Jock the dog

 

The most famous dog “Jock” in South Africa walked right through this valley in the late 1800s, where Milites Dei Academy has been situated since 2015.

At Sanderson House, a Jock Plaque marks the connection of Jock of the Bushveld travelling through this conservancy. Today that same house is home to Milites Dei Academy, a military-style training academy on a Peebles Farm in Jock of the Bushveld Conservancy. The valley has also become a community of farms, a school enrichment programme, nature trails and eco-tourism.

The students of Milites Dei Academy have protected this conservancy for 11 years. They do this throughout their three-month course, by snare sweeping often, routine surveillance and hiking keeping eyes on every corner of this area containing such rich history.

Sir James Fitzpatrick, the owner of Jock was a transport-rider, journalist and prospector’s assistant in the Bushveld in the 1880’s, with a runt-of-the-litter dog called Jock.

He told tales of Jock to his children, and his friend Rudyard Kipling encouraged him to write a book. In 1907, Jock of the Bushveld was reprinted four times in its first year.

Some of those adventures happened here, in Peebles Valley, about 20km outside White River around Milites Dei Academy. It was a stopover on the old Lydenburg to Delagoa Bay wagon route. That history is why this stretch is known as the Jock of the Bushveld Conservancy.

A hundred years on, the wagon roads are still here, and so is Jock’s legend. 11 years later Milites Dei Academy is still offering the three-month course as well as other courses.

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