Jock of the Bushveld is a true story by South African author Sir James Percy FitzPatrick.

[1] The 1907 book tells of FitzPatrick's travels with his dog, Jock, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross,[2][3][4] during the 1880s, when he worked as a storeman, prospector's assistant, journalist and ox-wagon transport-rider in the Bushveld region of the Transvaal (then the South African Republic).

However, it was only when FitzPatrick had made his fortune, settled down to have a family and become an established and well-respected member of society that he took pen to paper at the urging of his children and shared these delightful tales with the rest of the world.

FitzPatrick gave Jock to a friend until he had a safer place for him to live in the town, where with his deafness, he was unsafe from traffic and people.

[6] Rudyard Kipling, a good friend of FitzPatrick, also took part in these story-telling evenings and eventually persuaded him to collect these tales in book form.

Since then it has achieved the status of a classic South African book and has been also widely read abroad – more than one hundred editions have been printed and it has been translated into Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Xhosa and Zulu, amongst others.

Today the area is only 600m from the N4 road near Sonte, Mozambique According to Gubbins in a letter dated 4 August 1933, the site of the fig tree bearing Jock's name, was close to the Pessene railway station.

Percy FitzPatrick's daughter and only surviving child, Cecily Niven promoted her father's legacy in the Lowveld by erecting bronze plaques and statues at places of significance to the story of Jock.

[12] The book was made into a movie in 1986, starring Jonathan Rands, Gordon Mulholland and Jocelyn Broderick with Mfubu as Jock.

[14] At the end of 2007 Duncan MacNeillie together with a small team of animators moved from Nelspruit to Johannesburg to start production on Jock of the Bushveld.

[15] Scheduling the release of a 3D animated movie called Jock the Hero Dog on 24 July 2012, Canadian singer Bryan Adams voiced the title character.