Barbara Gill, Age 13, Of Fort Erie, Ont., Canada, for her question:

What is a dingo dog?

The story of dingo is a sad one. It is a tale of travels and adventures, of hardships and great courage. There is mystery, too, in his story, for no one is quite sure how the wolfish dog reached Australia. Like all dogs, he is a natural friend of mankind. But in his native land he has bitter human enemies, and he also has his human friends.     The white settlers found the wild dingo dog when they reached Australia. for centuries he had endured the hardships of the arid plains and the sparse woodlands.  When the ranchers brought in their flocks of woolly sheep, dingo raided them. This made him unpopular, and the ranchers set out to destroy him. They forgot that he also destroyed the hordes of rabbits. They shot him on sight and awarded a bounty for his scalp.     When the dingo dog is adopted by a human family, he becomes a devoted friend.  This led peop1e to suspect that his ancestors had been tame dogs. Zoologists wondered how these dogs reached Australia, for they are the only native carnivores in the land of marsupials. Perhaps they were taken there in boats by early men who reached Australia from Malaya. Isis fossil bones were found in the rocks of australia. They showed that dingo and perhaps his early masters were in Australia 40,000 years ago. These wandering human families were the ancestors of the bushmen, the aborigines or original natives of Australia. Dingo has been rejected by the recent settlers of Australia, but he is still. A devoted friend of the bushmen.

He is a wolfish dog, three feet long and two feet high at the shoulder. He has a Wolfish grin and a bushy, wolfish tail. His soft fur may be rusty red or honey ye11ow, red or black. As a rule, his toes and the tip of his tail are white. Dingo does not bark. He expresses himself with sharp yelps and sorrowful howls. In habits, he is very much like our coyote. In the dusty wilds of Australia, the dingo hunts kangaroo, wallaby, rabbits and smaller game. He may hunt alone or with a group of his relatives.

Mrs. Dingo gives birth to her babies in a burrow or a shallow cave. There are four to eight cute puppies in the litter. They stay with mama while they are growing up, and she teaches them hunting and all the skills a dingo dog will need to cope with for life on the dry deserts and the scrawny plains.

The original Australians are the bushmen who share the sparse desert lands with the dingo dogs. Most of the bushmen refuse to learn the ways of the settlers and keep to themselves. It is with these people that the dingo dog sometimes finds a home. He earns his keep by tracking and stalking game, for dingo, like his bushman Master, is a great hunter.