Author: Sarah Northway

Rainy Day
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

This must be one of the last rainstorms of the season. There is a guy out in the water bailing out his longtail boat. We’ve hardly seen a cloud for weeks, and to be honest I missed the rain a lot. It makes such wonderful sounds on the roof and gives the ocean and amazing effect (although we haven’t been able to photograph the effect yet). Everything is so picturesque.

Looks like our job with the dogs is working; I would have expected all of them to come crowding up to the deck but we have only Brave (who is welcome) and Rope (the most stubborn one by far). I tossed Rope off a few times to give him the idea he isn’t welcome in our shelter, but he beat me back to the door both times and tried to squeeze inside. He’s upset about being wet, but I don’t think he sees the correlation.

We’ve heard that monsoon season has been so light this year that it hasn’t filled the resevoirs high enough. The same thing happened three or four years ago, and the summer after parts of the island were without running water for two months. We’ve enjoyed the good weather but aren’t looking forward to having to bathe in the ocean. Another reason we’re looking to be elsewhere when our visas expire in April.

Ivy the Canine Terror
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

You may remember past scenes of puppy mauling from our photo stream. For Colin at least, this one here was the last. After taking a day-off-dogs on the 1st, we discovered we couldn’t just close the door and be rid of them anymore. They live here now.

We’ve stopped feeding them treats since Newyears, and stopped paying attention to them except to boot them off the deck, but still they persist that this is their new home, and we are their chew toys. Colin is depressed and angry about not being able to control the buggers. At 2 or 3 months old they may be starting to teethe but haven’t learned any manners yet. They chew on things and bark at night, run inside if the door is open and jump up on us when we leave the house.

We still like Brave; the original, whussy Momma’s boy (the one with the black muzzle in most of our pictures), but his brother and sister are complete terrors. You toss them down the stairs and they scamper right back up again. You yell and point at them and they run through your legs. Whereas Brave cowers and whines even when you aren’t mad at him, and stays where you put him. I hope we can find a way to keep him around; if any of them actually needs our attention it’s probably him.

So far the puppies (even Brave) haven’t been too put out by our putting them out, but Momma is. She’s been living with us for awhile now, and I guess she’s got anxiety problems. When we finally emerged from our hungover state on the 2nd, she was so excited to see us again that she started panting very fast and loud and shaking all over. Her eyes went wide and her ears back in what I would call ‘a dog freaking out’. She desperatly licked our hands and faces (she’d never done that before) until we edged back to the door and escaped inside.

Then she whined and scratched at the door (which she’d also never done) until we closed the curtain. Still hyperventillating, she ran all around the house looking for a way in. At one point she made it to the other side of the deck railing and was confused about how to get back, then she tried to sit down on the two inches of clearance and fell off with a yelp (we checked that she was okay, then laughed our asses off). Ten minutes later I heard more scrabbling and hysterical wheezing at the bike under another window. I peeked out again, and when she saw me she lept from where she’d been balancing on the bike seat and smashed her face into the closed window between us (I think that one did hurt her).

We shut all the drapes that night and hid from this horror-movie stalker. I had nightmares.

Colin has their long-term survival in mind when he tries to chase them off. What if the neighbours stop feeding them because they’ve moved in with us? What if they become dependant on us, and we move away in a few months? What do we do if Momma’s suitor (still lurking around) gets her in the family way?

I would love for the answer to be “it’s not our problem”. If the people (our landlords actually) who feed these dogs don’t think it’s a big deal then why should we care? The puppies will get run over or poisoned eventually, and until then we can play with them and make their little lives happy… Except they are our problem, because they’re chewing up our things being pains in the ass every time we go outside. The lady next door called them ‘Bad news’ and probably blames us for enticing them from across the street. Well, I guess we did, but we’d like to send them back now, please.

I’ve been in touch with the animal clinic on the island. They are tiny and underfunded but spay a few dogs every month, and they agreed to get Momma on the list for next round. If we can get her on a Songthaew without her freaking out again and jumping off the back – am interesting supposition.

Momma’s suitor
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

No really, this is interesting:

So Momma the dog seems to have a boyfriend. He’s been following her around patiently and very intently, waiting for her to put her guard down. When she does, he immediatly tries to mount her and gets a very upset Mama barking and snapping at his face. She sits with her butt to the wall now.

Her suitor does look a lot like the puppies and they don’t seem to mind him around, so maybe he is Papa. I was pretty surprised he’d be here for another round so soon with the puppies only recently off the teat, until I read that dogs can have two litters a year (of up to 10 puppies!).

So now I’m thinking, no wonder dog overpopulation is a problem here. Apparently people here deal with the problem by occasionally poisoning the strays. Back in the day they used to shoot them, but upset tourists started to complain, so now they stab them with a poisoned dart on a bamboo pole, or (worse) leave out poisoned food. Either way it is a painful and slow death. :(

There is an animal clinic on the island that brings in a vet once a month to spay dogs. It doesn’t seem like our place to take Momma in when we’ve only known her a few months and she still spends a lot of time at the neighbor’s across the street. But if we get a chance to talk to them about it we will.

Also, Momma has (at least) four puppies, not just three as we’d believed. The one we call Timmy that was alternately super shy or super licky is in fact two dogs. We’ve dubbed the super licky one, a girl doggy it turns out, Ivy. Ivy enjoys nothing more than to jump on my back when I’m sitting and chew my hair.

The lot of them seem to be pretty comfortable with us now. We kick them out at night but Momma and Brave sleep on the deck outside. The others spend most of their time across the street but come around (excepting Timmy) every day to cause puppy havoc. I don’t know if they are teething or what but they chew every damn thing they can get in their mouths, including (and particularly) fingers, skirts, our doormat and their siblings ears. We bought them some rawhide sticks which they go to great lengths to steal and guard from eachother.

The puppies have been locked outside today due to horrendous newyears-related hangovers and low tolerance for fast-moving objects. I’ve spent the whole day reading blogs and writing journal entries in the comfort of cranked air conditioning. Not that it’s hot out today, but it just feels nice, like a special treat.

Robes is in Japan!

http://pierreallec.livejournal.com/

Deli’s we miss you!Oh, totally unrelated to the last post, but last night we met a nice guy named Kelly who works at Deli’s South in Nanaimo. Small goddamn world indeed! He told us of the latest developments with the giant hole in the downtown core and we commiserated on the terrible lack of city planning.

Now I really, really want a Deli’s wrap.

We visited an excellent mexican restaurant in Thongsala last week called Ando Loco’s. I had a real beef enchilada with amazingly yum fresh salsa, and a delicious drink called a Caipirinha made with actual Brazilian Cachasa (which I’d never had before – I thought it tasted like something between white rum and tequila).

Like the sushi on Samui, the meal reminded us both of home and Victoria’s incredible selection of restaurants. The Brits up the street can keep their custard and mushy peas; I’ll have a taco, some kimchi, dolmades, ooh or an indian curry…