Address to Inaugural Meeting of the Australian Native Dog Training Society of NSW LTD by Founder and Secretary Berenice Walters November 1976.

I have reproduced this extract of the speech made by Berenice nearly 40 years ago to demonstrate her passion and knowledge of the Dingo.

At that time, there was very little accurate information about the dingo and much of the false information that was available was spread by farmers, doggers and other that had a vested interest in the destruction of the Dingo.

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Address to Inaugural Meeting of the Australian Native Dog Training Society of NSW LTD by Founder and Secretary Berenice Walters November 1976.

I sincerely hope that I have selected a thinking body of members for the nucleus of this Society who will question and keep questioning any relevant data. That no one will make wild claims based on theories purported in the past.

If we are to be dogmatic in our ideas, we will quickly be outdated. If we accept what we are told without question, we have a closed mind.

I also hope that our concern for the Australian Native Dog will also include all the true wild dogs of the world. There is rarely a wolf that could live up to the reputation of big, bad wolf; the old claim of "the only good dingo is a dead dingo" is proven incorrect in most cases, both scientifically in the wild, and by thousands of persons who have kept dingoes either as pets or working dogs and called them something else - anything but a dingo.

Even if the dingo is not indigenous to Australia, by its long residence here, its development into a dog unique to Australia, kept pure by its thousands of years of isolation, make it truly DOG OF AUSTRALIA.

There is a worldwide awakening to the merits of the wild dog as an integral part of our ecology, and a realisation that the “big, bad wolf” image is completely false - in other words we have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into believing something completely untrue, and been guilty of accepting without question the world's biggest lie; that the wild dog is savage, aggressive and uncontrollable.

We have all accepted the fact that the wild dog is a completely devoted and loving parent. Yet hunters will claim that they can rob the den of its pups and the bitch either disappear into the scrub or cringe in a distant corner.

The act of a coward - or the act of a cunning, aggressive and savage predator?

No - the act of an extremely timid animal. Despite her love and devotion, too frightened, too lacking in courage to fight for her pups.

There are records of bitches seen "abandoning” their pups when man approached. Is this the act of a coward?

No - it is the act of a desperate mother making a target of herself in an effort to draw the attention of man from her pups. Even to protect her family she did not have the courage to attack, but she would risk her life to save theirs.

These are the actions of the true wild dog. Domestic breeds have had this timidity bred out of them. They will stand their ground and even attack man. Man has wrongly expected the same behaviour from the wild dog.

However, once the wild dog has been domesticated, robbed of his timidity and superlative hunting powers, then he would be expected to behave in like manner. He is no longer a typical example of a wild dog.