Monday, January 30, 2006

Puppy love

It seems that everyone is Brazil has a dog. We have already adjusted to falling asleep to the sound of dogs barking. Here, dogs are much more than just companions, they are the guards of the house. We've been told that the presence of a dog makes your home 60% less likely to be robbed. Security aside, the kids wanted to have a pet, so we figured a dog would be a good decision. (We have only seen, maybe, three cats since we've been here.) A neighbour down the street that works at PACA has a purebred Akita and a mutt. (The Brazilians don't have a word for "mongrel," they call them a word that means "dogs that go to the garbage cans." The result was some cute, German Shepherd-looking dogs with softer features. You can't sell mutts here as people are constantly abandoning dogs for others to take care of. We see stray dogs every day, and we've seen whole litters of puppies on the side of the road with their mother. (Strangely, nobody seems to be concerned about rabies.) So we got ourselves a puppy, and she has turned out to be quite a little bundle of energy. It took us a while to come up with a name. She was originally named "Thyme" as the product of "Sugar" and "Ginger," but we finally decided on the name "Maple." We got her when she was about 7 weeks old.