IT'S NOT OFTEN that a registered breed of dog starts with a castoff that even the pound didn't want and a stray plucked out of the woods.  But it is even less likely that such animals would provide one of those rare "Eureka!" moments in science, drawing back the curtain on both evolution and human culture, and providing clues to the mysterious origins of the long, fruitful partnership that exists between humans and canines. 

Humans and dogs enjoy a prehistoric relationship, a longstanding bond with its origins in a time when dogs as we know them evolved from wild animals into our domesticated companions.

August 16, 2014

People used to make fun of Aiken residents Jane Gunnell and Billy Benton for their devotion to Carolina dogs.

​

Why, they wondered, was the couple so interested in breeding a bunch of mutts that had been found wandering in the woods or hanging around garbage heaps?  They called the animals yellow dogs, porch dogs, ditch dogs, strays, mongrels and curs.

On the tracts of uncultivated land at Banbury Cross Farm, north of Aiken, a phalanx of dogs bursts from the cover of the trees. There is no barking, yelping or growling. They break the silence of the clearing only with their quiet footfall and the occasional rustling of a branch or the snapping of a twig.

​

Annie, lean and foxlike, leaps on top of a hay bale, acting as a lookout for the pack. Quickly, the area at the edge of the clearing fills -- 10, 15, 20 dogs squirming and running in the small patch where thicket merges with field. Then, as suddenly as they arrived ...

Released from kennels into their 18-acre wooded compound, the yellow dogs began hunting, quickly reverting to behavior that has helped keep their kind alive for centuries.

Qualities of the Breed: Sometimes called the Dixie Dingo or American Dingo, this dog ranges from 35 to 50 pounds and has the pointed ears and muzzle, "fishhook" tail, and short coat of ancient breeds (like the Australian Dingo or the Korean Jindo).

Carolina Dogs
Discovered by Accident in Aiken; Saved through Dedication in Aiken

So often it is not the big occasions in your life that turn it around; it is the routine that turns into the extraordinary. When combined with the serendipity of personal connections, the accident of understanding can lead to the profound.

Dog World's Rare Breeds

BANBURY CROSS FARM CAROLINA DOGS — Show and pet lines. Multiple titles in conformation, obedience, agility and herding. Also CGCs and certification for therapy work

Carolina Dog

America's 'all-natural' dog Nicknamed the "American Dingo," the "Dixie Dingo," the "Native American Dog," and the "OF Yaller dog" in the rural South, the Carolina Dog, as it's properly known, hails from the swamps and bottomlands of South Carolina and Georgia. 

You've read about the New Guinea Singing Dog (Dog Fancy, Dec. '98). Now there's the Carolina Dog, a descendant of dogs that crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia to North America 8,000 years ago. The breed was in the news recently when DNA testing at the University of South Carolina linked its development with Australian Dingoes. 

Translated

​

Look carefully at this dog.  Perhaps we are looking, as it were, for the missing link with the primitive dogs of the Americas.  And research seems to indicate that the beloved Carolina Dog or American Dingo, has DNA that is closer kinship with the first canine inhabitants of the American continent.