moossie

No, I'm not a dog person, but if you have to get a pet, I'd rather have a cat. Those are much easier. But yes, how is that? You live more spaciously and with a large garden and your wife wants a dog. “No, I don't want a dog and that's it!”

Not at all, your wife wants a dog because, she says, very bad things happen in Thailand at night and then you have to have a guard dog in the countryside so that when the thieves and murderers come, you are warned in advance by the dog . Because that helps.

After much discussion and bickering, as you will always see, she received a tip that a family in the village had young dogs "free to get". For nothing. Reluctantly I went on the scooter with my wife to the address where the dogs were “free to get”. When we arrived there we were warmly welcomed and she wanted to know where I came from.

From Holland!

Oh, van Basten, Gullit, Kruif, Bergkamp….. Yes. I nodded friendly and wanted to leave immediately, but I was stopped by one of the daughters of the house who held up a dog by the hind leg in one hand. Really, it didn't look good, neither did that dog. A kind of big fluffy hairball, dirty, wet and sticky and yes, if you looked closely you could think that there was a dog in that dirt.

I really didn't like it and apparently it showed on my face because another daughter removed some wooden planks that were in the yard and a hole appeared in the ground.

She put her hand in the hole and boom, there was another dog, just as unattractive as the other dog. A long-haired dumpling in which really no dog could be recognized, there was hardly any life in it and, if a dog had to come, I would have imagined something completely different.

Well, well, then there was nothing that could be done about it, too bad, and I again, after a polite blow, got ready to leave. No, no, wait a minute, there's another one…. but we find them so ugly that we don't want to give them away. And a small black curly-haired dog was pulled out of the hole, barely 4 to 5 weeks old(!) and this animal also seemed more dead than alive. With a cute face and eyes that suggested that there was indeed life in it. She looked at me with a look like: Come here! I'll eat you up! Oh well, I was immediately convinced because what chance did the animal have if the owner thinks you're so worthless that he doesn't think you're worth giving away for free yet? Basically, we had a dog. And we call her Moossie.

Moossie grew up with us together with a Tomcat that we brought with us from the Netherlands and she developed into a very "vigilant" dog. If there was even the slightest suspicious sound in the distance, she would bark the whole neighborhood together. In addition, she also turned out to be super intelligent, she understood very well what could and could not be done, was very obedient, sometimes you didn't even have to call her, she understood that you wanted her to come to you. The animal had those very bright eyes where you had the feeling that when she looked at you you could look inside her. In short, apart from her sometimes loud barking, she was a perfect and funny dog ​​that you couldn't ignore.

And just when you think you've had it all, our daughter comes home with something that looks like a cuddly toy from Intertoys. But it wasn't a stuffed animal, it was a dog, a real one! At most 4 weeks old! And this one didn't run on batteries, this one really poops and pisses. Yeah, hey, how did you get this? "Found it". Yes, to me hula, bring it back, one dog is enough. Anyway….we had two dogs then. Moossie and Joepie and they became great friends.

And it really had to stop there. But 3 years later…..

August 2018 was a month with a lot of rain and the rice fields around our house were already quite white and the rice grew well and colored the fields bright green. Between the heavy rain showers I could sit outside in the garden with a cup of coffee. Regularly I heard a strange plaintive beeping and other noises quite close by that I couldn't identify.

When, like every day, I went for a walk with Moossie and Joepie to a deserted area next to our house, I saw a black animal walking, I thought a cat or a very large rat and once I got home I told what I had seen. Oh, my wife said, that might be a dog from those people who lived there and recently moved. I went to look and after some searching, with the boots on because the water was at least 30 to 40 cm high, I found four young dogs of about five weeks old on a kind of island in the rice field.

When they saw me, they ducked into a pit that was half full of water and covered with some branches to protect them from the bright sun. It turned out that a family that had to move was not interested in a litter of young dogs and had therefore dumped them on a slightly higher place of four to five square meters surrounded by water. Yes, in Thailand they treat pets a bit differently than what we are used to in the Netherlands….. We bought some canned puppy food and goat milk and gave it to those dogs. They appeared to be very hungry. Besides that, they were also quite eaten by mites, fleas, ticks and whatnot.

I went to look again the next day, although the place was difficult to reach due to the water and the soft clay soil. At night it had rained again with a great thunderstorm and the water turned out to have risen to such an extent that it was almost certain that the place would flood in the next rain shower, so… we suddenly had six dogs. Besides Moossie and Joepie now also Pipo, Pluto, Peethan and Pintha. Coincidentally we had bought an adjacent piece of land and oh well, where there are two dogs, there can also be six or not?

After the necessary visits to the vet, vitamins and medicines, the dogs grew up well and, as you can see in the picture, they ended up well. I just didn't know they would get this big.

Venomous snakes

In Thailand and especially in the countryside of Thailand you regularly encounter snakes. Also in our garden, but those are usually those harmless home, garden and kitchen snakes. As soon as I hear the dogs barking I am almost certain that they have found a snake.

Our garden is quite large and consists of a section around the house and then two rai that I mow regularly but we do nothing with and snakes can be found there almost every day. I also know what a Spitting Cobra is. Over the last 3 years I have caught several and brought them to people in the area who consider them a delicacy.

I once had one in the lasso and I had to hold it up because the dogs jumped at it and that animal sprayed two strong beams at the same time to spray the opponent in the eyes and disorient and disable it.

Especially Moossie, our first black curly dog, is very fanatical when a snake is found. With unrelenting enthusiasm she barks and bites and is clearly aware of the danger and always Moossie is the one who masters the snake. And then she looks at me with a look like "hey, you didn't think that did you?" Also on that day in April of this year.

I heard a huge barking from all the dogs together and I went, armed with my homemade snake lasso, to see what was going on. It was difficult to see because the whole crowd was sitting under a bamboo table that was only 50 cm high, pushed against the wall, so they were pushing each other to make the snake harmless, because it was there.

Finally I managed to rake out the snake, which had already suffered quite a few dog bites, and send it to snake heaven.

Then we immediately pushed two dogs with their heads into a bowl of water and washed their eyes and dripped them with special drops.

That Spitting Cobra has an incredibly good aim and sprays a corrosive liquid into the eyes of the dog that can at the very least go blind. I know that from the neighbors because they have experienced that. If you treat the eyes well, it can be over in a few days, so…

Again relieved that such a dangerous situation had ended well, we went back inside. Hey, where's Moossie? Moossie was already inside, how crazy, normally she always comes to receive a pat as a reward for things done. But Moossie, as leader of the dog pack, had come out of the battle unscathed it seemed, but a few hours later there was a big bump under her chin.

“Just keep an eye on it”, I still hear myself say and the next day the bump had disappeared; see, nothing wrong. The next day Moossie was different than usual, and lay in his basket the whole time. If you called she just came wagging her tail like always, nothing to worry about. But she was different anyway. Another day later, I went to the vet, nothing wrong. Nothing wrong? Again to the vet, I think she is very sick.

“Heart good, Lungs good, Kidneys good, maybe just a pill and then she will recover”.

Can you do a blood check? “Yes, then I will call the results this afternoon” “Oops, that result is not good, just pick up some medicines, I will have them ready for you”.

It slowly became clear that she would not make it. The beast, brave and lively as she was, would not give up. She couldn't take those medicines anymore, she was too sick, and the next morning she was dead. We buried her in the garden with a memorial stone above it. And every time I see that pebble I have to fight back the tears.

And also Joepie, the Intertoys dog, was completely upset, but now, about eight months later, you can see that he is starting to get back to his old self...

Well, you know, I wasn't much of a dog person, but if I have to…..

Submitted by Pim Foppen