Published by Ad Donker Publishers, 2010, softcover, illustrated, glossary, 269 pages, condition: as new.
Jock's owner was a young transport rider in the rugged and colourful days of the Transvaal gold rush. Those were the days when big game roamed the land and each sunrise brought a new adventure.
For sure one of the best books I've ever read. Jock of the Bushveld is a true story written by the South African writer Percy FitzPatrick. FitzPatrick during the time the book takes place was a transporter, guys who basically ran groups of oxen and natives transporting goods back and forth across the wilderness of South Africa a hundred-something years ago. I didn't know a lot about South Africa when I went into this, but basically they have their own version of the American wild west, with warring natives that may as well exist in a different world from the Europeans who have moved in, wild animals, frontier justice (and injustice), etc.
The Jock of the title was a dog that belonged to FitzPatrick, and almost the entire book is made up of hunting stories with this dog. While actually a transporter, hunting was by far Fitzpatrick's main passion during this time, and, though his writing is a little stilted by time, his descriptions of the hunts are brutal and exhilarating at the same time. The modern reader will probably be struck at times by the callousness of the hunters, but, like Hemingway's hunting stories, there is still a joy and respect for the wild in these stories.
His love of Jock is on every page, and the book goes from Jock's birth as a runty little dog no one wanted into Jock's prime when he's the baddest dog on the trail to Jock's brush with death by kick to the head which left him deaf, to Fitzpatrick's life finally moving away from the bush and into the towns, and the decline of Jock's usefulness and ultimate, painfully needless death by accident. His love of Jock, his relationship with the dog, is the stuff of Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows, but has a ring of authenticity that those books naturally lack because they were purposefully written as relationships with dogs, whereas this was actually just describing one that existed. Also, and this is a major, MAJOR part of the value of this badass book, the bushveld was a dangerous, unforgiving place, death was common, the wildlife was really wild, this was very extreme life, where the wild, primal, fullest part of both dog and man had infinite space to stretch out. The unspoiled beauty of the wild, the danger and excitement of the hunt, the simplicity of relationships; it's a kind of life that is almost never ever enjoyed by humans anymore. There is an almost Nietzschean hardness and dedication to the fullest life that applies to the natives, Jock, and FitzPatrick himself. Though he comes across as a very friendly man, there is also an almost comical toughness and deep, deep love of all of life in him.
