Senjabi Basenjis

Home of the African Barkless Dogs

Train your basenji to come when called from the day you get it. Hopefully your breeder will have started doing this with the puppies already. Getting them used to the command ‘come’ is quite important. I’ve found saying “pup pup pup” and showing them food is a good start. Once they get the idea, it becomes “puppy come” and showing the food again. Basenjis are quite intelligent and will learn what words mean. In my house if I say dinner, the dogs all look at me as if to say “are you going to feed us?” They also know the words ‘walk’, ‘out’, ‘park’, ‘breakfast’, ‘outside’, ‘in your pen’ and several others.

 

Cats and basenjis can live in harmony. I’ve found it best to have the basenji used to cats from a young age, but it is possible to introduce an adult basenji to cats. I wouldn’t recommend introducing a young kitten to an adult basenji that has never been around cats before. I think the natural hunt instinct would be too strong for it. When I got my first basenji I already had 3 cats, all of which were bigger than my 7 week old puppy. He soon learnt to respect the felines and to keep out of the way of their claws. My next dog was 4 months old when I got her and she had never lived with cats. Once the rules were established that she was not to chase the cats, she was fine. I think it also helped that she got whacked by them a couple of times so decided it wasn’t wise to mess with them.

There was a time of about 3 years where I was without cats, so when I decided to get another two it was important that they were older cats (12+ months) that had attitude and would stand up for themselves. Lucky for us, I found 2 cats like this and was able to introduce them to the 2 dogs that had grown up with cats, and a 2yr old basenji that hadn’t. As we have added to the pack, each dog has learnt the rules regarding the cats.

 

Basenjis can be rather destructive around the house (more so as youngsters). If you are not able to supervise them, then they need to go in a ‘safe place’, or you may end up with a lounge suite like ours with the corners chewed off. They can be kleptomaniacs, so anything lying around is fair game. They will not necessarily chew it, but they may well run off with it. Do you really want to find your underwear on the front/back lawn? If all is quiet, then you may want to go and find the dog to see what it is up to. It could be quite innocently lying in the sun, or he could be busy de-stuffing something.

They do eventually settle down and I can leave mine unattended in the house without coming home to a mass of destruction. Of course each dog is different and you may be lucky enough to get a puppy that is well behaved from day one.

 

 

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