Now the dogs, actually we are taking our dogs and cat back to the USA in November. 2 reasons, one is Cindy is returning the the USA as living here as the housewife isn’t really all that fun, maybe different in Bangalore, but here there is no expat community and the locals really don’t like to socialize with the meat eating foreigners, plus my job is a real Indian contractor job where there is no certainty month to month if you will get paid. And the second and main reason is we have a BIG scare 2 weeks ago with Pumpkin our old Lab. She got really really sick she stopped eating and got bad diarrhea with blood in her stools.

In the USA this is easy as you call the vet, and within the hour normally you are getting treatment. Here I called the vet, oh he is leaving for Banglore in 1 hr, back in 1 week. Do you have someone you can recommend… ahhh no, come see me when I am back next week if she is still alive I am told!!!

So called another vet, yes they can see me in 12 hrs only, late at night, but like most all vets here they have no xray machines, no lab facilities, so if I do need anything like this I will have to take the dog to a human hospital for xrays and labs !! And thats not easy of course as you have to do it after hours.

So in the end, we did some self teaching and with a touch and go couple of days we got her through it, we don’t know what it was or will we ever know. But there is really no realization here from vets of how precise animals are to us westerners, even the vets have little compassion ie our Pumpkin has a leaky pee pee, in the USA we can get this fixed or get meds…well we ran out that med, and the vet told us here in India we would put down a dog with this problem!…so she slept with a doctored diaper for a while until we could get some meds sent from our vet in the USA .

So don’t say I didn’t warn you, and make sure you have a years worth of any med you need for you dogs, also make sure you have 1 years worth of tick, flea and mosquito stuff, lots of ticks here even in the cities, the stuff they sell here is crap too… and have lots of worm pills, again what they sell here is crap. Also make sure you have some ear infection ointment and that Keto ear cleaner you get from the vet.

Good luck and see you in India soon