Puppy Love - Part 2

Life has been hectic lately but I guess thats normal. My puppy got really sick a week ago. He seemed fine in the morning and then was sleeping a lot. He didn't seem to want to move or even stand up but everyone said he was just tired. By the afternoon, it was obvious he couldn't walk or stand up even and by the evening, was having convulsions. I texted my parents unsure of what I could do since everyone kept telling me he was just tired. My dad thought it was distemper which is normally fatal. I gave him antibiotics that night and then took him to see the local vet (which I didn't even know existed in my village). He decided it was either paralysis (a symptom not a disease) or rabies (highly doubted it) and said I should tie him up, keep him away from kids, and that if he got aggressive they would cut off his head and send it for testing in the city. At this point Puppy couldn't move at all and was crying constantly. I didn't get much sleep and was very stressed out. Nobody understood why I was upset and there was a constant parade through my house to see the crazy white girl crying about a dog! As I have said before, dogs are not pets, family members, or friends here. They may be used to guard the house or even eaten. I consider Puppy my best friend in village and spend more time with him then any person so was obviously worried about him and hated seeing him suffer.

I will say that everyone wanted to help us out but I found their responses a little overwelming. They wanted to try all kinds of traditional medicines and everyone had a different solution. We first had some black granules that is from the root of some plant. They mixed it with water and made him drink it and stuck it up his nose. Then they put the black stuff over coal and tried to get the smoke to go on his legs and stomach. We did this three times a day for two days. No change. Then someone else lit straw on fire and put smashed up garlic in it and had that smoke waft onto him. Still nothing. There were several other suggestions made but at this point I felt like we had tortured him enough and he was miserable.

I decided to have him killed (put to sleep as they say in the US) after a week of not walking because he was miserable. That morning I took him outside to pee and his legs were moving. I set him down standing and he could stay up and then took a few steps. In the last two days he has started walking a little faster and yesterday before I left village he could get up from sitting though he still can't get up when he is laying. I am so shocked and really think it is a miracle since it was the day he was going to die. I have braced myself that I will probably encounter death while serving in the Peace Corps since it is a large part of life here with a high infant mortality rate and a low use of health services. I didn't expect my first experience to be with my dog though. I can only begin to imagine what the mothers in my family who have lost multiple children have gone through. To them it is a part of life, and though hard to deal with, it is almost expected that one or a few of your children won't reach adulthood.