After Ryan returned to PNG, after flying MAF PNG’s oldest C208 Caravan to our maintenance facility in Mareeba, Queensland, Australia, we headed home to Telefomin. We had expected to be in Mt Hagen for just 5 days whilst Ryan did training, but the Ferry Flight meant Shiv & Koda stayed for almost 2 weeks whilst Ryan was away.

Eventually we headed home to the bush, but there were people who wanted to be dropped at Bak, an airstrip about 40 minutes from Mt Hagen, along the route to Telefomin, so we dropped them off there first. Ryan gets to visit bush airstrips every day that he’s flying, but Shiv doesn’t get to go quite so often. This was also Koda’s first visit to a bush airstrip. The people were very surprised to see a dog get out of the plane and have it walk around attached to a rope.

Lots of people have dogs in PNG, but they live outside, they’re fed on scraps and at night they form semi-wild packs that wonder around the community, sometimes fighting. The dogs belonging to our friends in Telefomin only live around 5-6 years and are often malnourished with open sores on their ears or bodies. Several times Ryan has come home telling stories of mistreated dogs at bush airstrips and how he wanted to bring them home with him so we could look after them.

The nearest Vet to us is in Lae, the 2nd largest city in PNG, on the north-east coast, about a 2 hour flight from where we live. We’re looking into options of how we can take Koda there, or the capital, Port Moresby, to have him neutered when he’s old enough. But that may not be possible, we still need to do some investigating. The best option would be for a Vet to visit Mt Hagen, then us and our MAF friends could all get our beloved pets looked after!