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Mario Cesare wrote about his life as a game ranger in his memoir Man-eaters, Mambas and Marula Madness. Through these stories his readers have come to know and love, Shilo, a dog in a million and the love of Marios life. Though Mario is a game ranger and conservationist, this is not just another 40 years as a game ranger type of book. It is the story of an adventurous life - spanning both pre- and post-1994 Southern Africa which is interwoven with the tale of an intense, loving 14-year relationship between himself and his dog Shilo. This relationship between man and dog was clearly meant to be from the day Mario first took the tiny newborn pup into his hands. It has lasted through innumerable adventures of duck-hunt and killer crocodile, wounded buffalo, lion, leopard and poacher.
Mario Cesare was twenty-five years old and managing a game reserve in the rugged Tuli Block in Botswana when he first took possession of a shy black pup that he named Shilo. The pup attached himself to Mario almost immediately and very soon he became known by the locals as ‘The Man with the Black Dog’.
Very few dogs that live in Africa’s big game country die of old age, but Shilo was the exception that proved the rule. Shilo’s incredible versatility ranged from skilfully tracking big game in the hot arid bushveld to retrieving wild fowl in the icy wetlands if South Africa. He was also a constant companion, a devoted protector and for more than fourteen years he and Mario, had innumerable adventures together, encountering crocodiles, buffalo, lion, leopard, baboons and poachers.
The Man with the Black Dog is permeated with the same love and empathy that made Jock of the Bushveld a classic and it too is a very South African story. Seldom has an account of a man and his dog revealed so much of the flavour of life in such a wild location and although over a century has passed since the transport wagons carved their trails to and from Delagoa Bay, the scent evoked of dust and rain remains the same and the grey ghosts of kudu and elephant still melt into the bush.