What's in a name????

This is a picture of Djembi, Ballabus' one cousin. His other cousin is Willow and his best friend is called Phoebe. Willow is a husky crossed with a staffie and Djembi is a yapper, oh wait that's not a type of dog, that's just what she does ALL the time.

Now Ballabus is a strange breed all of his own. When he was a tiny puppy I thought he was perhaps part beagle, part jack russel. As he grew he got longer and longer. Yes longer! but he wasn't a sausage dog or a boerewors roll. He is a corgi with a dash of lion heart and a streak of jack russell.

Now don't be confused dear bloggernauts, his name IS ballabus NOT jack.

It's an interesting thing how he came to be called Ballabus and it is true in his case that his name became his character.As the saying goes Ballabus by name ballabus by nature.

His name is yiddish and means Boss of the bosses and he truly is the boss of himself. I'm not the boss of him and even when he was a tiny, fluffy pup, i gave him his freedom to learn about life and be the boss of himself. Now obviously I still looked out for him and made sure he came to no harm but sometimes he nearly did come to harm but his guardian angels were always ready to swoop down and save his puppy butt ( but that is another story) Through his life he has accquired a string of names which in retrospect prove that he is indeed global and universal in his nameage ( is that a word dear bloggernauts?)

In Zulu , he is Mbusi, which means goat and is quite apt as i am a capricorn and his "earth mother" and goats have special signifigance in zulu culture as being the animals that connect human life to the spirits of the ancestors.

In Yiddish , of course he is Ballabus, boss of the bosses. In English he has nicknames like Ballies, and bushy, and bosbos. In Afrikaans his name is Bossie which means bushy and its because he has a bushy tail and a bushy neck that he got this name but its also because its sort of short for ballabus, which is pronounced ba la bo(as in caught) s. In spanish he is Bossita, and that in itself is another amazing tale about the time Bossie and I travelled by dream to Spain and a whole bunch of other lands.

Bossie's cousin Willow is sometimes called tree, Haha get it? Cos willow is a tree, which makes willow a treedog. HAHaha.

Since Bossie was a tiny pup I spoke to him as if he could understand me in english, little did i know that he actually could! He just couldn't answer me in english as it is forbidden by the secret code of language barriers on the planet that he comes from. One of the 5 agreements he has to agree to before coming to earth was to never speak back in English. That ,of course all changed after we met his freinds from another planet on the magical beach that day.

I always told him how handsome ,clever and brave he was and because he was told that all the time it came to be so. And he was the most handsome, cleverest and bravest dog in all the world.

The Magical Beach

It was a day much like any other, and we were at the beach, as is usual for us on any given day. Ballabus, he was not a prince to us yet, was playing on the beach with his two cousins, Djembi and Willow. They were gamboling about with their usual over-exuberance. They ran in and out of the river mouth that ran into the ocean. They chased each other and barked and splashed around like very happy dogs. 

 

All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something in the shore break. I called my sister Haley and asked " Hey Hals, what do you think that is?" She looked over to where I was pointing. " I don't know, maybe it's a seal," she replied. But we don't get seals in our warm waters on the South Coast. We watched the movement coming from the shallow waves and saw Bossie stop playing with his canine cousins and start trotting over to the shoreline. His ears were stiff and alert and his head was cocked to the left. His expression was one of interested intent, for want of a better description. Whay happened next blew our minds. At first, we thought we were experiencing a group flashback or a stray hallucination. Out of the water rose a dome-shaped "rock". It was covered in seaweed and barnacles. 

What the @#$%?!!!!! We looked at each other, my sister and I, and began to giggle and panic at the same time. "Nooit," I said, "It looks like one of those old wartime bomb things that used to land on the beaches and blow up." "Ja" she replied. By now the three doggy cousins were barking their furry heads off and wagging their tails. Every time a wave broke over the foreign object, which was the size of a "Volksie", Bossie would howl and turn around twice just like he did when he was about to do a number two. 

The wind had picked up and our hair was whipping our faces and we could feel the spray of the ocean's waves on our faces but we stood still and said nothing. Right before our eyes, the rusty, shell-encrusted dome-shaped mystery object began to play music. This was just too much for us, we burst out laughing and I know I wanted to run, but I couldn't move. Haley started shouting for Willow and Djembi to come to her. Bossie though, was up on his back legs and dancing most gracefully to the sounds coming from the thing that was now right up on the beach. 

The music was something I had never heard, it was beautiful and hypnotic and melancholy, but joyful at the same time. The rhythm was not fast but it was not slow. I could not recognize the instruments that were producing the sounds. It was like a harmony sung by whales and sea turtles and all the frogs and birds of the universe. We stood mesmerized, we felt no fear, we were overcome by the need to start swaying and dancing wildly. We did!!!! Then as fast as it started it stopped. The foreign rock began to vibrate and cracked open. Smoke came out in puffs of colours, unimaginable even to the greatest painters and the smoke glittered with iridescent, sequin-like wisps of vanilla-scented candy-floss. And then without further ado, out came a little step ladder and three dogs, identical in appearance to Bossie, hopped down and started wagging their tails. Bossie ran over and there was much sniffing and tail wagging going down....

It started out so nice....

This is the true story of a dog that had a fascinating tale to tell but due to the language barrier was unable to tell his tale.

As luck would have it, or perhaps as it was meant to be, this amazing dog came to live with me from a very young age. In fact he was a mere pup of ten weeks when we had the pleasure of meeting but it was only years later in another place and on a magical beach, that we actually had our first dog to human language conversation.

And it was only then did i find out the true story and amzing history of.....Prince Ballabus,...The Flying Dog.

As is customary when regaling tales of yore, one needs to start somewhere and so i shall begin at the beginning. But what defines a beginning?

A true beginning would be long before i ever met Bossie,as he is affectionately known most days. Another beginning would be the time that he and i made our accquaintance and yet another beginning would be the time when i discovered his true lineage and royal ancestory.

Yes , I think I shall start in the middle and flit around, as is my wont.