in which I share too much information.

Yes, the blog has been silent.  Why?

On the 26th of June, we brought home two German Shepherd brothers, whom we have named Merry and Pippin.  They are so much fun to have around!  Adorable personalities and already learning fast. 

The first week that they were here, we spent constantly supervising them.  Why?  Two reasons: first of all, the resident dominant female German Shepherd, Lassy, who has lived here for 5 years and whom we are taking care of until the M family can come back and get her (probably the beginning of September).  Lassy was not too happy about her new "nephews" and was quite aggressive towards them for several days, so whenever we had to let the puppies outside (which was frequent) we had to chain Lassy up so that she wouldn't terrify them.  Otherwise the puppies wouldn't do their business outside because they were too frightened!  The other reason we had to constantly supervise the puppies was of course house-training them.  They were just not getting the idea of going outside to do their business.  So I spent the first week constantly cleaning up piles and puddles all day long.  What made it worse was that, because Lassy hadn't accepted them yet, the puppies had to sleep inside.  We confined them to an empty bedroom so that they wouldn't be roaming the house making messes, but that meant all the mess was. . . inside.  So every morning at 6:30 I was scrubbing the floors and removing more piles and puddles from their night's stay.  For a week!!

At last, Lassy and the puppies (after days of constant hard work by David and myself to teach them to coexist happily and play together) decided that they could be friends.  The situation changed for the better.  We could let the puppies sleep outside, and they housetrained themselves after a few days! 

But then, week two arrived. . . and Pippin got sick. He started vomiting one day.  The next day he was still vomiting, and stopped eating.  The next day the vomiting stopped.  When he hadn't eaten for almost two days, we got him to eat a little bit but the vomiting started again.  By this time he had lost a huge amount of weight and was growing weaker and more unresponsive by the day.  Realizing that his condition was worsening instead of getting better, we decided to contact the local vet (in the town) and take Pippin to see him.  Yesterday (Thursday of this week) David took Pippin to the vet, who diagnosed him with tick bite fever (it's quite common here and the vet described it as the animal's equivalent of malaria).  The vet gave him an injection of antidote for the disease as well as injections of vitamins and pain medication, and said that he fully expected him to recover.  After the visit to the vet, Pippin grew worse and worse.  He had no strength, and though his vomiting diminished (didn't stop completely) he was suffering from severe diarrhea.  We kept him in our room at night to keep an eye on him, so I spent the nights cleaning up vomit and diarrhea.  He still refused to eat.  Since last night I force-fed him soft foods, as well as giving him liquids (chicken broth and rehydrating drink) using a syringe. He was becoming more and more unresponsive and acting confused (probably because of the drugs in his system) and could hardly stand.  He resisted me when I tried to feed him and wouldn't even swallow.  This morning we were getting more and more worried about him but the vet said "he'll be fine!"  Even my efforts to give him something to drink using the syringe were hopeless.  He was immediately gagging and vomiting everything back up.  After 10am he never sat up again.  He was so weak that he soiled himself with diarrhea because he couldn't get up.  There was blood in his stool.  I was checking on him every ten minutes, trying to coax him to eat and drink once every half an hour, but all my efforts were fruitless.  When I checked him at 12:30, he was dead.

I share this because it's been a hard week.  I feel like I've done nothing but clean up vomit and diarrhea for days and frantically try to get a dying puppy to accept food and drink.  I'm worn out and emotionally cut up about having nursed our new puppy (whom we only had for 12 days) night and day and still couldn't save his life.  I did everything I could to keep him alive, but there was obviously something seriously wrong.  Whether or not it was actually tick bite fever we will never know. 

And of course so far I've only written about the puppies.  During the past two weeks, I've also spent time baking and preparing to have friends over for Elijah's first birthday; gone to a kitchen party (bridal shower) for the bride of a local chief; and hosted an Independence Day barbecue for our colleagues.  And kept up with my weekly Nyanja language lessons, which are really difficult.  And caught up on all the laundry and unpacking from our trip.  And moved Elijah into his own room, and rearranged our bedroom and his new room.  And I've missed my brother's wedding, knowing that so many of my relatives were gathering there and I was so far away and haven't even seen more than two photos of the occasion yet even though it happened a week ago!  These things all pile up.  And that's why I haven't posted again.  Plus, I didn't want to use up too much of our limited bandwidth at once, so I've been waiting to put up more photos.  I will do it at some point, when I have a chance to catch my breath.  Now that I'm no longer nursing a dying puppy, maybe next week I will have a chance.  Then again, next week I need to put in my vegetable garden. . .