotted the financing of his next BMW but I say nothing.




Today Diba (whom I refer to as Derelict) lives in Hamburg, baljaaring daily on the beach and terrifying the children with his one remaining eye. Can he come along for the balloon-ride?

 
Althea Hofmeyr
And why should one adopt a dog? Because it's the only way to get a real character like Diba!


Andy Hofmeyr
082 600 7341