For whatever reason dogs have been at the center off our attention for the last couple of days. It started when one of the farm dogs, Cahoun, was seen in a lot of pain. He was acting very strange and seemed to be dying. He and his sister Cashew are about a year old and they are into everything. They are truly some jungle dogs and have gotten in many scraps with the local wildlife on several occasions. Cahoun vanished before we could find him and take him to a local veterinarian. We still aren't sure where he is or what he might have died of. Our best and probably safest guess is a snake bite, most likely by a fer-de-lance. We had wondered if maybe it could be rabies too but we're just not sure. We will probably find him on the next few days. It's a shame because he was a good dog.
We had an interesting start to our day yesterday when we woke to the sounds of dogs barking. This isn't that unusual for the most part but we quickly realized that it wasn't one of our dogs. We are constantly looking out for hunters on the property and we look for their dogs too. Something on the back hill, very close to our palapa, was obviously getting harassed on this particular morning, and we saw a deer that we seen on a daily basis, running away from all of the racket. Normally she has a fawn tagging close behind but we couldn't see it so we were pretty much convinced that the fawn was cornered by the unknown dogs. The sun had just come up but we immediately put on knee-high boots and walked back there with machetes in hand. The closer we got to the continuous barking, the dogs began to attack what we still assumed was the fawn. By this point we started running, Brooks and I, our dog Caden, farm dog Cashew, barely awake with machetes, running through the jungle on the side of a hill to intervene. Once we were within a few feet the dogs started trying to kill what they had cornered. It was a piccari, a wild boar, and a young one so he couldn't defend himself like an older one could. Normally they are very dangerous to dogs and people because of their big, sharp teeth and powerful jaws. Once we realized that it wasn't our little bambie friend, the attacking dogs ran off and left us, with our dogs, near this desperate animal. We gave it space since wild hogs can especaily dangerous once they have been attacked and injured. He seemed to be in good enough shape to run off in the bush.
Later in the day we ended up in Belmopan, the Capital City of Belize, and saw someone selling Pit Bull / Bull Mastif puppies. It got us thinking about getting some pups out here to help us keep an eye on things around here.
