Afghan Hound - Misc - Famous Afghan In Disgrace
(Turkuman Dammar Pine Tree)
Turkuman Dammar Pine Tree
is one of the most important Afghan Hounds in the UK breed history. He was affectionately named "Ali Baba" by his owner, Miss Mathews (Westover). In her book on the breed, Margaret Niblock details a story whereby Miss Mathews opened up an account with the local ice cream vendor during the war, and Ali Baba, being typical Afghan, having eaten his ration, would rejoin the queue for second helpings, sneaking licks of the childrens ice cream as they walked by. Well we have now uncovered further scandal about this notorious ill-behaved Afghan -
Hooligan -
in her capacity as Breed Columnist for one of Britains weekly dog papers (Our Dogs) in the mid 1940's, Miss Mathews reported as follows "Ali Baba is in deep disgrace! He has rooted up my father's best pansy bed. He was taken to the scene of his crime, but in the nick of time, he was "saved" by an admirer coming to take him for a walk. I put his lead on, fastened a pansy behind his ear, kissed his wicked and unrepentant nose and told him to go on a long walk and I hoped it would teach him." There you go, thats how to discipline an unrepentent Afghan...
Child Actor -
Afghans are renowned actors (ever heard one "scream" when they have fallen over etc, only to "wag their tail" two minutes later when made a fuss of?) Perhaps one of the more famous Afghans is Ali Baba. In April 1943 Will Hally reported as follows in his (Our Dogs) breed column notes "For the past four months he (Ali Baba - Turkuman Dammar Pinetree) has been living with a family of children, and not only did did he promptly settle down under, for him, novel conditions, but he is now like one of the children, taking part in their play. The youngsters staged a nativity play at Christamas and Dammar Pinetree played the part of the cow. The children dress up the dog when there is anything special going on, and the other day he arrived at Miss Mathews house with pink pyjamas on his legs and a bow on his tail: these handicaps to locomotion did not, however, prevent him jumping the high front gate."
Romantic Wooly Greyhounds
The following extract is taken from Clifford ("Doggie") Hubbard's "The Afghan Handbook", page 25 - "Breeders of "Longtails" still have ideas about the usefulness of Afghans it seems, for a couple of years ago Miss M C Mathews (the "Westover" kennels) related the following (Dog World 21st May 1948): "I was stopped a while back by a man who said "Are you the lady that owns them wooly Greyhounds?" I admitted it. "Well I want to use the black 'un to my lurcher bitch to put a bit of go into 'er pups". Having politely refused his offer of 5 shillings for "yer trouble" I told him of a good lurcher. That evening "Ali" became restive. I was going to let him out for his usual evening stroll on his own., but decided to have a look round first: sure enough there was the chap and lurcher waiting for him; he evidently knew "Ali" came out about that time!"
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