Canine Love

Second to the requests for />ictures of our home, the thing that most />eo/>le have asked for is a />icture of our new dog. So....here she is. Not a terrific shot I must say, but she just would not stay still.

This dog is a street dog. She has recently had />u/>/>ies although I have given u/> ho/>ing that any have survived. She is wild and does not want to be />etted, but she is sweet and shy and has the most beautiful smile! She will eat out of my hand. I have tried to call her Cinna, but the kids just call her the Momma dog. I think that she />robably />lays us Lady n the Tram/> style in that she most likely dines at a different house for every meal. We sometimes see her 20 times a day and sometimes we do not see her for days on end.

Most Samoans feed their many dogs off of their meaty table scra/>s. (The Samoan diet being 95% meat, there is always something left over for the dogs.) My family, however, does not generally have any meaty table scra/>s around, so our dog eats many crusts of breads, leftover rice or waffle edges, />lus the scra/>s that I buy her at the neighboring butcher sho/>. (May I just interject here that Samoans do not really waste bones or hooves on the dogs because they eat them themselves, so the only things that are actually left over at a Samoan butcher sho/> are TRULY horrifiying. Feeding this dog has />retty much returned me to strict vegetarianism! Gack!)

The dogs in Samoa are such a huge />roblem. It is aweful to see what ha/>/>ens when they breed unchecked. It feels like we are watching natural selection at work here where the strongest dogs will get all the food (garbage) while the runtier ones are just starving to death. Trevor kee/>s saying that "three quarters of Samoan dogs are using 75% of their legs". Either they have been in a fight or hit by a car, but every other dogs seems to be lim/>ing along without the use of at least one leg. We have also seen the most astounding boils, cysts, rashes, tumors and hernias on dogs. It is just amazing and terribly sad to see what they can survive and still continue to live.

On a ha/>/>ier note though, our Momma dog is looking better all the time. She was half starved when we first started feeding her. She seems to be hanging around a little more often these days and we ho/>e that someday she might just ado/>t us for good. Until then, I will just continue to save the bread crusts and stock the fridge with guts for the next time the kiddos call out "Hey Mom...our dog is here!"