thank you for your kind words, ben. ❤️ in addition to dabi and prisca, my husband and i have had 4 other basenjis in the past. like your sheiba they passed away after they’d each lived moderately long or very long lives. we were so sad to lose them, too. but losing dabi less than 2 months after his 4th birthday was so unexpected… so hard. and it happened so suddenly we had no time to prepare or say goodbye. i’m sorry you lost your sheiba. i hope you have or will have another basenji some day. ❤️ of course none replaces the other, but a basenji is such a joy to have. ~amy

thank you so very much for your kind message. yes, you are right. i don’t think we can begin to explain to people who haven’t had one just how very unique and special the breed is. you are exactly right. basenjis aren’t just intelligent and independent-thinking, but intuitive as well. and, like your titan to you, dabi was my husband dave’s shadow. for 4 years dabi was dave’s little sidekick. we’ve had 4 basenjis in the past, and they were super special. one of them was MY special girl, she loved me so very much. but she came with issues. she had been a puppy mill breeder for her first 7 years of life so she was very timid and nervous. but she trusted me. dabi was completely well-adjusted and just enjoyed life greatly while at dave’s side. dave has taken dabi’s untimely death especially hard. we had no idea our time with him would be so short. he came from a very good breeder, a show breeder of over 50 years. this has blindsided us all. they are like our children, as you say. enjoy your titan. i know you will. ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you, Charlene. ❤️

aww. my husband and i talk about hoping that God allows our pets in heaven with us. just yesterday i was imagining that dabi could play with a real hedgehog in heaven like he did here… without hurting it. ha ha. wouldn’t that be funny if that’s what sheba and dabi are doing?

Thank you very much, Mando. ❤️

Aww. Boston Terriers are so cute, too. I just petted one the other day outside Sam’s Club and I told his owner that I wanted a Boston Terrier as a child. (I didn’t have dogs or cats as a child.) Sadly and tragically we just lost Dabi to prostate cancer 2 months ago. It hit out of the blue. We didn’t even have time to say goodbye, really. We’ve had a pack of 4 basenjis in the past that died of various old-age-related ailments. That was hard, too, but at least they had full lives. This thing with Dabi has hit us really hard. My husband can’t even bear to watch any of my old videos now.

thank you so much for the prayers. ❤️ prisca won’t get sick. dabi’s not sick. his prostate was enlarged so much that it stopped him from being able to pee. (and if that continued he’d likely go into kidney failure.) the emergency vet said he had to be neutered, that that would ensure that his prostate never swelled up like that again. my husband was against neutering. he was afraid that dabi would feel like “an old man” if he had it done. but we didn’t have a choice, given the situation. dabi is moping around a little today. i think his antibiotic is making him feel sick, and surely he’s hurting some. hopefully he’ll be as good as new in a couple of days. 😭❤️❤️❤️

They’re good. Thank you. ❤️ They love and need each other for companionship so much, yet they are secure enough to do their own things without the other sometimes. 🥰 (For example sometimes one will be laying in the window seat in the front of the house while the other is in the sunroom in the back. Sometimes one will go downstairs in the morning while I’m still in bed and the other will get back under the covers with me.) They could hardly stand to be separated from each other for probably the first year that they were together. 🤣

We feed Dabi & Prisca Honest Kitchen food & Fromm’s food. We always have some of each in a bowl for them to snack on whenever they’re hungry throughout the day or night. They seem to prefer the Fromm’s over Honest Kitchen. They’ll finish Fromm’s first. But both are really good foods recommended by their breeders so we continue to offer them both. Fromm’s Salmon A La Veg is their favorite flavor of Fromm’s. Plus once a day (as a lunch, of sorts) we give them either a little cooked shredded chicken or cooked steak or cooked ground beef (often mixing the ground beef with brown rice as it finishes cooking). We cook & freeze packets of those meats and defrost them by putting the packages in the fridge the day before they’re needed. We warm up the cooked meats for 15-25 seconds in the microwave, then mix them with a little water & their probiotics. They always look forward to these warm “meals.”

