Sweet like Suka

We've obviously seen lots of island dogs and puppies since we've been here. For the first time ever, we saw a dog with a roly-poly, healthy-looking puppy! The dog is a stray that comes through our neighborhood occasionally so when we noticed she was lactating we tried to feed her and follow her to find the puppies. No luck.

A month or so later, she came back with a puppy. The puppy was old enough to leave her mom and mom didn't seem too interested in feeding her anymore so we kept her just long enough to give her away to our neighber, Kelly. Kelly named her Suka. It means sugar in Samoan. And she's just about the cutest island puppy I've ever seen. Ruth's been watching the boys and hanging out with Suka during the day so she's had plenty of time to capture the cuteness on film - errrrr, digitally.
And while I'm on the subject of dogs, Ila is quite the cute island dog and entertains himself by chewing on coconut husk and eating coconut out of the shell. He's actually pretty good at it.

update

Since we no longer have a computer at home, we're not able to blog as much - although we do have some more photos to upload (thank you, thieves, for not taking our camera), whenever we get computer things figured out.

We're still snorkeling and hanging out and not much has changed except for the lack of internet and music in our lives, but the major news is that the puppy finally has a name. We wanted to let the kids name him, but their suggestions were Cutie and Ultra MegaTron III. Oddly enough, we vetoed those.

Then we waited a couple weeks and asked for suggestions again, thinking that they would have forgotten about Cutie and Ultra MegaTron III. They didn't. So, Clif and I named him Ila. It means spot in Samoan. Eventually we'll post a picture of him now that he has fur, at least in most places.

puppy update

The still nameless mutt is finally acting like a puppy now (as opposed to eating, sleeping, pooping, sleeping, whining, and sleeping) so we figure that's a good sign, even though our toes are his new favorite chew toy. He's looking much better.

These were taken right after we got him - although he had just eaten so his stomach is extremely full! I'm glad the photos don't show just how badly off he was because it was pretty disturbing. The second one was taken after a good scrubbing so he looks really cute!

Just after a few days of a lot of puppy food and a couple shots he's filling out. We can't see all the bones in his hips and his skin doesn't look as thick and scaly anymore.

puppy love?

We are suckers. Someone dumped a pathetic puppy off near the entrance of our street, and we ended up with it. It is malnourished and probably infected with just about anything that crawls. It has a terrible case of mange and it stinks like a dog in old age.

He will probably be cute once he's not so sick, but right now he just looks pathetic. He has the thick skin and hair loss of a very sick animal, but he looks like he's getting a little bit better already.

I took pictures so you can see just how sorry looking our new mangy mutt is, but haven't gotten around to downloading them from the camera yet. He has no name yet so if you have any ideas, let us know!

Oh yeah, Clif and I found out we passed the MPRE today. Clif is happy because now he won't have to worry about exams anymore. I am, of course, glad I passed, but more concerned about the bar results that I'm still waiting for. UPDATE: I passed the bar! I found out yesterday. I'm more relieved than excited, but it's still great news.