While in Thmor Da registering our girls for the 2023 school year, somebody abandoned 2 puppies in the back of my tuk-tuk, and I knew this was a gonna be a sad story no matter how things turned out.
Only In Cambodia 🤦♂️
This whole day did not go as planned, and even what was supposed to be a formal school registration day that had been hyped up for over a month turned out to be a disorganized mess. The date given for registration was December 20th, and sometimes even the first day can be a partial study day, so the girls came with spare school clothes just in case.
Well, there was no need for us even to do the two and a half hour round trip, and no registration took place, the school told us the new date was January 1st of next year. Now missing $4 of diesel and 4 hours from my life that I can't get back, we all began heading back to the tuk-tuk, realizing there was basically no reason for us to be at the school. From a distance I could see a crowd of kids gathered round the back of my tuk-tuk, so I asked Srey-Yuu to investigate.
Puppy Surprise 🐶
Srey-Yuu quickly discovered the reason my tuk-tuk was so popular is that because someone tied up two puppies in the back of my tuk-tuk and left them. Initially I thought one of the parents had used my tuk-tuk as a temporary puppy shelter because it's quite common to use other people's things without asking. When I used to ride a motorcycle, it only took 5 minutes of being parked before my mirrors became ground zero for teenage pimple popping. It is nasty to clean a moto mirror full of a total stranger's exploded pimple heads, but I have now digressed from what this post is supposed to be about.
After several minutes of wondering what's going to happen next, I began to realize this story was not going to not have a sad ending. Our life is a bit unstable because we are still pursuing a USA visa despite being denied for nearly 4 years. We aren't wealthy, and we certainly don't have money to buy plane tickets for two dogs. I can't even visit my own parents more than once every two or three years the way it is now due to our financial situation.
Accept The Circumstances 🤷♂️
Eventually the woman across the street called us over and told us she was the dog abandoner. She remembered that once upon a time we told her a previous litter of puppies she had was very cute, but we didn't express interest in getting or having a puppy. It seemed as though she was dead set on getting rid of these dogs though, so we decided it was better to remove them from a home where they are not wanted. Keep in mind also that it is fairly common to eat dogs in Cambodia, so an unwanted dog can sometimes have a very gruesome fate.
I didn't want to see these little guys become neglected, or even worse, BBQ, so we brought them back home with us. My wife said her brother would gladly take them, so we planned to drop them off in Pursat tomorrow on our way to Phnom Penh for a vacation/shopping trip.
Too Cute 🐶
I am a dog lover, don't get me wrong, but I also feel dog ownership is for a lifetime, and I cannot simply abandon a pet under any circumstances. Because of our current visa situation, I am not willing to take this responsibility on, and I reminded my family that I had a dog for over 20 years that died in 2010 while I was in Cambodia for a one-month holiday and the longest time I had ever spent away from my dog. My dog died while I was away, and it remains one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life, my dog just gave up on life two weeks after I left, seemingly too dependent on me.
Not only this, but my 17+ year old golden retriever rescue died on the same day, a dog I had for 6 years before taking my first vacation as an adult without dogs in tow. It is still hard to believe that both of my dogs just gave up on living within 12 hours of each other, but that is how attached dogs can get to their humans. My wife was quite willing to take them and care for them until a possible departure where we would give the dogs to someone else, but I told her a dog is for a lifetime in my opinion, and this became a sour subject better not discussed.
Bath Time 🛀
When we got the dogs home, I knew they needed a good bath because they were covered in fleas. I picked some lemongrass and began boiling water to provide some pleasantly scented bath water on this cold day. I managed to give both pups a bath in our wheelbarrow, but my hands were wet, so sorry for the lack of those pics, you'll likely find those shots in my wife's post.
After giving the pups each a bath, I handed them to the assembly line for drying and flea picking. Nim, a neighbor girl, even joined in on this exciting action. There isn't a lot of excitement in our village, so picking fleas from puppies can easily be the highlight of a day, I'm even posting about it, so it's obvious it was pretty entertaining for me too.
Once the pups were dry and mostly flea-free, I fed them some beans and they also devoured a coconut, then fell asleep for a few hours. While we were packing for our trip to the capital, a neighbor guy came by and bean inquiring about the pups. He requested one, but we said we'd like to keep the dogs togethe because they are siblings.
I personally wanted to give them to my brother-in-law, but they aren't exactly dog lovers, although they would take good enough care of them. Our neighbor guy promised that he is a lover of dogs, and even though he didn't want two dogs, he had a sibling that would take the other one, and told us they live near each other, so the dogs would still see each other often.
My wife capitulated and decided the dogs would have a better life with this guy than with her brother. I didn't expect it, but both my wife and Monkey-B shed tears for quite a while, and my wife even admitted she was angry with me for a short time over this situation. The old saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is stuck in my mind today.
I will leave you all with this gem. Just when the guy was about to leave with the dogs, I suddenly remembered this is Cambodia and not Kentuckiana when my wife made him promise several times that he won't eat these dogs. Only in Cambodia does the whole situation happen and also end the way it did. What a hot mess of a day, and now I've got to try and get 5 hours of sleep before driving the tuk-tuk around 400km tomorrow morning.
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Return from 🐶 Cambodian Puppy Surprise 🛺 Random Pups Left In My Tuk-Tuk During Public School Registration Day 🏫 to Justin Parke's Web3 Blog
