And Then There Were Three – August 25, 2006
The next morning, I drove into town to call Dad and check in on Mamaw who had just undergone a planned surgery. I was driving back down the dirt roads to Nexpa in the middle of nowhere when I saw a tiny black four-legged thing dart off the road into the bushes. Now, for those of you who know Jenny and I and our love of animals, you knew we would have a hard time dealing with the stray dog situation in Mexico and Central America and probably predicted this would happen eventually. Well, we’ve fed many a stray dog a leftover, petted hundreds of dogs that the locals ignore everyday and even had dogs adopt us for the night, sleeping outside of our tent to protect us. I’m happy to say most of them appear to get plenty of food and actually seem happy. And we’ve been realistic so far, remembering our own four-legged son back home and knowing we couldn’t help every dog we came across. But this was different. In a split second I saw a young lab-mix looking puppy – probably 8-10 weeks old with the cutest face and the skinniest body, running scared off the road all by itself. This wasn’t near a town, a house or anywhere where a puppy should get food. And she didn’t have that street-smart look of the older strays – she looked scared. I stopped the car immediately and tried to coax her out of the bushes but she wasn’t coming. I though maybe she had moved on but, after I grabbed a bag of bread I saw the bushes rustle and out she came onto the road – barking her puppy bark at me. After getting her to take a few bites my first reaction was to get her into the village, get her fed and cleaned up, then leave her with someone to watch over her. Heck, even if we left her in the streets of Nexpa she would be better off begging for food than out in the wild on her own. She was well bribed with the bread so I easily picked her up and put her in the car.
I surprised Jenny with our new friend, knowing already what her reaction would be. She has always wanted a miniature black lab-type dog, or even a puppy to raise since she wasn’t there for Morgan’s earliest years. And this thing was a pretty good fit for an extremely underfed lab puppy. She felt as compelled as I did to take her in. We quickly fed her some more bread, two cans of tuna which she absolutely devoured, and plenty of fresh water. Within minutes she looked healthier and was starting to act like a playful puppy. We gave her a shower and dried her off, after she looked almost normal and quickly decided she was going to turn on the charm to make sure we didn’t change our minds. It was then that reality started to set in. Never mind the fact that we couldn’t have another dog back in the States and had gone through enough heartache leaving Morgan for our trip – there was no way we could even travel with a dog. Finding hotels that would take us and managing border crossings would be a nightmare. We had to find this dog a good home. Only problem, even in this friendly little beach town there were no takers. Everyone pretty much said the same thing – “no necessito mas perros” – there were enough dogs in the village already. An older man explained to us that the mature dogs in the area had established their territories and food sources and wouldn’t tolerate a young dog moving in. We learned what he meant when two full sized German Shepards charged at her the second we put her on the ground. He suggested the best thing we could do was take her back to where we found her and let her go.
Jenny and I literally spent hours agonizing over what I had gotten us into and what we had to do. We knew this could throw a huge tangle into our trip but we couldn’t even stomach the thought of abandoning this dog on the side of the road, or leaving it here to suffer a quicker fate at the hands of the older dogs. It was after noon and we hadn’t even eaten yet, packed our stuff, or gotten on the road to the next big town, which by the way, was our only way to get enough money for gas and food. Left with no options, we packed up the car, this time making some extra room in the back seat, and grabbed the pup to take with us. We would have to find a home for her somewhere else. As we left the last thing our friend Lomas said was “whatever you do, don’t give her a name.” Yeah, we could already feel why.
At the first town we came to, we asked around the veterinarias to see if they could take her or knew of any animal shelters in the area. No and no. Maybe a bigger town like Acapulco would have an animal shelter? Maybe. Back in the car and a few miles down she was getting restless, so we had our first walk on the side of the road. She didn’t like our homemade hippie rope leash one bit but she did her business – luckily outside the car. Back in the car she slept soundly on Jenny’s lap the rest of the way and we figured she probably hadn’t gotten a chance to sleep without fear since leaving her mother. We got to Lazaro and found an ATM, but no info about an animal shelter. We also realized right then how difficult it would be to do anything with a dog in tow, as one of us had to baby-sit her while the other tended to whatever needed doing. In a last ditch effort we got online to see where the animal shelters in Mexico were located. The information was sparse at best, and most of the listings were for agencies in the US that had actually rescued dogs from the Mexican shelters since they were so under-funded to deal with the problem. Even in the “no-kill” shelters here, dogs have to fight for insufficient food supplies so most don’t survive. And the only shelters mentioned were in Mexico City or Guadalajara, easily a day or two behind us. Again, we agonized over what to do and started to discuss the possibility that we might have to get her shots to bring her back to the States, then take her to a better shelter. Just before we got up to leave, I tried one more search for “Zihua (Zihautanejo) animal shelters” since that was our next destination.
Miraculously, the first listing was for Sociedad Protectora de Animales de Zihautanejo, a private, volunteer animal rescue program founded by the late Helene Krebs Posse to help injured or abandoned animals of all kinds in the Zihua area. Even from reading their website I could tell they had impeccable standards of care and a genuine concern for helping rehab animals or finding them homes. With nothing more than an address and the day drawing to an end, we jumped in the car and sped off to Zihua, 2 hours away, hoping we could find their office and convince them to help our girl. What we found (eventually, after circling the city 5 times) was more than we could have hoped for. The daughters of Helene continue to run the Humane Society in her memory on the second floor of a historical building in the heart of the tourist district of Zihua – just above their shops. Picture artistic shops and boutiques down below with the occasional dog bark chiming through from upstairs. What’s better, they had found homes for every dog they had taken in, save one recent enrollee – so they thought there was an excellent chance our girl would be adopted soon – especially since she was so damn cute. I was pretty sad that they took her away from Jenny right away, while I was parking the car and even before we could say goodbye. We gave a donation to their cause and gave a deep sigh as we left without our baby girl. But at least we can rest well knowing we saved her – easily the most important part of the trip so far.
Tags: Travel
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