Stories from the Amazon - Mandy

My first dog that I ever owned was a little tan mutt we brought home from the Indian village when I was 6. I named her Ginger because she was ginger colored. I don't remember a whole lot about that dog except that she wasn't very nice and she tried to bite and attack people. I remember we had to keep her chained up a lot. One day I went to school and came home and my parents had had her put to sleep because of her behavior. I cried and cried but looking back we decided that she was probably demon possessed because of the circumstances of where she came from. I wanted another dog so badly I almost couldn't stand it. When I was 11 another missionary family was moving back to the States for health reasons and they had a young German Shepherd dog named Lobo. They needed to find a home for him. I begged and begged my dad to let me have Lobo. He said that if I could promise to walk him every day, cook his food every day, bathe him every week that he would let me have him. I promised and begged and promised and finally he agreed on a trial run of having a dog and seeing if I could be a responsible 11 year old. Every day I measured out the food and cooked it for him and fed him and took him on walks around the mission base. Every day people would tease me, asking me if the dog was running me or if I was running the dog. I guess it kind of looked like he was taking me for runs because it was fun running next to him and we ran pretty much everywhere. I was a scrawny, skinny kid and he was a big, burly German Shepherd. Every Saturday was bath day and I took care of him with all my heart. When I was 12 we went on furlough to the United States and I had to leave him behind with another missionary family. Every month or so they would send updates to my parents about the dog, until about two weeks before we were to return and they sent notice that he had run away and they couldn't find him. I was devastated. My world crashed down around me, thinking of my beloved dog that I'd never see again. They felt terrible of course but there was nothing anyone could do. I was now dog-less. Sad, depressed, lonely, dog-less. No commpanion, none to lick my tears or run by my side or bark to alarm me of strangers. My heart could barely stand it. One day our maid came to work with the news of a litter of mutt pups who had been dumped in her neighborhood. By this time I was 14. My mind instantly devised a plan to go rescue one of those puppies for myself. My parents were going to be at church that evening so I thought to myself that I could dress in black clothes and sneak out after dinner time and run to town 8 kilometers away, find the pups and run back home before they returned from church and they would never know that I did that. I put my plan in action and started down the side of the dusty gravel road to town. Every time a car would pass I'd dive into the weeds on the side of the road and hide. The brambles and barbed wire fences sometimes grabbed me and hung on, tearing my clothes and skin but I didn't care. My heart was set on getting a dog. After several kilometers of running I was getting close to a section of road where there was a bar. Whenever we passed by car I'd notice there were lots of men drinking and loud music and gaudy women. And no place to hide. I'd have to walk past that part of the road. My heart began to beat faster with trepidation. I was only a young teenage girl and no match for any man who might decide to try and take advantage of me. About the time I started thinking of that I heard my parents car drive past me on their way back to the house. Panic arose inside me as I suddenly realized that they would return home and lock the doors and I was locked out, to either continue my quest or return home and spend the night outside or last choice would be to return home and confess what I had done. None of those options seemed very nice in my young mind. I weighed the idea of continuing and going past the drunk men in the bar, or turning around and giving up on finding myself a dog as I continued slowly towards town. Finally the fear of the drunk men got the better of me and I turned around and sprinted towards home. I probably broke some world records in how fast and far I could run without stopping as my feet barely touched the gravel on my mad dash back to the misison base. By the time I made it home it was around 2 in the morning

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