Ha ha. Yeah… The worst is when Dabi runs back and forth along our fence in the path he’s worn, playing with the neighbors’ dog. All thought of not wanting to get his paws wet or muddy goes out the window if Blake is outside and wants to play with Dabi. 🙄🤣❤️

Hello, young teenager. 😊 We’ve been married a long time, for one thing. And in that long time we’ve lived for a long while in each of our first 2 houses. This is our 3rd house… our “temporary dream home” (with the real thing being in heaven some day with God). I was once told by a realtor that people live in houses on average for 3-7 years. That seemed crazily short to me (those times). Maybe some has to do with marriages & families breaking up? If you’re in a house for a long time you’ll build up equity. In any case, we pray a lot and rely on God and truly believe this house we have is a blessing from Him. …not that we prayed it into happening as some people think you can do, but that we prayed for God’s will and everything fell into place. ❤️ (Regarding jobs: healthcare has worked out well for my family. There is always a need for healthcare workers. Even during Covid - when the rest of the world shut down - my family never missed work.)

yes. we NEVER leave our “babies” alone with collars on. 20ish years ago, when our first boy basenji was 1 and our first 2 girl basenjis were less than 1 - still puppies - one of the girls jumped up on my father-in-law’s patio furniture in his backyard. we used to keep collars on all 3 of our pups, with name tags, at the time. well, sophie hung herself by her collar on a patio chair. if our teenaged son hadn’t witnessed it from inside(!) the house and immediately rushed to her aid she would have strangled to death. (she lived a good 10 years after that until cancer ultimately took her.) anyways… with the way basenjis jump around and climb everything my husband and i largely avoid putting collars on them unless absolutely necessary, and remove them as soon as possible. ❤️❤️❤️

yes. last night my hubby had to sit with dabi & prisca downstairs in the sunroom until it stopped raining. prisca wanted to go out - but didn’t want to go out - until the rain stopped. 🙄 they have us trained. 🥰

…for sure, that’s the worst …at night in the rain. that must be really rough living in a rainy area like that when you love basenjis. ❤️ God bless you. 😘

i’ll bet that ibizan hounds and basenjis have quite a bit in common with each other, each being descended from primitive-types of hunting breeds/lines. ❤️

@@GrumpyGirlProductions The breeder of my dogs also had basenjis, so you might be on to something. They both seem to be very sweet breeds, but also both seem to have their own strong ideas about how things are going to go. I think it would be fun to have an Ibizan Hound, a Basenji, and an Azawakh, just so that people would think you're screwing with them when you answer, "what breeds are those?"

@@davidhines68 ha ha. i tried to talk my hubby into getting an azawakh for awhile. we ended up sticking with basenjis and got prisca for dabi for company. they are perfect for each other. dabi and prisca are half-siblings and their personalities mesh so well. they get along better than any of our original 4 basenjis ever did. (although our first 4 were fine together. they didn’t all like to play at the same level, though.) i guess we decided to stay with the breed we knew, when we got prisca. but ibizan hounds and azawakhs seem very cool to me, too. ❤️❤️❤️

yes. it was a very difficult time. when my husband was home we each stayed with one of them. when i was alone with the 2 of them, though, prisca could bear being away from me better than dabi. we kept them together and with us until the last possible moments… but when the time had come where dabi could impregnate her they had to be kept separate. it was a trying time, but the worst of it was being separated by a gate, and those days passed soon. you may be interested to know that we insisted on being allowed to be with prisca when she awoke from her spaying surgery… we didn’t want her to be without us for a moment once she woke. the vet and her office kindly obliged. and apparently the techs carried prisca around like a baby rather than allowing her to be distressed in a kennel before her surgery. prisca is our little princess (and dabi our little prince) and we treat them as such. ❤️❤️❤️

honey! i keep forgetting to tell you when you’re here… he wasn’t in his office! lol. 🤣 granddaddy & i were sitting right next to the window, and he was sitting closer to the inside of the little cafe area in the airport. (it was like he was sitting in the center of a little restaurant and we were at the window…) it was just a trick of the light and reflections that “put him out there” on the outside of the glass of that little hallway/tunnel that leads from the inside of the airport to the plane. ✈️ he was completely out in the open in the middle of the rest-tree-ont. (ha ha. 😘) but i pointed my phone towards the outside/window and his reflection was projected onto that jetway or whatever it’s called. well, at least that was my phone’s camera’s impression. he was just in the reflection next to me. i’m not a creep! lol. 😅

