This man-meets-dog story began with a puppy in a rusty birdcage. While I volunteered at the Sociedad Protectora de Animales, a local animal shelter, an impatient young Mexican woman walked in and matter-of-factly placed the birdcage and the puppy on the reception desk, as if it were a FedEx package. She said she had found a cardboard …
Tag: abandoned animals
Double deal, today only: Carnival of the Animals plus Pictures at an Exhibition, all in one post
For the past nine or ten years Stew and I have volunteered two weekends to work at a spay-and-neuter clinic sponsored by Amigos de Animales, a local not-for-profit funded almost entirely by the expat community of San Miguel, with additional support from the Guanajuato State Health Department.Our jobs are to sit by a table at …
Reality spoils ending of my happy dog story
The story of Benji, the dog whose adoption by someone in the Centro we facilitated had a bittersweet ending, certainly not the one we expected.Still, it taught Stew and I how little we know about the ways of rural Mexico and also about the perils of hubris, that mythological Greek sin of arrogance—in this case how …
Continue reading Reality spoils ending of my happy dog story
A not-so-bad Friday the 13th, after all
This Friday the 13th dawned fully intending, it seemed, to live up to its bad-luck reputation. Benji, one of the stray dogs that live outside our gate—and whom we thought had been adopted—ran away from its new owner and disappeared somewhere in San Miguel late Thursday. We woke up worried that some horrible thing would happen …
This mellow "fellow" urgently needs a safe haven
To a stranger's eyes the six to nine dogs that gather outside the gate of our ranch likely looks like an indistinct, motley gang. But after you've fed them several years, the differences in their appearance and personalities are unmistakable. Also, we can readily tell if someone's missing. Negro, a big black dog, disappeared for two …
Continue reading This mellow "fellow" urgently needs a safe haven
Eulogy for an old burro
Around our small ranch animals are constantly born while others die. For those raised for food, mostly goats, sheep and cattle, their stay on earth is brief and uneventful until their last day. Donkeys, horses and ranch dogs live longer but only for as long as they can perform their jobs.Then there are the fatalities, …
A week at the beach, without Gladys
We had taken her on our yearly one-week stay at the beach only twice but already it had become a family tradition. Of an undeterminate age, except old; or breed, other than a street mutt, the ever-chunkier Gladys had learned to jump excitedly on the back seat of the car, do a few tight turns …
Raining cats and dogs, hallelujah!
Dogs and cats, of all sizes, ages and stripes, keep coming, in cardboard boxes or repurposed birdcages, at the end of frayed ropes, or wrapped in blankets in the arms of their owners. Freaked-out cats howl while some chihuahuas, bug-eyed and trembling, appear to be on the verge of an anxiety attack. For the return …
Then there were five (mutts), again
After our dowager mutt Gladys died several months ago, under sad and questionable circumstances, Stew and I made a solemn pact not to adopt another dog. I knew it was going to be a fragile promise, though, what with a canine chorale that assembles outside our front gate every day howling for food, a reassuring pat …
A brief, horrible tale
Bicycling back from lunch today our gardener Félix, who has an unnatural sense of hearing, picked up some noise coming from a plastic bag quivering by the side of the road.He stopped and inside the bag found seven puppies, a day or two old, with the eyes closed and one with its umbilical cord still …
El Rancho Santa Clara 