Dog attack, snake skin and another cholera delay…

So the end of this week did not go as expected. Having completed 3 weeks of schoolwork at home and eager to try out the new bikes they’d been hoping for since Christmas, Abigail and Hannah were ready for a day playing with their friends at the Beulah Training Centre while Gemma and I got on with the huge amount of work that needs doing there. But as we drove away from our house yesterday morning and saw 3 dogs on our road, we new it could mean trouble…

The perimeter fence we’d put around the land to keep our own 2 dogs, Oliver and Bobby, from escaping was doing its job (after a few additions of extra chicken wire AND a small wooden barrier 👆🏻 to give them an additional challenge while we drive out the gate!) but sadly it wasn’t enough to stop a very determined bigger dog from breaking in. As it was meant to be our first ‘family games night’ (eating and socialising with the other kids and volunteers onsite at Beulah) Gemma and I decided that mid-afternoon we’d leave Abi and Hannah at the Centre briefly so we could go back to the house to feed the dogs before leaving them again into the evening. And it was a good job we did!

We arrived at the house to find only Bobby running to greet us at the gate and no sign of Oliver. As we got closer we saw why - poor Oliver was standing very still with blood all over his back, legs and tummy and, as we found out later, he’d been like that since just after we left in the early morning! We managed to get him to the vet (30mins+ away) just before they closed for the day and where they kindly set to treating Oliver. He had 6 puncture wounds on his body, one particularly deep which we hoped wouldn't require further surgery. The vet’s assistant, who was quite surprised at the attack, thought Oliver might have been targeted because of his white fluffy coat, but the fact he was still wearing his medical cone (see last blog) won’t have helped - the poor dog wasn’t able to defend himself ☹️

👆🏻 Taken this morning.

By the time we arrived back at Beulah to collect the girls we’d missed most of the food and games and were a little concerned about how they’d take the news of what had happened. Thankfully, because they hadn’t been with us when we discovered the dogs and so hadn’t seen Oliver at his worst, it wasn’t too big a shock. Plus, Abigail was still getting over the snake encounter she’d had minutes before we arrived...

While the games were underway, Abigail had remembered she’d left something at her friends house on-site and so rushed to go and get it. But when she got to the front door and had been knocking for a while, she suddenly heard a hissing noise coming from above her. She looked up in horror to see a long, dark snake laying across the top of the doorway. Despite REALLY wanting to get her stuff, she then made the wise decision to run back and join the others.

With all the dog news and Abi also trying to tell us her story, while everyone else was playing games, it all felt a bit bizarre!

It wasn’t until we went with Abigail to finally get her things a while later, that we realised the truth of her tale. The snake she’d seen must have been shedding its skin at the time, as we found this very fresh snake skin exactly where she’d seen the snake! 👇🏻

With both our dogs in the car, and Hannah now having decided to have a sleep over with her friend at Beulah, we decided to leave the girls’ bikes at the centre until morning.  Since the government had also just announced another 2 week closure of schools because of cholera, another late night in the grand scheme of things probably won’t make much difference! 💤