 "CLIPPER"
Dad reared a bullmastiff pup that, in 1963, was to become a good companion as I started to work on the farm as a tobacco assistant on Sandown. The dog grew to be extremely strong, lean, fit and a dog that loved water. Clipper had, with all the swimming, learnt to retrieve objects in the swimming pool and could also dive in and fetch items off the bottom of the pool – a trick that would save his life and fill his belly. Apart from being very friendly and rather stubborn he always had a mind of his own. He grew to be a rather soppy typical bullmastiff weighing 65 kilograms. His only aggression was to leguaans and these he hated with a vengeance and to his mind, with good reason.
(below- Renier de Jager with Clipper)
 With all children he was very good and enjoyed their company and attention, as he knew that a missing tea biscuit taken gently out of the child's hand soon brought a few more. Here Renier de Jager excelled.
Lionel Hickman was a next-door neighbour some eight kilometres along the road to the Lock Kaba dam and Clipper would regularly find his way there to visit Lionel’s bitch when she was on heat. On another occasion when we were trucking the coal for the tobacco from the rail siding at Nyabira, Clipper followed the farm truck that I was driving all the way to Nyabira - 28 kilometres. Along the way natives stopped to say that they had tried to capture the dog but Clipper had refused to be caught.
Clipper soon learnt the thrill of going with whenever a gun was removed from the gun safe and he would eagerly anticipate the shooting of a ox or old cull cow that was doomed for ‘boy’s rations.’ After the animal was shot he would grab and hold the kicking leg in the death-throes of the beast, as the throat was cut to bleed the animal. This he would hold onto in an attempt to stop the kicking leg, with his legs braced and pulling back he often managed to move the carcass.
Hunting bush pig was also something Clipper would help with and on one occasion, with several farm labourers, we were flushing out some pig in a large vlei. We chased down and shot and wounded one. In the excitement I had not noticed that Clipper had failed to return home after chasing after other pigs. Knowing that he would not be able to run down the pigs I had left him to return on his own.
Dad was furious with me and sent me back to look for Clipper the next day after work and so I took some twenty men with me and we spread out over the bush and vlei to look for the dog. We had been walking and calling for a half an hour when one of the men spotted the dog in the distance, sitting in the long grass. He would not come to me as I whistled and I feared the worst, he must be injured and slashed by a pig tusk. He just sat there wagging his tail and grinned in doggy fashion. The stupid damn dog he had found my hat that I had lost chasing after the fleeing pigs and there he decided to stay, did he really think that I would come back for my old tattered cloth hat?
On a similar occasion my cousin Chris and a few others were water skiing on Loch Kaba dam and fishing in the spillway rocks below the wall. A few small bream and a barble had been caught, these we had thrown into a rock pool to keep alive. Clipper had run down to the dam following us as we drove in the Landrover and as we left in the evening Clipper was expected to follow to us back home.
At breakfast the next morning I noticed that the dog was again missing and that he must still be at the dam. Sure enough there he was at the rock pool lying next too my Bata Slops that I had left behind and he had caught and eaten the bream left in the pool and still keen to catch the barble that could escape being eaten by slipping into a crevice in the pool.(see photo, right)
One afternoon, Dad and I were fishing for bream from the aluminium boat near the top end of the dam. The heifers that we stocked in a paddock on the one side of the dam to separate the heifers from the bulls, had come down to the edge of the water to sniff at the boat with curiosity and to see if we had brought the salt blocks that they enjoyed licking. As we sat and watched our fishing floats, a large crocodile head quietly surfaced and started to edge towards the nearest heifer that was standing knee deep in the water. The croc was definitely taking more than just a passing interest in the young heifer. Dad shouted at the croc and started the outboard motor and drove the boat straight at where the croc had sunk away. We spoke of the way the croc had approached and it was certainly going for the heifer, Dad thought that it wouldn’t be long before one of the heifers became dinner.
Several attempts were made to spot the croc and sneak up on it to shoot the reptile, but I never got into a good position. Don Cocker and I decided to hunt the croc at night and our first attempt was on the raft. Anthea accompanied us down to the dam and was to hold the big torch so as to allow both Don and I to shoot together if we spotted the croc. It was not long before the two ruby red eyes were lit up in reflection in one of the bay creeks, the outboard motor was cut and as we drifted in closer Don and I stood either side of Anthea who steadily held the beam on the eyes.
