Alright so after the partying of Easter weekend I headed into Tana to take care of some business in the city and visit with my supervisors and friends. Whenever I go out of town I leave Chance with a friend and colleague of m
ine and her family. (This friend happens to make some awesome fresh juice which I often indulge in on relaxing weekends) Madame Nirina and her family live on my side of the town and has a large area that Chance loves to play in. While it was hard to leave him the first time it has since gotten easier as they both love each other's company.
So I l
eft chance with a little reservation asking Joanna to look in on him while I was gone and make sure that I was right to trust my new friend. As the days passed I enjoyed eating french and Chinese food in the capital, took care of my business needs in the city and went out and met new friends and new connections in the city. I headed back to Maevatanana with my friend Esther(my Korean friend featured in my Picasa web albums) and had an interesting text from Joanna saying that my dog was fat and healthy and that Nirina had an interesting thing to say about him. That night I picked him up- he was quite fat. Apparently everyone feeds my dog more than I do because every time I leave him with a new family his twice as large as he was before. The next morning I came with gifts for Nirina and to say thankyou and visit with her. As I sat down she said to me... Momba ny alikako, tsy lahy izy fa vavy. Which means, "About your dog. Its not a boy, its a girl." My jaw dropped open as I tried to retranslate the words into anything else. I had her repeat herself three times as I kept trying to make the words what they werent. There was no way... no way my dog was a girl. I had just convinced myself that she was a boy after trying to 
name her Lilly. Nirina called her brother into the room and her confirmed it. "We've raised dogs for ten years," he said. "And that is a girl." Then he said the funniest thing I had heard all week. "Tsy misy penis!" ( Complete with hand gesture) (Tsy misy is Malagasy for There is no...) We all laughed until tears started to creep out the sides of our eyes and I accepted the fact that I was right it was a girl, that
I had been calling my dog a boy this whole time and that now I was quite possibly responsible for my puppies own issues of sexual identity. After all- she had already started trying to hump things (Me) twice. Its funny how your brain identifies certain things with sex and as I brought myself to say good girl and bad girl over the last few weeks I have realized that my protection instice for my little girl is twice as strong as it was for my little boy, that she quite possibly gets away with a few more things, but is just as spoiled no matter what she does and doesnt have. Although I now catch myself warily eyeing the boy dog, who Ive named Roscoe and who I think is her sibling, and warning him that he will be neutered the moment he makes a move on her. Although Ive caught her twice trying to prove her testosterone level to him, which only confuses the whole situtation more. As I sat on my back porch teaching english to my neighbor I told him the sitatuion and he looked at me with a funny expression. I asked him why such a weird look and he just laughed and said, "Well yeah, its a girl." I punched him in the arm then let loose an exasperated sigh as I slowly realized I was the only way who believed I was raising a big brute male of a guard dog. "You could have told me," I said. "If you had been studying your english you would have known I have been saying GOOD BOY!!!." With that we laughed and continued to study, me feeling a little more rediculous and a little more at home at the same time.
ine and her family. (This friend happens to make some awesome fresh juice which I often indulge in on relaxing weekends) Madame Nirina and her family live on my side of the town and has a large area that Chance loves to play in. While it was hard to leave him the first time it has since gotten easier as they both love each other's company.So I l
eft chance with a little reservation asking Joanna to look in on him while I was gone and make sure that I was right to trust my new friend. As the days passed I enjoyed eating french and Chinese food in the capital, took care of my business needs in the city and went out and met new friends and new connections in the city. I headed back to Maevatanana with my friend Esther(my Korean friend featured in my Picasa web albums) and had an interesting text from Joanna saying that my dog was fat and healthy and that Nirina had an interesting thing to say about him. That night I picked him up- he was quite fat. Apparently everyone feeds my dog more than I do because every time I leave him with a new family his twice as large as he was before. The next morning I came with gifts for Nirina and to say thankyou and visit with her. As I sat down she said to me... Momba ny alikako, tsy lahy izy fa vavy. Which means, "About your dog. Its not a boy, its a girl." My jaw dropped open as I tried to retranslate the words into anything else. I had her repeat herself three times as I kept trying to make the words what they werent. There was no way... no way my dog was a girl. I had just convinced myself that she was a boy after trying to 
name her Lilly. Nirina called her brother into the room and her confirmed it. "We've raised dogs for ten years," he said. "And that is a girl." Then he said the funniest thing I had heard all week. "Tsy misy penis!" ( Complete with hand gesture) (Tsy misy is Malagasy for There is no...) We all laughed until tears started to creep out the sides of our eyes and I accepted the fact that I was right it was a girl, that
I had been calling my dog a boy this whole time and that now I was quite possibly responsible for my puppies own issues of sexual identity. After all- she had already started trying to hump things (Me) twice. Its funny how your brain identifies certain things with sex and as I brought myself to say good girl and bad girl over the last few weeks I have realized that my protection instice for my little girl is twice as strong as it was for my little boy, that she quite possibly gets away with a few more things, but is just as spoiled no matter what she does and doesnt have. Although I now catch myself warily eyeing the boy dog, who Ive named Roscoe and who I think is her sibling, and warning him that he will be neutered the moment he makes a move on her. Although Ive caught her twice trying to prove her testosterone level to him, which only confuses the whole situtation more. As I sat on my back porch teaching english to my neighbor I told him the sitatuion and he looked at me with a funny expression. I asked him why such a weird look and he just laughed and said, "Well yeah, its a girl." I punched him in the arm then let loose an exasperated sigh as I slowly realized I was the only way who believed I was raising a big brute male of a guard dog. "You could have told me," I said. "If you had been studying your english you would have known I have been saying GOOD BOY!!!." With that we laughed and continued to study, me feeling a little more rediculous and a little more at home at the same time.
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