Quite a long trip for such a ugly, smelly thing!

Cristian, Nala and I went to a river about 7 km away from our house. Since we don’t have a car yet, Nala rides on the scooter with us. We always put her in a backpack, I wear it in front of me and off we go. Although she doesn’t really like motorcycles when she sees them on the street, she doesn’t seem to mind riding on one when I have my arms around her. (In contrast to her scared look where you puts her ears back and makes big eyes, on the scooter she puts her ears up and has those little wrinkles in her face which means she finds something interesting.) And yes, I know that it is not very safe! But we are planning on getting a car soon anyway.
Well, Nala has one best friend: a bone made out of ox skin. Dogs chew and bit on them until they get soft and then they can eat it. However, Nala’s teeth are not very strong yet and that’s why the bone will last for a few more months. But she has already managed to chew it up quite a bit. This bone is the only thing to get her quiet when she has too much energy. Without the bone she would be jumping up my legs 10 hours a day. So, thanks to whoever invented it!
Since she likes the bone so much, I try to take it everywhere we go just in case she gets bored. So, I also took it to the river. But she didn’t get bored: She had a blast barking at people who were splashing with water and we also made her swim a bit (which she didn’t really enjoy). She is not a great fan of water!
However, she likes to climb things and explore which sometimes is quite a problem. She sometimes jumps of falls down things that are far too high for her not completely developed bones. And that’s what also happened at the river: She climbed up a high stone, looked down and didn’t realize where the edge was. She fell, but luckily partly into the water. She looked a bit scared at first and was limping a tiny bit. But after three minutes in my arms, she was the most energetic girl again. It is said that American Stafford are quite tough, have a high tolerance for pain and strong bones. I think that is definitely true for Nala: Sometimes she hits her head quite hard on my knee when she comes running towards me or on the wall when she is clumsy, but she never cries.
When we decided to go back home, we packed all of our stuff into a bag and left. But we forgot her bone: it looked like one of the stones at the shore. I realized it that we didn’t have the bone when we were at home. Cristian found it very funny that I was such a drama queen about it. But he can’t understand how important it is!!! So, I made him drive us into town to check if we can buy a new one at the pet store because the old one looked kinda ugly and all chewed up anyway. But the tiny and badly equipped pet store didn’t have any. How can they call it a pet store when they can’t even supply me with my baby’s favorite toy? So, we had to drive back to the river, walk 15 minutes and jump over several stones to get to our swimming spot. But we couldn’t find the bone. We looked quite a while until I decided to pick up Cristian’s helmet because it was laying in the way and there it was: the BONE! Until much later in the day (when Cristian saw how much she loves her bone), he still couldn’t understand why we had to go back all the way for such an ugly, smelly thing!
By the way, another thing is very true about Nala which is said about American Staffords: They have a ton of energy. My only problems is: I can’t provide her with enough exercise. You might wonder why since right now I can’t work. Well, I wouldn’t mind at all going for walks with her 3 or 4 times a day. But here in Guanacaste it is so hot that Nala doesn’t go out throughout the day. It’s always a fight to get her outside just for peeing. She has black fur and even when she is very eager to play with me, she never stays outside for more than 10 minutes. I said that American Staffords are fairly robust, but that doesn’t seem to apply for the heat, at least not for Nala. She nearly had a heatstroke already when Cristian tied her into our yard for half an hour. He didn’t know (and me neither) that she would be that sensitive. But that half an hour in the sun was already too much. She had a fever all day, was really weak, and just felt terrible. But now she is back to normal and full of energy. So, I have to wait until the sun goes down and it gets a bit cooler, to go for a walk with her. But I can’t wait too long because in Costa Rica, women (especially European women) should not go outside alone in the dark. Other than that I try to play with her inside as much as possible. But it excludes throwing sticks or running because we have a tile floor (which is good when she pees onto the floor once in a while) and very few carpets, but bad for her because it’s very slippery and I’m always afraid that she slides into a wall or that she sprains her leg because she is slipping away all the time. Poor thing: It’s just too hot for a black dog here! But by the way, she doesn’t like the cold either! *lol* She is such a princess!


PS. I had forgotten to take my camera to the river for me. But we went again and I decided to post those pictures here. By the way, the day we went the second time was the first day where it was cloudy after 2 months of cloud-less blue sky and heat. You can’t believe how good it feels when it’s only 25 degrees Celsius and you have a very slight drizzle of rain!