I had Dad’s eight-millimetre rifle and Don the double-barrelled shotgun loaded with SSG shot cartridges. Quietly I spoke ‘One, two, three’ and we fired every thing. The shots banged out and a huge splash but no light we couldn’t see anything, Anth had dropped the torch in fright with the blasts ringing in her ears. The torch dropped and the batteries broke out of the torch. We had missed the croc. A few nights later Don and I went with the boat and as we cruised slowly up and down we never picked up the croc eyes and despaired of finding it. We went around the dam again and on the way back down to the jetty and while still in the narrow top end, I happened to glance backwards and suddenly right near us and just at the back of the boat was the croc. I slipped the motor out of gear and allowed the croc to come along side the boat. He had been following us. It was so close Don held the rifle over the edge of the boat and fired point blank and MISSED – again.
Clipper’s hate of leguaans stemmed from the time that the pet leguaan that I was attempting to tame. I had this large four foot long, youngish one and I was walking the reptile along the lawn with a lead when Clipper came around the side of the house and suddenly sniffed at the leguaan. The leguaan attacked and latched onto Clippers jowl and would not let go, biting deeply into the fleshy lip. I couldn’t get it off either and after calming the dog, called for Mother, who brought a desert spoon. I used considerable force to ply open the locked jaw with the handle of the spoon. I broke off a couple of the lizard’s teeth before managing to free the dog. Once free of the leguaan Clipper wanted his turn to bite the leguaan and he knew where to find leguaans around the dam edge.
(Below - Clipper chasing a leguaan)
After the first failures at shooting the croc in the dam I felt it might have left as several attempts to find it had failed. I did not give up altogether and one Monday I had sent men to round up cows on near near dam site paddock and I had taken the big rifle to shoot a cull cow.
I snuck along the edge for a while until coming up to top end along a spruit, there was a tree in which a Hamerkop was building a nest of hundreds of twigs and branches. The nest already had an entrance tunnel. I sat quietly watching the bird.
Suddenly I heard clipper yelping loudly and knew immediately this was no leguaan but the croc. I sprang up and ran up onto a granite boulder blocking the way to where the yelping was coming from. As I reached the top I saw Clipper biting at the crocodile that had the dog across the body flanks. Dog and croc went down under the water and in the next swirl the dog came up, I whistled and called madly for Clipper who was swimming towards the bank ten feet away. The croc came up behind to attack again and as it closed onto Clipper I shot the beast through the head, it rolled over and the momentum carried it down past Clipper.
Clipper was hurt and with wound punctures along his chest and flank, he looked a sorry sight, but well enough to follow slowly back to the land rover, I had to lift him onto the passenger seat. After dropping off the cull cow to be slaughtered I attended the wounds on Clipper with some Cooper’s Eye and Wound Powder luckily the skin was only punctured and with bruising on the flesh. The wounds should heal well with the strong antibiotic powder of neomycin, sulphanilamide, zinc oxide, and gentian violet ingredients and even some iodoform to keep the flies off.
Don and I went down each evening after work to see if the crocodile had floated up to the surface, on the third evening we went down with the chevy and sure enough there was the croc, semi-submerged a few yards out from the side. I lost the toss and waded into the water to drag it back to shore; it was huge and very heavy. Together we dragged it with the chevy and with the tow rope up to a small ridge and then reversing back up to the ridge we dragged the beast into the boot and curled it in. It loaded the chev axle so that the springs bottomed out. When we got home and laid the croc out it was eight foot – six inches long. Clipper saw the croc and attacked it immediately and if anyone came to see the croc, clipper would bite the croc and growl to show that it was his, and it was not going any where with out several more bites.
Bapton and Basil, Mums two garden boys, were delegated to skin the croc and a while later I went along to see how they were doing. I found that they had really hacked through the belly skin instead of the backbone topside. I wouldn’t be keeping that skin! I was disappointed to find only a few pebbles in the stomach contents, so all that I salvaged for myself was a hat band from a strip of the hard skin and that looked good, al la “Crocodile Dundee.”
Sadly poor Clipper began to develop goitres alongside his windpipe from the blood poisoning of the bites six weeks later and had to have Terramycin injections monthly or an abscess would develop which it would do quite suddenly. The injections were painful stinging injections to receive and Clipper quickly learnt to know when he was due for the next injection. He became very aggressive towards anyone trying to inject him, it took Dad and I together to inject and rub the site to ease the burning.
One weekend I noticed the dogs breathing was wheezing again and found the goitre well developed. Dad was away and Clipper was not going to allow me to inject him. Well I thought that was okay as Dad was due back on Monday. That night Clipper died.
Clipper, dozing
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