What Jane Goodall’s dog, Rusty, taught me about live journalism

I couldn’t believe a dog had just ruined my interview with Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, about 20 years ago. 

At least, that’s how I felt as a young radio journalist when I got lucky and shadowed the chimpanzee expert on an early 2000s educational tour to Soweto. 

After our day south of Joburg, I interviewed Goodall at the bottom of a sprawling Parkwood garden typical of the city’s northern suburbs.

As we spoke in the late-afternoon shade, the crested barbets were barbeting, the sun beetles were sun-beetling, the flowers were audibly flowering. I couldn’t have asked for a better soundtrack to my radio interview — everything was singing the natural magic of Jane’s world.

But I lost track of whatever the world’s most iconic primatologist was saying when a labrador-like canine emerged from the house and loped down the hill — straight at us. 

It could’ve been an Alsatian. As indicated, the minutiae were instantly forgotten.

What I do recall, in detail as colourful as a chapel window, was the premeditated plan of an envoy from a big dog breed — likely dreamt up in a deadly thought bubble on the coolness of a kitchen floor.

From the dog’s vantage point, its plan may’ve involved a brief bonding session with the only other large mammals within earshot. 

From my vantage point, time dilated as the dog galumphed in slow motion across the neatly trimmed lawn, positioned itself behind my interviewee and, with lethal accuracy, relieved itself of its lunch. 

Then it turned on its paws and headed right back to napville, somewhere inside the comforting embrace of the manor house.  

If nothing is certain but death and taxes, I could’ve added a third: the warm air no longer smelled of gently fallen jasmine blossoms.

As if it was somehow this cub reporter’s professional duty, I extended a sincere apology to Jane Goodall. 

The naturalist — who’d spent years in Tanzania’s forests studying humanity’s closest-living cousins — was, of course, unfazed. 

It was a parcel of compost, for Pete’s sake.

Some dung beetle, Goodall’s thought bubble might’ve said, would be dunging soon. 

Her thought bubble might also have said: Whether we’re a labrador-like animal or a young Homo sapiens too eagerly clutching a radio mic, we’re all mammals from a tree with a common ancestor.

The peerless ethologist, who died at 91 in Los Angeles on October 1, spent her entire career helping humanity evolve its sense of itself. At its heart, her message was a counterintuitive argument against the critics of “anthropomorphism” — the idea that it’s “unscientific” to impose human emotions on other animals. 

During another assignment, I, too, met a baby chimp rescued from the illegal wildlife trade. She reached her right arm through the bars, peered into me and coiled all of her tiny hand around my stretched-out index finger. 

We sat like that for a while, talking in silence — about being a stolen baby, about motherhood, about the world and what it had become. 

Few understood better than Goodall that the natural world had to be met on its more-than-human terms — but she knew it was the natural world that had made the human ape all it is, for better or for worse. 

Reflecting on her life, and my encounter with an icon whose grace and intelligence moved many who met her in person, I now realise I’d missed the whole point of that interview. 

Goodall famously spoke about her dog, Rusty, as one of her greatest teachers on the subject of natural intelligence.

The compost interlude was journalist gold. 

Life had orchestrated the perfect moment to launch into a segue about Rusty, and all Goodall had learnt from him and other dog teachers. 

I should’ve kept the blooper, my naïve apology and Goodall’s gracious response, instead of deleting it for the final broadcast. 

Rusty, during just another week in October, has come back to haunt me. 

May he, and all he stood for, continue to haunt us still. DM