Life & Work

The Breeder of Movie Dogs

Biddy

Biddy Davis (left) and her dogs at her house in Karen. Workers feeding the dogs (right). PHOTO | COURTESY

‘‘This is not your ordinary home. It is a dog house,” Biddy Davis jokes about her house in Karen, Nairobi.

Inside the house, visitors are greeted by the chorus of fervent barking. A little too much barking if you are not used to dogs. More dogs than humans call this home.

Predictably, the walls in the home too are decked out with pictures and paintings of dogs, once treasured family members.

After a boisterous, barky welcome, in which the dogs resolvedly try to access the house through a wide glass door separating the sitting room from the yard , they lie down and are calm for a while before they start to growl again.

It is shortly after 10am, about the time they usually get their snack. John Muthee and Jacob Molinge emerge with buckets of biscuits.

Interestingly, the many dogs stand in wait as all the bowls are filled; never starting until John gives the nod. Then they gobble down the biscuits and troop into the house, cause a raucous licking us wet.

Soon everyone is in except Sport and Snoowy; some two furry small dogs, mixbreeds that love to stay in the kitchen and some seven dogs that are in the kennels because they are in season.

Two Labradors, Bill and Duke about 13 years old, are suffering from arthritis. They lay about most of the time wasting just like old people. “These two wazees are 91 and 95 years old (respectively) in human ages,” she says. “Their lungs are weak.”

“How many are there?”, I ask.

“It’s not a good thing to tell how many dogs they are. It is bad luck,” Biddy says.

Attempts to count them are thwarted by the busy activity as they go and come. Everything in her compound seems to revolve around the dogs even though there are other animals including cats and cows.

Expenses

Biddy puts food expenses for the entire pack at about Sh60,000 every month. The dogs get their breakfast at 7.00 am, then are taken for a walk shortly after. Their second meal is provided at 3.30pm. In between they will have two snacks.

“We cook nine kilos of dog food a day.”

But what is striking is that at night all the dogs sleep in the house and never in kennels.

“Some sleep in my bedroom, others in John’s bedroom and the rest in the other rooms. They all know their designated room.”

The furniture in the three-bedroomed house is cloaked in sheets of cloth or blankets for the dogs to lie on.

“Life would not be normal without animals. I have grown up with animals all my life. I had a goat sleeping on my bed growing up,” says Biddy whose early years were spent in Ireland.

Although she had a Labrador at the tender age of two, she had to wait until she was 17 and had just completed her studies at Limuru Girl’s Secondary School when she got another Labrador called Tassy from Molo.
“Sandy my childhood dog went to my cousin after we relocated to Subukia, Kenya in 1959,” she says.

“Then I met a gentleman called Charles Moore, a dog breeder who imported my second dog, a female from northern Ireland, and she is the foundation bitch for all my stock,” says Biddy.

Purebred Labradors

Most of her dogs are Labradors; all registered purebreds. She also has three dachshunds, short-legged dogs, only Chutney is around when we visit.

Then there is the calm, graceful, and undemanding lanky Scottish Deerhound that seems to require all the space she can get for the long strides of her floating gait. Amongst Biddy’s dogs are three rescue dogs too.

Model Dogs

Justin especially won’t stop taking my arm in his mouth. Biddy informs us he was Reserve Best in Show in February, while Benjamin who is persistently slavering on my legs has been the top male dog for some time now. He was the best in the Labrador show in September for the second time and is the father to Justin.

And Jezebel, the current top show girl, in the country is Justin’s mother.

This pack is clearly not made of typical dogs. They have been in shows and adverts, and back when her husband was still alive they even played roles in films.

“Our dog was in the film ‘Out of Africa’, and have been in other films,” she says as she enumerates how many. Also did you ever watch an Africa Cup of Nation advert with dogs cheering a goal with all the humans? Those were Biddy’s dogs too.

Having entered her first dog show in 1956, in Ireland, today the many trophies and awards that adorn the shelves of her home are testament to the work that has been put in to ensure that the hundreds of dogs that have gone through her hands are model dogs.

“It’s not just beauty, it’s brains,” she says of the dogs. “Our dogs have done very well in shows. They’ve particularly won a lot in obedience competitions.”

The 73-year-old, who is now starting on her 14th generation of breeding, has been associated with Labradors so much so that around her circles she has been baptised ‘mama Labradors’. One of her counterparts even joked that she carries around a kiondo with her dogs’ pedigree certificates.

“Moore saw in me someone who was really keen on improving the breed,” she interjects as she shows me a folder with nearly 5,000 registrations of Labradors. “I keep every registration of every pedigree dog that has been bred in Kenya in this book.”

“We’ve tried doing artificial insemination with semen from the UK without much success. The last time, the (semen) bag got lost at the airport and prior to that by the time it got to us and we used it on the bitches they ‘didn’t take’,” she recounts.