02/06/12

Yesterday Anna and I spent most of the day at the house, since we had our girl come to wash our laundry in the morning and we can’t leave the dog at home alone with the washing hanging or he’ll pull everything off the line onto the ground. We were sitting in our front yard reading when heard some kids at our gate calling me by name—turns out it was my host brothers and sister (baby Anata). Their mom had sent them over to play, so I spent a couple hours with them. They climbed our tree and fence, ate lemons I picked them off our tree, and sported the new sunglasses I had bought them a few days earlier.

Our dog has been acting strangely ever since we returned from Swaziland after last weekend. On two consecutive nights he ran away (jumped our fence), which he has never done before while we are in the house (only when we left and he ran after us). Since then we have kept him on his lead or locked in the house 24/7, which has resulted in incessant whining, crying, and barking. Really, incessant, as in non-stop. All day and all night. As much as I would like to let him go have fun (it was undoubtedly a female dog in heat that lured him out), I refuse to start paying for any damage he might do in the neighborhood, like killing chickens or running over a kid. Last night he was outside on his lead and we were in the house when Anna said “weird, he’s being quiet, I’m going to check on him.” Then from outside I heard, “Scooter, he hung himself!” I ran out and we were relieved to learn that he hadn’t actually hung himself, but had jumped over an impossibly high wall and was now outside our fence, luckily his head was long enough! So I had to climb over the fence, Anna unhooked his lead and handed it to me, and then I dragged him (as he clawed and thrashed maniacally in the other direction) back to our yard, apologizing to our neighbors whose yard I was tramping through. Below is a picture of the wall he jumped with me (I’m 5’6”) standing by it for comparison. If I don’t look very happy in the picture it’s because I’m not.