The red hunter with the ridge

The well known history of origin of the Ridgeback-"Ridge" leads us back to the native dogs of the Khoi-Khoi and Bantu tribes. In earlier days, tramping hunters and pastoral tribes came all the way across Central Africa with their dogs up to the Cape of Good Hope where they got together with the first Europeans, namely the Portuguese sailors in the 17th century.

The written reports of these traders and adventurers confirm the existence of dogs from native tribes "which have the fur on their back growing towards the front". These broadly travelled men also found it extremely remarkable that these similar to jackal striped, unhandsome creatures were exceedingly useful and faithful to their owners.

Beloved "Boer-Honde"

A few generations later it was common and widely spread amongst the European settlers to have a functional cross-breed, which often had the characteristic ridge of the native dog and who proofed themselves to be a watchdog for the herd and farms as well as a hunting dog in the bush. A couple of these beloved Boer Dogs were brought back from Swellendam Cape by the missionary Charles Heim from his dangerous tracks in the Matabe Land the former South Rhodesia, where he settled down around 1870.

The adventurer and big game hunter Cornelis van Rooyen borrowed the ridge carrying dog couple from the Cape to be his hunting companions. Because of their remarkable dedication van Rooyen began to carefully use the inheritance of these two dogs for his pack of existing cross-breeds.

Dog of the Big Game Hunters

These dogs were of immeasurable value for professional and big game hunters. Lion hunting with these dogs ran according to the following structure: As soon as a pack of dogs saw a lion on the prairie, they followed, encircled and surrounded the lion. The lion was so busy with paw bashes, fending off the dogs, that the hunter was able to come closer. The dogs were so clever in doing this, they never got too close to the lion so as to always keep out of reach of the strong paws of the lion. If the lion jumped at them, they would let him pass only to snap after the lions flanks in the next instant until the lion faced them again. Getting too close to a lion is always deadly for dogs, and they should never really pack a lion. Only few dogs survived the dangerous hunt up to the age of reproduction, a tough selection of these dogs.

The old breeds of the Massai and Zulu dogs, as well as the Khoi-Khoi dogs (falsely called Hottentots or "Stutterers" by the Boer because they could not understand their snappy phonetic language) belong to the old ancestors of the canine with the ridge. Of the four legged Europeans, mainly Airedales, Collies, Bloodhounds and Irish Wolfhounds contributed to the development of the Lion hunter.

Development of the Lion Dog

In 1922 Francis Richard Barnes grounded a breeding club in Bulawayo, the former Rhodesia. This club was based on the standard of the Dalmatian and began by collecting breeding materials of Lion Dogs of different origins.

A forceful, arduous, fast and very agile dog developed which showed psychological qualities to a high degree. A. Hunter accurately describes this dog as brilliantly courageous mixed with clever cautiousness.

When one takes the development of this dogs history into consideration, the difficulties encountered when trying to harmonise the ãRhodesian Ridgeback" or ãLion Dog" is understandable.

However, the selection of character that was made due to the demands of the big game hunt and to the very close co-operation between dog and humans has turned out to be very consistent. The instinct certainty makes the Rhodesian Ridgeback appear suspicious towards strangers but without aggression or timidness.

In the year 1926 nothing stood in the way of the international acknowledgement of this, until now, only registered breed originating in the south of Africa into the working dog class of the "Gun Dogs".

The "ridge" was defined as an external characteristic trait of this breed, a close stripe of fur which grows in the opposite direction of the rest of the fur on the dogs back and ends at the edge of the shoulder in two crowns. At last we owe it to F.R. Barnes and the from him established "Rhodesian Ridgeback Club" for the kind of Ridgeback that we know today. From when the breed was first acknowledged up to the seventies, we had a row of carefully thought through changes concerning the definition and the standard especially in regards to the height and weight which had already posed to be a problem in the thirties.

With the end of the hunting safaris at the beginning of the fifties, the breed acquired a new range of duties. Since then the breed has been registered in Group 6 of the "Scent Hounds and related breeds" of the FCI and is widely spread out throughout the world today.