Why scores of dogs will honour a Great Dane in Cape Town this weekend

A quaint local festival celebrates the life of the first dog to receive a Royal Navy rank

Cape Town, South Africa – Just Nuisance, who died 80 years ago this week, was the first dog in the world to receive an official Royal Navy rank. Every April, humans and canines flock to the naval suburb of Simon’s Town to celebrate his life with cake, walkies and a pipe band. Last year, about 80 dogs turned up. This year’s festival kicks off at 10am on Saturday, April 6.

Cathy Salter, the curator of the Simon’s Town Museum, is thrilled that the dog’s legacy of lifting human spirits lives on: “There was an awful war going on [World War II] and most of the sailors passing through Simon’s Town were very young,” she says. “For them, it was quite a big deal that this dog wanted to hang out with them.”

“Many years ago, we were sent a photograph of Just Nuisance by a man who’d been taken POW by the Japanese,” Salter told Al Jazeera. “He wasn’t allowed any personal possessions, but he managed to smuggle that photo in and keep it with him throughout. It just shows how important Just Nuisance was to them.”

A pedigreed Great Dane born on April 1, 1937, Just Nuisance was bought by a man who worked in the naval port of Simon’s Town. “The dog took an instant liking to the sailors,” says Salter. “But only the low-ranking ones. He’d have nothing to do with officers,” whom he identified by their uniforms. While numerous sailors tried to adopt him, according to his biographer, Terrence Sisson, “Nuisance was his own master.”

At 67kg (148 pounds) Just Nuisance was “massive,” even for a Great Dane, and “almost human in concept and intelligence”, writes Sisson, an ex-sailor who knew the dog personally. After doing his business, for example, Just Nuisance would thrust out a paw to demand a “handshake” from the nearest human.