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In which Moxie tries to bring a turtle home, we almost adopt another dog and beggars visit
So last night I take my dog for a walk and we run into this other dog we've seen before. The other dog seems scared of me and by extension my dog, but eventually gets over it and they start running around and playing and what not. I was happy about this because now my dog is exhausting herself and I just get to stand there (I'd just finished a workout and slightly tweaked my knee).
This dog looks like a smaller version of a border collie, but with a bit more white than you'd typically expect, and lighter brown hair. S/he is so cute, but dirty and probably hungry, so I start walking her home, calling her. She follows along behind me and Moxie. We are across the street from my house and I call my dog (she usually is not on a leash, love the lack of tort laws here!) as I walk across the street. The street dog follows and my dog doesn't.
I look back at her and see her sniffing in the dirt, tail wagging and her head bopping up and down. She often does this with frogs and bugs and what not, so I wasn't too alarmed. But eventually she looked like she was pulling at something. By this point the stray is hanging out in a puddle waiting for me and I want her to stay, but I need to cross the street again to get back to Moxie. I cross the street, call her and she comes with something in her mouth. She is soooo proud... and drops a turtle at my feet. I am grossed out and trying to keep her from grabbing the turtle by a arm/leg/head before it can bring it back into it's shell.
I pick up my dog and bring her across the street. Now, I should have put the leash on her, but she was squirming and I was trying not to scare the other dog away. So the second I let go, Moxie runs back across the street while the stray is following me all obediently. I run home and yell for FH to come out and help. I try to feed the stray, but it is scared of coming into our yard, especially when it sees a big man come out, too. FH comes out, falls in love with the stray (he has had border collie, bandana and frisbee dreams for years) and we try to figure out how to get the stray safely into the yard while I go get Moxie.
Before we have figured a way for me to pass the stray without scaring her off, Moxie comes trotting home triumphantly with her turtle in her mouth, gently being held by one little arm. She drops it when we scream "Moxie!" excitedly and she notices we have food. She runs past the stray into the yard and eats all the food we'd left for the stray. Plus, the stray has never eaten dry dog food and doesn't seem to get it's food so she really never stood a chance here.
So I go inside and get some delicious pork sausage that we have been hoarding from our trips to Dubai and Paris. We tempt the stray with them, and she finally comes in our yard. We left the gate open so she wouldn't feel trapped. Now Moxie is literally jumping on me, over the stray, whatever it takes to get sausage. Poor stray. She doesn't know what to think and is just starving and trying to eat but doesn't want to upset anyone. Eventually we lock Moxie inside and the stray gets a few bites of sausage unmolested.
Then we hear voices. Some random strangers come into our yard with a puppy and start begging for food! We are not visible from the street, so I don't know what made them think "oh, open gate, let's go beg for food." They kept begging in Russian, we said no, they pointed at the puppy and the sausage in our hand we were trying to feed the stray, so to get them to go away we gave them a tiny piece (even though the puppy may not even have been on solids yet). She then says "Thank you very much" in English. So weird. I'm still not sure if they were begging for the dog or for themselves (it was a group of 3 people).
Anyway... after feeding the stray we had to let her/him go. We can't go around adopting every cute dog in Ashgabat, although we did consider it. If we weren't leaving for Italy so soon we might have tried keeping it, but we just didn't know what to do with a dirty dog and no time to get the vet. We feel so bad about having to kick it out once it started trusting us.
BONUS: How to tell if a carpet is real silk
Apparently real silk will smell like burning hair because of the protein in it. So if you are ever trying to buy a carpet and don't know if it's real silk, light the fringe on fire and sniff. You'll look a bit like an idiot if you're kneeling on the floor in public with your nose to the ground (like FH did this week with the boss and his wife), but there's a tip if you ever go carpet shopping.
Re: In which Moxie tries to bring a turtle home, we almost adopt another dog and beggars visit
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Wow, I can't believe you can smell silk! I can't imagine how annoying it would be to be smashed up next to someone wearing silk and smell fish the whole time.
Poor pup, at least he got some nice sausage!
What do you do with your dog when you travel?
Last time we just had our driver feed her and walk her while she stayed in our house. We were only gone for two days, though and I think that she would go crazy being in a house alone for 23 hours a day for a week.
So this time we are paying him to take care of her and take her to his house for the week. The thing is, Turkmen are not down with letting dogs inside their houses, so she won't get the treatment she gets with us. I'm already feeling guilty about that. But she will be safe and at least have more human interaction for the week, so it's better than any alternative we could think of. Him and his wife both get along with our dog, too.
We considered just leaving both dogs together in our yard and having someone feed them, but without the other dog getting its shots, that just seemed like a bad idea. Given the situation, we don't feel like we could ask anyone else to take care of it either.
There are SOO many cute stray dogs here. Seriously, you can just walk down the street and see like 3 or 4 on any given day. There were two puppies a few weeks ago that looked like golden retrievers (but we think they had some Alabai in them, which is Turkmenistan's national dog - they don't let you take them out of the country. These may have been OK as mutts, though) and they were adorable.
Then there is another dog that looks like Tramp from Lady and the Tramp. He is fun.
I wish there was a way to take care of them and find people to adopt them, but they just don't have a big dog culture here, and not enough Western expats to support something like that.
Dup. Sorry guys. The internet is so slow you think nothing has happened when you are looking at the same screen for 30 seconds, then you click again and it's up there twice.