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Dates & News:

ZimDog News, can be accessed from: www.vanerp.net.

GSD Council: Has been re-instated into operation with the same structure, more or less. The new members are: Bulawayo Paul Greeff and Graham Bryce and Harare: Gordon Grierson and Greg Shaw.

Condolences:

George Russell-Cargill passed away on 2 December. He was living in England at the time of his death and used to show dogs in the Zimbabwe show ring as well as doing breed judging in this country    

Zilletal Sapphire Sapphy passed away suddenly while doing guard duty on a farm just north of Harare. Ems Wallman, who showed her and entered in the obedience with her as well, brought her up. She produced one lovely litter and then went onto the farm to work as a guard dog and ruled the roost there. A wonderful easy and lovable dog, very good with all other breeds [Ems often had to look after orphans] and loved children and cats. One of the very good examples how German Shepherds should behave.

First Day at School Former Zimbabwean Ross Musto went to his first day at school while Aero is giving him an encouraged goodbye and wishes him well. Heard that Aero, a spayed female Golden Retriever, might have to go to a new home and readers in South Africa, spread this news as Aero needs a good home. They are living in Durbanville, near Cape Town. Any one wanting her please contact our website and I will pass this on to the people concerned. New Home Another dog, this time a German Shepherd bitch, 9 years old, also needs a good home Owners are leaving for Australia in about a month.

Elephants save tourists from tsunami

      By Mark Bendeich

KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Agitated elephants felt the tsunami coming, and their sensitivity saved about a dozen foreign tourists from the fate of thousands killed by the giant waves. "I was surprised because the elephants had never cried before," mahout Dang Salangam said on Sunday on Khao Lak beach at the eight-elephant business offering rides to tourists. The elephants started trumpeting -- in a way Dang, 36, and his wife Kulada, 24, said could only be described as crying -- at first light, about the time an earthquake measured at a magnitude of 9.0 cracked open the sea bed off Indonesia's Sumatra island.

The elephants soon calmed down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be comforted despite their mahouts' attempts at reassurance. "The elephants didn't believe the mahouts. They just kept running for the hill," said Wit Aniwat, 24, who takes the money from tourists and helps them on to the back of elephants from a sturdy wooden platform.

Those with tourists aboard headed for the jungle-clad hill behind the resort beach where at least 3,800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed. The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.

"Then we saw the big wave coming and we started running," Wit said. Around a dozen tourists were also running towards the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort, one of a line of hotels strung along the 10 km (6-mile) beach especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans.

"The mahouts managed to turn the elephants to lift the tourists onto their backs," Kulada said. She used her hands to describe how the huge beasts used their trunks to pluck the foreigners from the ground and deposit them on their backs. The elephants charged up the hill through the jungle, then stopped.

The tsunami drove up to 1 km (1,000 yards) inshore from the gently sloping beach which had been so safe for children it made Khao Lak an ideal place for a family holiday. But it stopped short of where the elephants stood.

On Sunday, the elephants were back at work giving rides to the tourists on whom the area depends.

German Ewald Heeg, from a small town near Frankfurt, said his charter company had offered his family -- wife, two daughters and one of their boyfriends -- the chance to go straight home, but he had turned it down. "Our family is OK so we stay here to make our holiday," he said. "Today, we make a safari. We go by elephants at first, then we make a boat trip.

I found this article to be interesting...thought provoking. Did animals sense the coming danger? By Gary Moug Taken from the Sunday Post.

Where are all the dead animals? That's one of the questions being asked in Sri Lanka after stunned wildlife officials revealed that despite the worst tsunami in living memory, they can't find any evidence of dead animals.

Giant waves washed floodwaters up to 3km inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged south-east Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of animals including elephants leopards, wild boars and water buffalo.

More than 25,000 people are thought to have died in the country but HD Ratnayake deputy director of the department of Wildlife Conservation Sri Lanka said it appeared the animals had sensed danger and headed to safety.

"The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals" he said. No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit."

"I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening" Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, who runs a hotel in the park said, "I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to find a dead animal."

Wildlife officials are now convinced that animals sensed the Indian Ocean tsunami and fled to higher ground to avoid death. Snorkellers swimming at the time the tidal waves hit Sri Lanka's coastline reported unusual behaviour by marine life, as if they sensed impending danger. Experts have long expressed beliefs that animals may possess a sixth sense that tells them of changes in atmospheric pressure.

There have been instances in the past of cats going into hiding up to 12 hours before earthquakes, while dogs bark frantically shortly before they struck.

Zimbabwean caught in the Tsunami. Clive Baron, from Bulawayo, was tragically caught up in the Tsunami disaster. He is still in hospital and we hope he will recover soon and return safely home to his family,