There are street dogs everywhere in Dakar. Most seem friendly, some seem leery and shy. This cute brown-and-white dog hangs out near our apartment. We know quite a few Americans who have befriended a street dog (or dogs) and eventually adopted them into their home. If we didn’t already have two four-legged children (one of whom hates other dogs), it would be tempting. There’s a beagle mix that roams around a few streets over I’ve got my eye on.
Only my eye and not my hands, though, because the dogs need quite a bit of cleaning up before they can come live inside with a new family. Especially problematic for the street dogs and cats are mango worms. Nasty little flies lay their eggs on an animal and after a few days, a worm forms under the skin. The worms don’t kill the animals (unless they’re in really large numbers), but removing them requires a pimple-like squeeze. Such is why our own two dogs are outfitted with down-the-back anti-pest medicine once a month and get a healthy spray of doggy insect repellent at least once a day.
Rachael Cullins is a twentysomething American girl living in Dakar, Senegal, with her husband and two dogs. She blogs about her adventures in Senegal and travels elsewhere in West Africa. She will reside in Dakar until summer 2013, when she and her family will move to another foreign post as part of her husband’s career with the U.S. government. In addition to West Africa, she has traveled to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Costa Rica and plans to continually add to that list.
