This Has To Be The End

As I walked into the cage (training center) after traveling 10 hours from Durban to Maseru I was greeted with a lovely welcome home message from closest girl volunteer. While I was away furthering my training and spending blissful hours on the beach my puppy, Ma-ta-ta was at home getting a beating from the “gardener.” She apparently ate one of the chickens. I am not sure if I mentioned in a previous post her name means problems or trouble. Her name fit. The muddy paws, the destroyed crops, the shredding of the family cats, ruining the girls school shoes, choking on plastic juice bottles. Where there is trouble, there is Ma-ta-ta. I definitely set her up for failure, AND she definitely overstepped her boundaries.

I was absolutely not prepared to hear my pal might not be there when I got home. Despite the warning I was not ready for what I awaited me. Had J.W.M. (a volunteer in my district) not been with me I would have burst into tears. Ma-ta-ta’s jaw is completely misaligned. She can’t eat! She can’t bark! She can’t close her mouth! She can’t run! I was only gone 19 days and she has already lost so much weight. One of the biggest cultural differences between where I come from and Lesotho is the treatment of animals. This is yet another perfect example. In America we would do anything at almost any cost to save our pets. That is not the case here. There is nothing I can do and nothing anyone else is even going to attempt to do. It is impractical for me to syringe feed her or try any other techniques. Veterinarians do not exist! Dogs here are not pets.

I wish I could have been there, not to see it but to prevent it. I would have paid for the chicken.

I am in the process of convincing my family to put her to sleep. I can't look at her without wanting to cry. They seem adamantly opposed to my idea because "she can still do her job" (although I question the quality of job she is doing if she can't even attack/bite, let alone bark). No one ever asks for my opinion though, especially here.

Surprisingly she does not seem to be in a lot of pain so we will keep on keeping on until a verdict is reached.