Miles In Missions

When I moved to Nigeria I knew we would probably have animals. My whole family is animal lovers and I have always had dogs, cats, rabbits, snakes etc. Once arriving to Nigeria we were so excited to be given a gift of a 6 week old puppy. Bingo was his name O. After the excitement and play time with the new pup was over, I realized I had to feed it. What do you feed a puppy in the bush of Nigeria? I can’t just run up to the local grocery store and pick up some dog food. We were told to feed him pop which is a ground corn, beans, water and seasoning that is boiled and looks like oatmeal. This worked for awhile but once he grew he needed more solid food. We started giving him our leftovers…bones and all. I think we had one of the fattest dogs in Egbe. Dogs here are for protection and are lucky to eat daily so very skinny.

A few months later while in JOS we fell in love with a German Shepherd and brought him home for a playmate for Bingo. With two mouths to feed a big bag of dog food sure would have been nice. We started with leftovers but never had enough. Instead we had to take corn, ground nut (small peanut) and dried fish to a grinder to grind it into a powder. Then about every 3 days Shola has to take a big pot and cook this powder with water, Maggie cubes and cut up yam until it makes an oatmeal chunky mush. It’s really disgusting and smells. Once it cools we put it in Tupperware in our fridge. It swells up sometime and comes out of the container and all over my fridge. When feeding the dogs the kids normally gag as they take the food out to them. For the most part the dogs eat it but they still prefer leftovers.

Lately this mush still seems to leave them hungry so I have been googling and trying different variations. No matter what I try it isn’t easy and every few days we are making dog food again and again and again. I would love to find something more hearty as our bush dog Bingo still tries to escape our yard daily to find food. Never in a million years did I think that I would be googling dog food recipes but that is the life of a Missionairy in the bush and I love it! They are kinda cute too!