Dingo Howls His Way Into History

Dingo Howls His Way Into History
Fri Jan 30, 9:44 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A howling success in outback Australia, Dinky, a singing and piano-playing dingo, is about to be immortalized in a board game.

The three-year-old native wild dog has won a nationwide competition to identify the Australian with the most trivial feat, to star in a question in a 20th anniversary edition of the local version of the board game Trivial Pursuit.

The dingo was saved from a wild dog culling program as a six-week-old pup by Jim Cotterill, the owner of a roadhouse in central Australia, who soon discovered his new pet had talent.

Dinky began impromptu performances whenever Jim's two daughters played the piano and, with a little encouragement, would also strut across the keyboard.

His act has become a tourist attraction at Jim's Place Roadhouse at Stuart's Well, 61 miles south of Alice Springs in the red center of Australia.

"He'll sing to anything really but he prefers a happy song, something gay and high," Carole Levesque, the manager of Jim's Place, told Reuters Friday.