Written by Hayley Cawthra
Professional photography by ICapture Solutions
In April 2023, while hiking up to Muizenberg Peak on Easter Weekend, I spotted a lone medium-sized black dog in the mountains above Boyes Drive. The sun was out, not a breath of wind, and the paths were busy. I assumed that this hound belonged to one of the several groups of people sharing the trails with me that day.
To my dismay though, a few days later I intercepted Marilyn Hoole, a friend of mine, looking up at Lakeside Peak with binoculars from road level. I assumed she was bird watching, so I first carried on my way and left her in peace, but something prompted me to turn around and say hello. As it turned out, Marilyn was puzzling how to reach a black dog perched on the sandstone cliffs. I immediately realised that this must have been the same dog I’d spotted four days prior, so I offered my assistance.
The mountainside had recently burned and the path up to where he was lying wasn’t obvious to Marilyn, so I grabbed a rope lead from her and made my way up. The poor dog was terrified and ran away and further up the slope as best he could. He was also exhausted, though, so eventually gave up and lay down. At that point in my life I’d only had cats and knew buggerall about Canids, so I figured I’d start by talking to him.
I introduced myself, explained my ineptness with his sort, told him where I lived and pointed out the house which was visible from Lakeside Peak, that I had two lovely cats called Keith Richards and Ingwe, and asked him to please just cooperate. He obligingly did so, but probably only because he was totally worn out, and he flopped his head onto my lap as I sat beside him. I fastened the lead, but in the end he wouldn’t budge so I carried him all the way down the cliffed slope.
Back on the road, I handed him over to Marilyn, and as they drove off I felt connected to this dog. For several weeks afterwards, while TEARS did their due diligence on testing, sterilising and trying to locate an owner, I bugged Marilyn, asking her all sorts of dog-related questions, and I asked their team to reserve fostering rights to me.
Marilyn named him Hamish, and when I picked him up, he joined me on geological work trips to caves, coastal sand dunes, archaeological sites with very-long-buried bones (!), and we shared a (very small) tent for a week for mapping work in the Swartberg mountains. This set the scene for the establishment of a special relationship, and Hamish has brought much entertainment and joy to my life.
He’s an incredibly gentle and alert dog, and one that makes us feel proud to be his custodians. As a co-founder and director of TEARS animal rescue, Marilyn gets everything in sight sterilised, but we do admire Hamish’s genetics and secretly wish that there were more of him!
Marilyn gifted us a MuttMix kit to put our guessing aside, and we were VERY surprised by his DNA results.
Hamish’s MuttMix Results:
44% German Shepherd Dog
39% Toy Fox Terrier
17% Shih Tzu
We’d expected that he was a Labrador cross, but instead Mr Hamish is an impressive combination of German Shepherd, Toy Fox Terrier and Shih Tzu! We think he has some of the intelligence and eager-to-please ways of a German Shepherd, the entertaining silliness of a Fox Terrier, and alertness and some barkiness of a Shih Tzu.
Of course we’ve had a few chuckles about the Shih Tzu contribution that seemed a bizarre blend to imagine.