Aww. Yeah. I think they DO feel a kinship with other basenjis that they don’t with “regular” dogs. Ha ha. 😅🤣❤️ Thanks for sharing your story. 🥰

Ha ha. Yes… We purposely have never advertised the fact to them that they COULD jump over the gate. We really need to use the gates sometimes when we have company, or like when Prisca was in heat. I bet I could offer them a treat to jump it… they WOULD… and then the gates would never work again. Don’t give our babies any ideas. 🤣🤣🤣 We had 4 other basenjis, previously, and one of them sailed over gates and fences without touching them. ❤️

ha ha. ❤️

Thanks so much. ❤️

basenjis are the most awesome breed in the world to have, and sometimes they seem like the most impossible animals to have. my husband and i have had 6 and we wouldn’t have any other type of dog, but they require a lot of attention and patience. a really good place to get a lot of info is from b.r.a.t. ...basenji rescue and transport. www.basenjirescue.org a good page to read on the site is “the good, the bad & the ugly.” www.basenjirescue.org/REALITY%20STORIES/Good-Bad-Ugly.asp some people sign up to volunteer as fosters for b.r.a.t. and their experiences fostering can help them decide if the breed is for them. they’re beautiful and funny and smart (...and they’re stubborn and destructive if bored and they will sigh in exasperation with you if you displease them. 😅😬🤷🏻‍♀️) ❤️❤️❤️

that’s pretty awesome, j wildberry. prisca returned dabi’s stuffed toy to me 2 times, the other day, when i threw it. i need to work with them more. only 1 of our 4 previous basenjis that we had used to kind of play fetch with me. sophie had this life-sized stuffed basketball 🏀 that she would bring to me to throw. i was sad when she or one of our other 3 de-stuffed the ball. i thought she’d stop playing fetch with me then. but for the rest of her life she still loved to bring that flat, unstuffed ball to me to throw to her. 😭❤️❤️❤️

@@GrumpyGirlProductions Awww, that was a much-loved basketball! I was really surprised to see the "fetch trait" in my girl. I didn't expect it, and I haven't trained her. She's just a little weirdo. ❤The best part is that she sometimes yodels while holding the ball in her mouth. 😂

yes, they are just beautiful… elegant. regal. majestic, like you say. 😍

yes. dabi likes to play fetch with his little stuffed toys. prisca joined in and brought a toy back to me twice the other day when i threw it for dabi. prisca DOES like mouthing our hands and wrists when my husband and i get home from somewhere. you’ve given me the good idea of having a stuffed toy near the door to throw, when we get home. maybe prisca will use her excitement to see us for that. thanks! ❤️

Thanks so much. ❤️

No, we don’t raise puppies, and I’m sorry… I don’t know anyone in Colorado who does. If you go to the AKC website, though, I think you can find breeders for any breed. Dabi came from a show breeder in Gettysburg, PA and Prisca came from a breeder near New York City. 😊

SO TRUE!!

AGREED!!

you are ridiculous, mister! 😅😅😅

I know, right!

ha ha! you’re funny. 😅😅😅

YEAH!!!!

benji is so cute. 😍

ha ha. it’s true. ❤️

yes. it was a difficult time. lol. i’m glad that’s over. we plan to get prisca fixed. she’s gone through 2 heat cycles and that’s enough for us. lol. at least she’s supposed to have been able to grow well - with us waiting until she gets a bit older, before having her spayed. her breeder recommends waiting for at least a year and a half, so that’s what we’re doing. ❤️