Basil is a kind and attentive host, particularly when evening scraps are his due. He might be ugly, scarred and with a bad case of bung-eye (I forgot to get some Golden Eye ointment for his conjunctivitis from the local clinic) that hopefully should be cleared up in a few days. He isn’t riddled with ticks and is obviously reasonably healthy – in mind and body. In all he is just a normal dog – except that he is (technically) homeless.

This brings us back to the Notice at the Nyirripi Store and begs the following question.
Has anyone bothered to ask the locals if they want the Police to shoot their dogs?
No? I thought not.

Dingoes play an important role in Australia’s ecosystems; they are apex predators and the continent’s largest terrestrial predator. Because of their attacks on livestock, dingoes and other wild dogs are seen as pests by the sheep industry and the resultant control methods normally run counter to dingo conservation efforts.

This is “Stripe“, who ended up with Gloria Morales, an animal carer that works at the Warlukurlangu Artists cooperative in Yuendumu – a remote community about 300 kilometres north-west 0f Alice Springs.

Many years ago I had a T-shirt produced by local Darwin artists Chips Mackinolty and Therese Ritchie. On the front of the shirt was a woman talking to her husband about a request from their child, who was standing before them resplendent in one of those cheap cowboy outfits we all had as children. From the foggy mists of memory she was saying something along the lines of “Johnny wanted a Cowboy Outfit for Christmas. So I got him the Northern Territory Government.” Colin Holt’s show, “30 Years of Chief Ministers – the official portraits we should have had” runs from 8 July to 4 August at the Alice Springs Public Library.

Ceciia Alfonso told me that “I take my dog Maliki to work every day – and I’m glad that the artists do as well. The only days that I leave Maliki at home is when he has a bad dose of the farts – they are truly horrible.”

AMRRIC is covering a wider field now in that we are trying to help out with not only facilitating vets into communities but also to help the local Shires with legislation, trying to increase awareness at the Federal government level of the problems with animal management nationally and we are also trying to increase education of the community.

These dogs have been a large part of my life for the past three years – walking with them, talking to them, caring for the sick and injured, burying those stomped on by camels, kicked by bulls or bitten by snakes. I miss them terribly.

He must have been a lot more relaxed being held by me because he started eating like crazy and nearly ate my fingers as I was holding the chicken neck! He was very skinny, with bones showing through his skin and I could count all of his ribs..

The best fun that Miku has with dead things is with the occasional Cane Toad that she finds squished on the road outside her house. If she finds a newly road-killed Toad she will roll in its remains in an outburst of unalloyed joy…