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.