Remembering Pip

As planned, we buried Pip's collar at her favourite spot in our garden. Her memory rests in the shade of a coconut palm tree.

We all thought of something nice to say about her:

Sydney: "I liked Pip."

Fiona: "She could have been my grandmother. She was so old."

Elena: "She had such sad eyes."

But April is not herself today (which is actually nice for a change). She is so sad that her mother has gone.

two feet under

We buried our dog yesterday. I didn't know what to expect, since I've never interred a bigger animal in a city. We put her into a sack and carried her through a garden, over a wall and into another garden. The owner had agreed to have a grave dug among his maniok plants (for a price, of course).

I'm glad Sydney went with me. She was the only one who volunteered to join Pip and me on her last journey though Lomé. Somehow I didn't want to be alone. I think, I must have gotten attached to Pip more than I thought.

This afternoon we are going to have a 'remembrance service' in our garden. Pip had her favorite spot under a palm tree. That's where we'll bury her collar.

A sad day

I'm not sure how many of you followed the saga of our dog Pip (the bigger of the two we "inherited" here, who was also the mother). She has had some sort of infection for months now and has gotten progressively worse. Even after weeks and weeks--months, actually--of antibiotics, we still couldn't heal her. She was losing weight and even with lots of food, she just didn't get better. The vet here, who is actually about the best we have in Lome, basically came to the end of his knowledge and didn't know what to do. We wrote home and asked a vet (thanks for all the help by the way, Sheila and Bryon) if he had any idea. He came up with an idea and we tried it. However, he didn't have much hope. It seemed to give Pip some relief these last couple of weeks and she didn't have so much pain, but she wasn't getting better.

Anyway, sometime in the early hours of this morning, she died. Yesterday, as we left to do our shopping, she looked terrible and we stopped by the vet to make an appointment to have her put down. When we got home, she had perked up and was hanging around the garden looking happier. We didn't have the heart to put her down when she had perked up again so called the vet. However, by evening, altho she ate, she never seemed to recover again.

The girls are handling it well. They don't understand why God let her die even though we prayed for her. We've tried to explain but if any of you have any ideas, please send them!! Elena said, "I wouldn't mind so much if I knew she was going to heaven." What more can we say?

Roger and Sydney have gone with the vet to bury her. We had to contact him and he had to "find a place". Then he had no shovel or pick axe, so Roger had to bring them as well. We'll see how that went when they come back.


I'm putting a photo of her before she got sick.

School

Well, school has started. We got off to a good start on Tuesday and Fiona promptly proceeded to get a tummy bug and missed most of what we did on Wed. Today was normal again. It's nice to be in our new classroom and we now have Sydney with us. You can read a bit about her on the girls' blog.

Our school has a name: Kingfisher Elementary. Here the girls are with their teacher in front of our new sign.

Sydney says good-bye to her bushy Papa. (By the way, I have a quote from Minnie Pearl. "Kissing a fella with a beard is like a picnic. You don't mind going through a little brush to get there.")