New Guinea Singing Dog

It's much too long a story to relate all the details of how my wife and I came to have one of these rare, almost endangered dogs, but I'll try and make it brief. Shortly after we moved to Sydney, Australia, we visited the Taronga Zoo and saw these fox-like dogs. We were captivated and wanted to learn more.

We're non-conformists to begin with, and once we did the research, we decided New Guinea Singing Dogs were the right dog for us. If not following the crowd is your nature, too, you might agree once you become familiar with these amazing animals. I won't attempt to be an info-mercial for this breed; you can find what you need to know on a host of websites and will discover their uniqueness. I will tell you a little about our experience in owning one.

Bono, as we named our Singer, has adapted so well to domestic home life that we couldn't be happier. That's a question with New Guinea Singing Dogs, and we can occasionally see his wild instincts come through. Bono has some very endearing qualities; one humorous thing is that he prefers to howl or sing when he is with us much more than singing alone. He'll almost beg us to sit and listen, as if he's an opera diva desperate for an appreciative audience! I just wish I knew what he was singing about. We enjoy how he can actually change his pitch and create a new song each time he sings.

Because of their dwindling numbers in the wild, we would like to find a suitable mate and breed Bono, but we certainly don't want to compromise the integrity of the bloodlines. We're not geneticists, so we are working with the New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society and letting the experts handle the process. Hopefully, Bono will have new reasons to sing, maybe even a love song sometime soon.