A South African Labrador is about to become world famous on The Oprah Winfrey Show for her unique mothering skills. Although she’s never raised her own pups, amazingly, Lisha, from Oudtshoorn’s Cango Wildlife Ranch has done is mother a menagerie of wildlife as if it were second nature!
To date nine year old Lisha’s foster brood includes about 30 orphans from the African and Asian wilds including cheetah and tiger cubs, potbelly pigs, a pigmy hippopotamus, a water mongoose, a porcupine, a bush pig, a striped weasel and even a barn owl!
Oudtshoorn’s Cango Wildlife Ranch manages to keep their doors open by offering tourist really close encounters with all sorts of wild animals including the cheetas ad tigers.
That’s where Lisha’s kissing, cuddling and playing comes in. Her chief role is to domesticate the animals while they are being hand reared so that they retain their animal instincts yet safely interact with tourists. She does this in the home of her owner Rob Hall, a Cango Wildlife Ranch director.
‘Lisha is like a bridge between the wild animals and humans,’ explains Hall.
‘They adjust more easily to her and when they see that she trusts us, they are more at ease around us.’ According to Rob Hall hand-reared animals usually become imprinted with the behaviour of humans.
Check out some of the photos of Lisha and the cubs!
