A dogs story........

At Amecet, we are guarded at night by our four lady dogs. Let me introduce them to you:

This is our old lady, Rafiki. She must be at least 15 years old, she is missing some teeth, is not running so much anymore, but she is still the leader of our crew. The others are not going in the doghouse, when she is not there!

This is Simba, she is the smallest of the group. She is 5 years old, she can really bark!!!

Here is Lassie, named by the children after the famous Lassie from the TV and movies. She is is 3 years old and she is a big dog with a beautiful tail. She is still very playfull and when you have to walk in the compound after they are released, she is jumping on you, so happy to see you!

This is Boefie ( a Dutch name for someone who is naughty) , she is the youngest of the team, she is 1 year old. On this picture she is still small, but now she is bigger than Lassie. Boefie and Lassie play a lot and are always running around or fighting (as play) together.

During the day the dogs are in their dog house, we release them in the evening, they guard the place at night. After we lock our frontgate and our side gate, the place is theirs. A couple of weeks ago the staff on night duty forgot to close and lock the side gate. This is a gate in the fence, which is between our compound and the compound of the clinic, next to us. After the dogs had eaten, they discovered the open gate, that was fun, more space to run! The clinic has also a frontgate, to the road, which is closed at night and guarded by a guard.

That night none of the patients or the caretakers of the patients dared to go out, the dogs were running in and out, the guard didn't dare to do something and the story goes that one of the patients had to go to the latrine and didn't dare to go out, he got into trouble.

The worse thing was that there were white ants out that night. This are flying ants, which are coming out their ant hill only now and then. They fly towards the light, the people come out of bed to cath them at night (they don't fly during daytime). They fry and eat the ants, it is a real treat to them. And just that night they were flying outside, but our dogs were running around!!! The next day three people came to complain to us, what else could we do than apolgize and making sure that we lock the gate in the future.

At least we know that our dogs do their work and people don't mess with them!