August 2nd, 2022
Wednesday Aug 3rd
Slept until 4 am this morning!! Nothing short of a miracle. Got that instant coffee brewing and Nichol and I are ready for walk by 6:30am or so. We Just waited for the sun to come up! He’s a whole new guy today. Standing up and changing his position in bed! Wanting to lick his favourite toy! All excellent signs.
Being up at 4 AM gives me the opportunity to catch up with everyone back home with texts and FaceTime as that’s still yesterday afternoon there. By 6:30, Nichol was definitely ready to go for a walk and he even tried to go down the two flights of stairs when we left the room. That was a hard no from me but once I carried him to the street and set him down, he was off to the races.
There are lots of dogs here. Off leash of course and probably some mix of street dog/pet? situation. Nichol is very good with all of it, butts were sniffed and we moved on. This is great news for us that these dogs that roam are not aggressive towards him. There was one female that we encountered a couple days ago that was clearly a new mama that barked a lot at us but at that time he was still in my arms so I’m not sure what her deal was per se. Probably just saying her piece to the new guy.
We have a little route established here in the neighborhood and I see the same people every time we go by. Up until now I’ve mostly been carrying him, but now he walked on his own and people were cheering him on and smiling it was very sweet. The security guard out front was particularly smiley when he saw our progress!
I am going out apartment hunting in about 30 minutes so will update on that later. This morning, I also caught up with a fellow teacher that I met on a pet import Facebook group as part of my research to get here. She flew in last night from Atlanta and has a cat and a dog. As it turns out her place is about half a block from me so I think we are going to walk our buddies together tonight. I’m really looking forward to it! Having another person to talk to, with shared experiences is important for all of us!
