09/07/2020
An update for our valued followers and guests regarding our beautiful, irreplaceable canine family.
As you well know, we allow our jungle dogs to breed naturally and fortify their young, as well as teach them and nurture them to value both the fruits and pitfalls of living in the Cambodian jungle, while having a fallback (should they need it) of an incredibly loving family unit.
Over the years we’ve raised many beautiful and faithful dogs from pup to warrior, and have also sadly lost those whom we love so much (far a variety of reasons), yet every one of them has been - and is - integral to our general operation and wellbeing here.
A couple of weeks ago however, saw a series of events unfold that have been both tragic and harrowing to us as a ‘human/animal’ family of longstanding. ‘Gizmo’, our most long-serving loyal member of the family, and ‘great-grandmother’ by all accounts to her extended young - a mighty snake hunter and teacher to her subordinates in the ways of protecting her jungle home and family from external threats - has since been removed.
Why? She made the grave mistake of upsetting the family on neighbouring land, by way of killing their chickens, (again, to be fair) which directly affected the livelihood of our neighbours. Naturally, we were devastated and while the neighbours were more than understandably upset, they unfortunately rejected our offer of compensation in order to replace the chickens. Instead, they wanted us to hand over Gizmo as a prize. For anyone that’s lived in Cambodia for any stretch of time, you’ll know just what that means: it means they want to exact revenge by way of a long and slow painful death, with a good measure of torture mixed in (their words, not ours). As a result, we drove Gizmo to a very far away location, and gifted her to a Pagoda as an offering to the monks, on the proviso that she’ll protect them from snakes in exchange for love and some of their leftover food. As traumatic as it was for all of us, she seemed comfortable. Our mood in the car as we drove away however, was far from it.
Having ‘fixed’ the problem, we returned to our neighbours, discussed the result, and everything seemed satisfactory. In Cambodia, doing the honourable thing accompanied with a Sampeah and maintaining ‘face’ is paramount. In return we were met with the same respect, gratitude and understanding. Everyone was happy, and we were relieved that we can remain in good standing with our neighbours.
Or so we thought. Just last week (a few days after the event) our remaining dogs, including our beautiful young and budding ‘Alpha’, failed to return home.
The passionate and emotionally charged exchange between us personally here at the Lodge was intense, yet fortunately, after a lot of displaced energy, we’ve since agreed that true ‘sense’ is the only viable option forward given the weight of history and reality that sets the standard in this country.
Which brings us to our most recent observation, and concern:
Since our adult dogs - with all their combined survival and collective protective instinct - have left us, we’ve seen on average, three potentially deadly snakes come up to and enquire around the house across a two-day period. This would never have happened on Gizmo’s watch. All we are left with today (no complaints from us at all) is two, beautiful, innocent puppies (one named Jessie) who will grow up without any ancestral knowledge of the skills necessary to protect our family home and maintain the abundance of love, food, fun and care. We can only hope that her DNA has rubbed off somewhat on her basic natural instinct. We can only hope. Seriously. We can only hope.
