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: animal adoptions
Growing old alongside our pal Lucy Mae
While volunteering at the reception desk of a local animal shelter, shortly after arriving in San Miguel, a woman came in with a battered birdcage holding a pitiful white puppy inside, with a bloated pink belly and soulful eyes. She had found a cardboard box containing three or four puppies, a few weeks old, by …
A Friday the 13th miracle
One way to dinner late yesterday afternoon, barely three hours after uploading my previous post, Stew and I spotted a grayish dog on the opposite side of the road who was panting, exhausted but determinedly trudging somewhere. It was Benji returning home.We called her name, she answered, and I loaded her into the car. She didn't …
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
When is it time to say goodbye to my old cat?
Some time ago, while Stew was lying in bed trying to read, our sixteen-year-old cat Paco sat on his chest to demand his nightly dose of head-rubbing and general coochee-coochee. Paco doesn't quit easily: He'll purr, meow, shove his head against whatever you're reading, climb on your head if all else fails. No point in …
Continue reading When is it time to say goodbye to my old cat?
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 …
El Rancho Santa Clara 