The 2010 African Safari - presented by the NetChows Chow Calendar

Johannesburg Skyline

We live in Johannesburg, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world – a modern & the largest city in South Africa. It is considered to be the largest man-made forest in the world! A large percentage of our fellow chow chows live in the greater Johannesburg area, with others spread throughout the country.

Our country has 11 national languages and even more cultures with a great variety of peoples.   
Throughout the year you will meet various of our SA chow chows, and their interesting activities. We will also show you much of this beautiful continent we now call home.

Our human dad, Franck is very good with cameras and we’ll borrow some of his images to show you. Hopefully you will enjoy them so much, you will plan to come visit us here soon!

Chows in 1943

Chow Chows arrive in SA

Chow Chows have been around Southern Africa since the late 1800’s and we have adjusted well, winning the humans in South Africa over with our handsome looks & unique ways. In those early years, there were both rough & smooth chow chows imported. Our smooth cousins made their appearance sporadically throughout history in SA (you know, humans are so full of whims – nothing consistent like us chows.) However, us roughs have consistently been around all these years. Our ancestors came predominantly from the UK, but in later years also from North America, Scandinavia and Europe - and just last year we met some from Australia & Russia. South Africans are known as the ‘rainbow nation’ – we think our chow chow bloodlines are just the same!

Coping with the heat

One of the first questions many people ask, is how we chow chows cope with the African heat. Grandma says that she loves the sun – and likes sunbathing. One supposes coming from such cold weather as in Scandinavia, she will. Our smooth sister says that for her the sun is not so hot. Judging by her running around all day, that must be true.

We only know the weather in Africa from birth, so we do as all sensible chow chows here do - lose as much of our undercoat in the hot summer months as we can (mostly we start as early as October – much to our humans’ frustrations when they try to show us). With that hot stuff all gone - just like the lions we are said to be so much like - we can lay about in shady, damp spots under trees & behave very lazy. We are most active in the early mornings & late afternoons, with night time spent – for the indoors crowd, guarding our humans, or for those of us with access to the outdoors, hunting all kinds of things at night whilst keeping an eye on home & hearth.

Chow Chow Activities

What do we chow chows get up to here in SA? We have cousins in Cape Town doing carting. We’ll post some photos here later in the year. We have cousins in Johannesburg & Cape Town doing Therapy work – we are very proud of them and will post photos as well. 
Then we have the odd cousin that has participated a bit in obedience, but personally we think that they are not very clever to be so obedient – it’s rather disloyal to our reputation for being stubborn & independent! We’ll post photos even of these traitors… when mom can find them again. We hid them – we just grin & wag our tails when she starts searching…
And of course a number of us attend the occasional breed shows. Most of us get bored with these very easily, so we do our best to misbehave when we’ve had enough of shows – then our humans don’t take us too often. There are two cousins who like it very much, and go to many many shows all over the country.  You’ll hear some show news during the year & also see more on Netchows Shownews.

From a midsummer & hot South Africa, we greet you in the homelanguage of +23% of the population – IsiZulu. The Zulu people are Southern Africa’s largest ethnic group. Their name is based on the well known warrior king, Shaka Zulu. Currently their monarchy is headed by King Goodwill Zwelithini.
Two Zulu words you may like to learn: Lion = Ingonyama & Dog = Inja

To you - who leave us to return next time – “hamba kahle” – meaning ‘go well…’
You would return the greeting - to us who stay – “sala kahle” – meaning ‘stay well…’

Joel & Nurya