History
The Khoikhoi people occupied the Cape Peninsula during the mid 17th century when the Dutch began trading with the area and set up a trading station. These people had a dog which was used for hunting; described as ugly, but noted for its ferocity when acting as a guard dog. This dog measured 18 inches (46 cm) at the withers, with a lean but muscular frame. The ears have been described both as erect and hanging, but the most distinctive feature was the length of hair growing in the reverse direction along its back. Within 53 years of the Dutch settlement, the Europeans were using these local dogs themselves.
By the 1860s, European settlers had brought a variety of dog breeds to this area of Africa, including Great Danes, Bloodhounds, Greyhounds, terriers, and Foxhounds. These breeds were bred with the indigenous African dogs, including the dog of the Khoikhoi people, which resulted in the Boer hunting dogs, a forerunner to the modern Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Reverend Charles Helm traveled to the Hope Fountain Mission in Southern Rhodesia in the 1870s, taking two ridged dogs with him. It was there that Cornelius van Rooyen, a big–game hunter, saw them and decided to breed his own dogs with them to incorporate their guarding abilities. The offspring were dogs with red coats and ridges,. They became the foundation stock of a kennel which developed dogs over the next thirty five years with the ability to bay lions, that is, to hold them at bay while the hunter makes the kill. The dogs were used to hunt not only lions but also other game, including wild pigs and baboons. (They have the ability to kill a baboon independent of a human hunter.) The first breed standard was written by Mr F.R. Barnes in Bulawayo, Rhodesia in 1922. Based on that of the Dalmatian, it was approved in 1926 by the South African Kennel Union.
The first Rhodesian Ridgebacks in Britain were shown by Mrs. Edward Foljambe in 1928. The breed was admitted into the American Kennel Club in 1955 as a member of the Hound Group.
Read more about this topic: Rhodesian Ridgeback
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