Ture Hounds: A Brief History

Ture Hounds likely wouldn’t exist, but for a very special girl: our first Basenji, Disa.

We came to Basenjis after having had a wonderful Papillon and an amazing retired racing Greyhound. We had long discussions about what we were looking for in our next dog(s), including physical activity, size, temperament/behavior, and so on. Winding our way through descriptions of the breeds we’d met, and those we hadn’t, we narrowed down to the hound group, and eventually centered on Basenjis. Digging deeper into the breed, we learned about the Basenji Club of America’s African Stock Project, and we were determined to find a dog with a “high-quotient” African heritage, both for the qualities that we would enjoy directly, and for the potential benefit it could give back to the breed. The breeders in the greater Seattle area were fantastic about helping us find the progeny of recent imports, and we eventually found our way to Katie Campbell of Taji Basenjis and her (at the time) last-remaining and very independently-minded girl, “Know-neighm“.

As is not uncommon when it comes to new four-legged members of the family, Know-neighm chose us even more than we did her, eventually hopping up on Barbara’s lap and letting the other dogs know all about it. A trial weekend became a full week, and before we knew it, we were thinking about names (ending on “Disa”) and getting ready to sign a purchase agreement. Part of the agreement—one that we fully expected given our desire for a more-African dog—was for her to be bred at least once. Finding a sire to pair with our special girl took a while, but with the help of Michael Work, a long-time principal in the breed, we finally found one in Bravo: a dog who no longer lived, but who had been collected some 25-odd years previously.

The process of breeding, whelping, and raising the puppies also raised a very important question: would we want to do this again? With a resounding “yes!”, the next question was: should we have a kennel name? The answer to that was “yes” as well, leading to the process of finding a new name. After much research, we found what we thought was the perfect name, the Trickster in the lore of the Azande people: “Ture”.