Rabies Roadtrip

I’ve had a hard time adjusting to the fact that dogs are treated much differently here than they are in America.  My natural reaction with dogs is to pet them and play with them.  The natural reaction here is to shoo them away, ignore them, or hit/kick them.  It’s sad and I don’t think I’ll ever really get used to it.  I’ve had to check my instincts several times as I’ve come close to having my hand bitten off when trying to pet some of the dogs here (this is on the rare occasion they don’t instantly run away from me instead).  A lot of people have dogs as pets, but I’ve found they’re often treated no differently than the soi dogs, or street dogs that you see wandering around everywhere – besides maybe the fact that they’re given food on a regular basis.  It hasn’t ceased to amaze me how unfriendly these dogs can be, and I don’t blame them given the way I’ve seen them treated.  I have run into a few friendly dogs and have really enjoyed the dogs that have lived at both of my host family’s homes.  The dog at my first homestay was afraid of me for several weeks and would always run away from me, but eventually I made friends with him and I’d like to think he was sad to see me leave (I was the only one that really paid attention to him and snuck him treats and showed him affection).  The dogs at my new homestay are friendly and always entertaining and warmed up to me in no time, which I love. 

One of the dogs at my host family's house

One of the things we were taught in PST is how to avoid dog bites.  I’ve realized over and over again why we covered this in our first week of training, because every time I ride my bike I’m chased by at least one dog (usually it’s 3 or 4 at a time though).  The water bottle attached to my bike has become the designated dog water bottle as I use it to squirt the dogs that don’t give up on chasing me and come dangerously close to taking a bite out of my leg (it also turned moldy on the inside from being neglected and left in the sun, and I refuse to try to clean it since I always have another bottle of water with me). 

To my delight I recently found what looked like a golden retriever puppy, and given how much I love golden retriever puppies I couldn’t help but want to steal him and make him mine.  I’m used to these puppies being overly friendly and licking my face to death.  When I tried to play with this puppy he ignored me and walked away.  When I tried to feed him pieces of my ‘chicken’, he grabbed it so harshly from me that he bit into my finger.  I was crushed that this cute little thing could do something like this to me, however I think it was less out of intent to harm and more due to overexcitement about whatever was in my hand.  The next day I reluctantly informed the PC medical staff, and as I suspected they told me to go to the hospital for a rabies shot (we were given 3 initial rabies immunizations during training).  Although it had been more painful than I would have imagined, the bite was small and I wasn’t really concerned about it at all, but there was still a small, miniscule chance that I could die from rabies, so I knew I should probably get the shots.  Everything was halted for the day as my supervisor, his driver, my counterpart and I all piled into my supervisor’s vehicle for the hour and a half trip to the nearest Peace Corps friendly hospital.  Why we needed 4 people for this I’m not sure, but we went, I got the first of 2 required shots, and then we went for steak and coffee before heading home.  I opted not to eat ‘steak’ as I knew it would only be a disappointment (as I’ve found out the hard way about many things I get excited about here….like ‘cheese’ or treats that look like cakes but also have a surprise filling of tuna, corn or beans).  I had to go back 3 days later for the second rabies shot.  Needless to say I’m even more careful around dogs I don’t know now.  As much fun as the rabies roadtrips were (I got a box of doughnuts out of the second rabies roadtrip – a gift from my supervisor’s wife, along with two meals – neither one of them ‘steak’ – and an assortment of fruit and other treats), I’d rather not do it all over again.

Dogs on a school bench during PST