Written by Lorel Alexander
Photography by Strike a Pose Photography
I didn’t plan on getting another dog when Molly made her way into my heart. She was adopted just over a year ago from Border Collie Rescue (BCR) Johannesburg as an Honorary Border Collie.
Special dogs
Four years ago I got Lu, a golden Labrador from Labrador Rescue – who came with a little Jack Russell named Patch; at that time I also had Rosie, a small Border Collie rescued by BCR in East London, who’d moved with me to Johannesburg.
This little dog had – and still has – a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, she’d suffered a stroke, and, although she survived, it affected her hearing and she was also almost blind. She still tottered around the house just fine until, in April 2017, she was diagnosed with a big tumour on her lung and I reluctantly had to let her go.
I vowed never to have another dog…
Honorary Border Collie
Somehow, a couple of months later, I found myself scrolling through Border Collie Rescue’s website, hoping that maybe there would be another “Rosie” needing a home. But it didn’t happen.
Instead, what I found was a photo of this funny-looking little “honorary Border Collie” in the shape of an odd little black-and-tan dog, with a long body, stubby legs, short tail, head a bit big and an underbite… anything but a Border Collie. She’d been found trotting along the dirt roads near their kennels by one the BCR employees.
This peculiar pooch was named Daffy, and although she was not really what I was looking for, I went out to see her anyway. And what a lovely dog she was.
I had sleepless nights wondering: should I take her or not; would she get on with Lu and Patch; did she like cats? I made all sorts of excuses to myself, but eventually I brought her home and renamed her Molly.
Miss Molly had no problems settling in and making herself comfortable; she had fun chasing the cats until she got zapped on the nose, and now she’s best of friends with them. She quickly learnt good manners, went to sleep at night with the other dogs, took just a couple of weeks to learn how to walk on a lead, and has a character like no other dog. She likes to sleep on my feet. As it turned out, she may not have been what I was looking for, but she was exactly what I wanted.
Miss Molly’s MuttMix Results:
Level 3 Rottweiler
Level 3 Australian Shepherd
Level 4 Bulldog
Level 5 Poodle
Level 5 Great Pyrenees
Molly’s DNA analysis was most difficult for me to fathom!
Although she has the colouring of a Rottweiler and the underbite, which could be part of the Bulldog, I see no evidence of any the other breeds – French Poodle, Pyrenean Mountain Dog and Australian Shepherd. And, despite her long body and short, stubby legs, there’s not a trace of Dachshund to be seen, which we’d thought there might be.
But, whatever she is, she’s ours and we just love her to absolute bits – and she knows that she is loved!
Dominique of MuttMix says:
Molly is an interesting case. The levels of breeds found indicate that she comes from a long line of mixed breeds. In other words, her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents (going further back even) were probably all some sort of mixed breeds.
When this happens over generations, the breeds become so diluted that you almost start to see a “new breed" appearing by natural evolution, only picking up certain physical traits of the breeds found in the DNA. Each new mixed breed that’s added to the gene pool adds additional features to any new litter produced. She is certainly a very unique pooch!
