My personal experiences with a Basenji dog

I spent weeks researching different breeds of full-blood, mongrel, and mini-breeds. I wanted one that was good for interiors as I was living in a small duplex at the time. I didn’t want dog fur on all my furniture, so a slight shedding was a must. He also lived on a busy street and didn’t have a fenced yard, so he needed a dog with low to normal energy levels. I wanted a proud looking dog with good posture and strong muscles, confident looking and generally good to his master. After weeks of searching, I found the Basenji. This dog seemed perfect to me.

I continued my research on race and learned some interesting things. They are not supposed to bark. They make a strange howl, known as a yodel. They can be very stubborn, but always with good intentions. They have hair, not hair, so they will lose something on the floor and furniture, but they don’t take off their coats. They also clean themselves, so bathing is biannual.

All of this seemed perfect, so my girlfriend and I drove across Missouri to buy one, for just over $ 600. From the moment we picked it up, we fell in love. The long road trip home wasn’t the best experience, but it ended before we knew it. Then reality came. I’m about to share with you exactly what I’ve been through with my Basenji, Sam, and what to expect if you plan to buy one.

So they don’t bark, but they sing? No. It is not a boulder. Just a piercing howl that sounds like an old woman crying and screaming hysterically. Sam did this every night while we were trying to sleep, literally for over a month. Our neighbors hated us, remember, duplex. My girlfriend and I lived there with my roommate. He could barely bear to sleep there, so he stayed away as much as he could (good boy, huh?). This is not a typical puppy cry that you will hear from any young puppy while training in the kennel. This was the scariest sound you can imagine coming from an animal, and just when you think it can’t get any worse, it starts crying even louder.

Sam was very playful when he was a puppy, which was to be expected. He had sharp teeth and didn’t enjoy his dog toys, he just wanted to chew on us, bite visitors, smash furniture, chew on baseboards, and break his leash, the list goes on and on. You have to be on their case constantly. We couldn’t let him roam around the house, because he would just run into another room and chew on things.

Another month of this, and a couple of cans away, and she finally learned to enjoy her dog toys a little more.

Now he is a little older, he does not cry at night. It’s a little quieter, so we don’t have to keep an eye on it 24/7. But he is, and always has been, very stubborn. He knows when he’s doing things he shouldn’t, and he’ll do it anyway, just to get us out of the chair and then he tries to get us to play with him. It’s not very high maintenance, but it does need a good hour of searching and fighting every day. Once we get past the puppy stage, he’s a really good dog. We had a son since he came into our lives, and Sam is doing well with the baby. Everything else is like any dog, but these are the things that struck me as somewhat specific to Basenji.

It was tough for a few months, but now we wouldn’t trade it for any dog ​​in the world.