Family news

Joy has been busy with business meetings and next week Ruby will attend a one week seminar in preparation for transferring to her 11th/12th grade high school.

Up to last year in the Philippines, high school ended at 10th grade but now they have extended it to grade 12 so she won't home school anymore but attend school elsewhere... if her father will sign the papers to allow her to do so.

 (He wants her to go to the school here in our town to finish high school. It is a good school, but not the best). Since he opposed her decision, I will pay for the tuition/expenses. Actually not me: My husband put one of the Manila apartments in her name with the instructions that I am to "enjoy" the income, so we have been saving up the income for tuition etc. 

The cook just buried her daughter's husband who dropped dead of a heart attack: That will be the third death in her family this year. Sigh.

In the meanwhile, we just weaned the puppies and gave most of them away last week.

But the mother dog seemed lethargic for the last few days... she is one of the outdoor dogs we got from the farm, and semi wild and tens to jump over the fence to roam and eat garbage, so I assumed she ate something, and just slipped some amoxicillin in her feed. 

But for two days she didn't eat much at all and was hiding under the truck where no one can reach her. We finally caught her when she came out to drink water, and when I examined her she had signs of distemper, including twitches. So we took her to the vet, confirmed the diagnosis, and had her sent to dog heaven.

Distemper has a high mortality in dogs with weak immune systems, and as a farm dog, she has never been strong. Sigh. Now I worry that the puppies who were recently weaned and given away might have caught it too.

Dogs here don't tend to live long lives, although Mama and Papa dog both lived to be 12 and George the killer lab is now 10. But we lose dogs now and then from various reasons: tick fever, viral diarrhea, heat stroke, and our cute little dog from a kidney stone with infection. Sigh.

We buried her under our banana trees with the other dogs. Lolo used to light candles and place flowers on the graves when we buried our pets. This is the custom in our cemeteries (I leave flowers, light a candle and say a prayer every week at Lolo's grave, for example), so I presume he wanted the dogs to go to dog heaven.

No we didn't get them shots for distemper, so my bad. But dogs are not cared for here...