...and two soon grew to five...are just munching away at Corine's puppies' food. They became horrible thieves and the other members of the expedition were always screaming expletives about my puppies wreaking havoc in, on, or around their tents. I found it quite funny that they were so resourceful (but of course I was embarassed when they peed or did other not so nice things in the others' tents). Each of us of course brought food for puppies...but I had not intended to take five...plus my dear friend Marya had four! to care for....so we ran out of food quite early. Luckily Boubakkar our cook (really he was a chef) would keep the leftovers after each dinner and give them to me and Marya for our poor little kibble-less hanshee kinai. Al hamdullilah! The Tamasheq do not like puppies or dogs anywhere near a cooking fire...fire is sacred to the Tamasheq...but by the end of the expedition little Tamgak was treated with tenderness, acceptance and admiration by Boubakkar and the crew. He was the most 'rustic' of all the puppies brought back (a total of twenty: nine to the states and eleven to Europe)...but he found a special place in the hearts of the Tamasheq crew. Behind Tamgak in the photograph is little Aisinda. More about Aisinda later...Insh'Allah.
2 comments:
Too funny. We took Azelouan tent camping on Catoctin mountain with the girls when he was about 4 months old. He had a great time tearing around but was a perfect gentleman in the tent. He seemed to get that he was supposed to settle down and sleep inside. His major complaint was that he didn't have his own sleeping bag. (Also the girls were very wiggly.)
I had this idea that being dogs from nomadic roots, they had an instinctive good behavior in tents. Way to go. You have completely blown that romantic notion out of the water. :(
OK. My new, more rational, hypothesis is that even an Azawakh puppy can become tired after 12 hours of running around, playing and cavorting endlessly with the other dogs on the mountain.
Occam's razor suggests that rather than having a bred-in affinity for tent etiquette, the little guy was fricken exhausted.
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