Our first night in Thimphu I cannot sleep. Dogs are everywhere barking, discussing, arguing, and calling to each other across the weedy garden patches between the houses. The Gadho's compound has 6 dogs, who are considered pets and are fierce guardians of the compound's boundaries. Beyond this, there are dogs everywhere, and they run in packs at night through the streets and alleys. Buddhists will not kill these wild dogs; sterilizing animals is unheard of here, and so there are a generous abundance with always more on the way.
There are many body types and sizes of these dogs of Thimphu, but they tend to be either sandy-colored, or black, with curled-up tails and pointed, flopped-over ears. They nose in the trash, drink from the gutters, sleep on the sidewalk, piddle where they please. We do not approach them, and unless it is night and you are alone, you needn't worry that they will approach you. Humans and dogs occupy the same space here on different planes of existence, living in grudging acceptance of one another, if not exactly harmony. Some become pets, like the motley crew of dogs here at the Gadhos, who are fed a pot of rice in the evening and even wear collars, and who roam with gentle authority and arrive energetically barking at the gate whenever a person or vehicle approaches. They are Shadow, the black matriarch; Polo, a younger black dog; Puppy, a kind of small sandy shepherd dog with black muzzle; Licky, a brown feminine-looking Pomeranian mix; and Puppy's two puppies, perhaps 10 or 12 weeks old, one who is her exact likeness and one who is black, whose names I think are Pepee and Phoebe. The kids and the dogs roam in a kind of integrated pack, rolling in the grass and shoving one another, and staying outside the entire day.
At home I left careful instructions for our own dog to be checked for ticks. It has been a bad tick year in Massachusetts, meaning I can easily pull one tick off our dog every time she has been out for the afternoon. Jacob sometimes helps me with this task; he is fascinated with every sentient being, as a Buddhist might say, and ticks are an interesting novelty at home. So he is horrified and distressed to flip back the ear of one of the Gadho's dogs and count 14 attached ticks on the underside of a single ear. Jacob spends lots of time grooming the dogs, petting and combing through their fur and mourning the number of critters he finds there. This morning Jamtsho and our the boys have taken it upon themselves to rid just one dog, "Puppy," of her many bloated ticks, and they count upwards of 15 and smash them merrily on the concrete outside. Jamtsho does the smashing, although this is frowned-upon as Buddhist practice. His mother Tashi said to me apologetically yesterday that the flies in the house are a nuisance, but "what can we do, we can't kill them."
