Calico
Wednesday's child
Calico came with the house next door when I moved into this place. She was living under a car and then one day the car was gone and she just sat on the sidewalk. She waited for weeks. No one came.
I brought her food and a water bowl and she mostly moved down the wall and ate when I walked away. I brought Rocky with me or Mattie because it’s always better with a dog buddy. Some times I just sit with dogs and talk to them and walk away. No expectations. No touching.
The laundry lady two doors down said the pinche people moved out and left the dog. The house looked too gross to occupy for people to be fair, I don’t blame them for leaving, and like furniture in most of these Mexican households, they don’t take anything. Even the pets.
As someone who has wrapped my entire life in acres of bubble wrap and spent all of my money moving from one place to the other with all my trinkets and all the pets, it’s weird. But no judgement, maybe there was an emergency and they had to go.
*(Turns out they moved just a few blocks away and they’re just irresponsible pendejos, so now I judge a little.)
I’m not here to rehab people, (I tried) I’m here to help abandoned dogs. Self appointed, I’m not here by royal decree or anything. How did I get here? Origin story if you’re new. August will be FIVE YEARS in this dustbowl, all due respect to dustbowls. I cried for a month about being stuck here without ride, my wrecked car, a way to get out. Sometimes I still cry about it. But in lieu of being a big fat old baby about it, I pour myself into the perros sin duenos wandering everywhere.
Sad, broken, limping, missing eyeballs. A real cliche moment, I complained I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet. Service is really the only way to get over your bullshit. I’m no saint, trust this. I would have left 40x over if given a destination that even had a grocery store and a way to get there. Now I’m in too deep. I have to move all of us now. It’s even less easy now. Oh the choices we make.
Calico spent a chilly winter looking for sun on that sidewalk wall next door and then someone said she looks pregnant. Crap. She had found a space under a gate at the abandoned house where a drippy water line made the dirt soft and diggable and was in there being broody. This is why people leave the females when they move. No way to spay in town without effort and planning. Not worth it and vamos! Calico was from an accidental litter too. No particular breed of course, the Peanut Butter Dog is the usual street fare, but the brindle is seen a lot and here in ranch country there’s a little nippy cattle dog in most.
Calico’s face tells me everything I need to know.
She had the puppies in a mud hole in that yard and I had to break in to get them out of there. I’ll admit my days of crawling on my belly and breaking in places is coming to a close. The usual litter of 6 born, 2 died in a rain storm face down, two got run over, the male got adopted and one I call Border remained.
I spayed them both after snaring them with the lady on the corner who is a little touched in the head but will catch a wild animal with her bare hands. Sonoran/Indigenous women are no joke. Who knows what her story is. I sort of think it’s not an easy one. She tied them both up with rope and got bitten but the vet was ready with the sedation and we did surgery immediately. I’m post op and assistant at these triage clinics I set up. Calico and Border woke up on blankets and had a snack and ran off happy as clams. No cones needed, no sleepiness, just rough and ready.
They’re both still feral but I bring them inside my patio each night so they don’t chase cars or get beaten by the Can Man with the machete. Border is super affectionate but you can only pet her head. She yelps at everything and always has. Born with a nervous system that feels like it’s on the outside of her skin. As a hypervigilant sensitive person myself, I get it. Border would really like to sleep inside and I let her but her sense of obligation to her mama takes over. There’s a lot of opening the gate and closing the gate here. It’s been little by little for over 2 years.
On the patio Calico destroys the curtain panels, digs holes that are impossible to fill without a back hoe. Out in the wild, she robs tiendas, chases cars, bikes, kids, steals meat scrap from the butcher, jumps a fence to try to catch chickens at old Jose’s house and gets chased by his dog pack which she deserves. She eats twice a day here but still tips trash cans. She lays under my car until I leave the house and she follows me on foot or behind the car to wherever I go which is never too far…only a 2 mile radius but they’ll both run to the bank on the highway. It’s not ideal.
She is an opportunist and a survivor and I cannot fault her for any of this. She’s unadoptable. If she was on a big grassy farm and had a family and a soft place to lay or a tractor to get under and a job chasing goats she may relax, or she may not, it’s hard to tell. It was a big deal that Andie started coming in for supper but she was antsy and crazy to leave if she was inside too long.
She’d sleep like the dead and visit her baby Rocky and then flip out at 1am and come get me out of bed to let her out. Baby Rocky has been coming INSIDE the gate for 4 years since he was born, I have no idea why, and is a big giant lap dog despite his mom. But Andie brought him to me, like she wanted him to have a better chance at things. Somewhere there’s a mama’s boy Rottweiler who shares his DNA.
Andie died last year and if I say It’s Your Mama! too loud to Border, Rocky comes running and I remember how these dogs are paying attention to everything and have big feelings. He looks back and forth out the gate and I hate that I got his hopes up.
Calico is misunderstood but the rest of the pack lets her come inside little by little (River prefers she stay at the front entrance, thank you, she knows she’s going to steal food or dump trash) and I mostly let them work things out in dog world with supervision. I live more like a dog than ask them to live like people, but I was never too cut out for People Life before so it’s fine.
