Three puppies

Well, at the end of my last post, I mentioned that we have a dog who has been staying at our house who we call Reuben. He's definitely fully grown, but he bounds all over the place like a puppy, so I say it still counts. He likes to follow me when I leave the house on foot (which is about 90% of the time). It's usually a minor nuissance when I go to the shop as I often have to break up fights between him and other dogs in the neighborhood. It can be a major nuissance when I am walking to Frisbee, since he always tries to run through our game, which causes fights with the dogs in that neighborhood as well as the other players.

We have a Danish neighbor at our office, who regularly travels to Nairobi, so it's hard for her to keep a dog. She had a brand-new puppy and after seeing how well we got along with her, she decided to give her to us. We named her Mandaazi, which is fried dough Tanzanian style. It's a cute name and it definitely suits her. Since she was so small, we decided it would be okay to let her in the house from time to time, but that made Reuben incredibly jealous, so we just decided to keep her outside (also she seems to consider it her mission to pee on every square inch of floorspace in our house). She is without a doubt the crafty one. She likes to try to squeeze through the grate on our front door, so we can't keep that open to get a breeze, and she now likes to try climbing in through one of our low-level windows, so we have to keep that closed too (though it is really impressive to see how determined she is).

Then, one morning my housemate Mic showed up with another dog even smaller than Mandaazi. I mostly just referred to him as Tatu, meaning "the third". My housemate Joanna started calling him Chubs, since he's a bit pudgy. The kids in the neighborhood* pronounce it more like Chubzy, so that what I've taken to calling him. Apparently Tatu is a girl's name (I don't think I've met anyone named Tatu, yet), so Mic has taken to calling him Three. Anyway Chubz (I'll stick with this name for now) is probably the most persistent, always trying to get into the house (he also enjoys peeing all over the house) or dig under the gate and he's even willing to run through the stream near our house to get to the shop when I'm buying food (Reuben and I can both hop over it, while Mandaazi usually prefers to stay dry).

We had Mandaazi and Chubz vaccinated, so they've been pretty healthy so far. We feed them an odd diet of milk, fried fish**, bread and leftovers. They're growing well, so we'll probably keep at it. We're moving to a new house soon*** and we'll bring Mandaazi and Chubz with us, but Reuben will probably stay behind. He's good at fending for himself, and in theory he has an owner near our house. Well, some guy tried to sell him to us, but that may have been a scam. Someone gave Reuben a collar, though, which is pretty rare for the strays here. Anyway, our puppies are amazing companions and we're working on training them to be well-behaved.

* They've taken to coming into our yard whenever they feel like it, which can be a bit overwhelming. Some of the kids like to play games like Spit on the Dog or Kick the Ball Against the Garage Door. We usually have to chase them away at that point.
** They sell these really small fried fish along the road. They're about 3 inches long and pretty flat and bony. I've had a few dishes made with them, and I think they are much better for dogs than people.
*** Our lease runs out on our current place in about two weeks, and even though we'd love to extend, the landlord wants the house for his son.