I remember reading that Sargent Shriver told Maria to watch how Arnold treated dogs. A man who’s good with dogs is a good husband and father, he said. A bit too friendly perhaps as he ended up bedding the housekeeper and fathering a child with her right off the kitchen of Maria's own home. So maybe the motto should be, watch how a man treats dogs and also pay attention and see if he's sleeping with the staff.
I say, look at how a town treats its animals and you'll know how they'll likely treat its citizenry.
This town has no bottoms to its trash barrels for example (where there even are trash barrels) and that about sums up infrastructure and lifestyle here. A rusted bottom that no one will fix. Asi es! Keep in mind I'm not in Mexico City, or another pueblo magico or some high end city or gringolandia. I'm in a rural fishing town in Sonora where there are no usable roads in or out and I'm 3 hours plus from the next city which is Hermosillo. I'm not here on purpose of course. Some are and I'm very suspicious.
So the trash cans with rusted bottoms…I marvel at the Never Know When They'll Come trash truck men covered head to toe in hats, gloves, ski masks, long pants and sleeves in 100 degrees, as they roll the barrels and balance the trash on the sides to dump in the truck. Like those lottery spinning things. I collect dog poo separately in recycled feed bags that I harvest from the back of tiendas and put it outside of the bin. About 50% of the time some drunk like Cecilio (Andie the feral Aussie's "dad") will dump the poo in the bin and steal the bag for some reason and it's a heavy stinky mess and I feel awful for the dudes on the trucks.
I apologize while trying not to throw anyone under the bus…Alguien/Someone took the bag. It's a rough bunch on the trash truck and they aren't too worried about the neat and tidy bagging of my dog shit. No pasa nada senora! But oh! I think, wouldn't life be GRAND if only a new barrel was found? There are hundreds of plastic barrels around but they are too easy to tip by dogs and cows of course and some of the desert winds can haul those right down the dirt road. But a simple bungee cord, to the fence, no? Every single home and business is different and most of the trash is simply all over the streets so collection is a loose term. Especially glass bottles. Broken everywhere. Another perk for dogs and sandal wearers.
I come from a long line of trash collecting towns with highly structured mafia organizations. I have had militant sorting and washing with my recycling and binding and gift wrapping of trash in Atlanta and NYC, the ease and comfort of the cute wheelie bin in suburban Florida towns where my folks lived until their deaths. Nice uniformed trash collectors and separate bins for my mom's pile of newspapers. And most recently, my ¼ mile walk down my rural Georgia driveway with a giant wheelie bin that took me nearly a month to fill up and the freedom to do whatever the fork I wanted with my yard waste. My neighbors had a burn pile and they loved a scary 20 foot tall bonfire like good country folks, so I was encouraged to drag my stuff over and they'd chuck it in. Everything else was composted. That was the best of both worlds. No restrictions and an affordable Thursday morning pick up, on time. Someone else’s problem. That’s how “nice” neighborhoods view trash.
In Mexico, it's a gross, uncovered, un tended affair that no one has considered since the beginning of time. Oh, right. Trash. Donde ponerlo? (where shall we put it?) and the Aztec King answered, Alli! (over there) or of course Quemalo! (burn it) and little has been done since.
I've seen new construction hotels being built in the city of Saltillo on top of an ocean of 2 liter soda bottles that I am sure to read about in Sinkhole Times in 10 years. Everything is plastic, single use styro and I feel hurled back in time by 40 years just getting a taco. Styro cups with plastic lids for salsa or little plastic baggies filled with pico de gallo or cabbage. Foil wrapped styro plates, a trillion tiny worthless napkins. Cups for limes even.
Maybe I think too much but I'm always thinking about who or what is going to get into my trash, and I sort, cut up plastic round things or chip bags that could get stuck on a dog head, or a seabird. I tear up and soak documents and bad poetry in water before bagging, I put the syringes for a dog on meds in a separate bag and then wrap them in duct tape so no one gets poked. In a week I have about a gallon ziploc bag full of stuff. Everything else I compost.
In a country where 98% of the towns have starving street dogs there are no lids, tops, covers or otherwise on any garbage bin. I'm always rolling my eyes at the people who blame the dogs for getting into a pile of chicken bones or gooey baby diapers that they didn't even bother to rebag. I've defended many a dog to cranky abuelas snarting about pinche perros and let them know it was in fact, Frank the homeless guy looking for cans or more likely the loose bull who eats trees and topples cans at 3am. Insomniacs. We see everything. But also, the fact that they are mad at a starving animal for making a mess is the kind of person I don't understand.
Some beachy areas have little teeny landfills with a big hole that someone dug that one time they had a Bobcat and it fills with trash and rain water and serves as a perfect breeding hatchery for mosquitos and malaria. Cities are a little more defined but street bins always look like the trucks forgot to come this week. Overflowing. Veracruz folks met the trash man outside and handed them all the junk or stood in the median with their bags and old electronics and the trucks were so heavily manned with two guys on top, two guys hanging off the sides, two guys INSIDE the trash heap—sorting glass, plastic, electronics, shit they might want later, hairbrushes, shoes and organics to be composted and of course aluminum which still brings some money. It was great fun to watch them pass by like a trash circus of acrobats.
In this town however, trash, like dogs, is met with ambivalence.
You can toss it here or there or ignore it or walk by it or let it pile up on your patio. No one cares. Dogs are ignored too. Stepped over, ignored, left on patios, piled on streets. Two places sell dog food and it's the same brand. No one sells collars or leashes because no one walks or claims these dogs except for the toy chihuahuas in ballet skirts that are kept around for breeding. No vet, no feed stores, no animal supply, no animal control, no shelters. And even though it's just me, people are ambivalent if not hateful about what I do.
Even I recognize that my rescue efforts would not be welcomed in most areas. I'm not an HOA gal but I'm definitely a zoning and community gal. I'm lucky that I'm on a road to nowhere, with vacant warehouses and a hotel no one goes to at the end of the block. A Church across the road, a vacant posada and one neighbor behind who lives on his own landfill of car parts and chickens so he's not calling code enforcement. Just kidding, there's no such thing as code enforcement here.
If I was in a Florida beach town someone would have done a head count on these dogs and I'd be hung out to dry, surely. I get away with it here because they are mostly indoors (in this heat 100%) and we go on walks, go to the beach, have games and they have a pretty big yard (by Mexico standards) and I'm home on the computer all the time, it's not like they're just standing on an old boat barking. They were all running in the streets before, but no one remembers that. But they do get riled up around 6am and 6pm and chase each other and wrestle and bark and try to get lizards in the wood pile and yodel at birds and bark at the gate at passing dogs and kids who bang on the fence.
The landlord knows it's more than 5 or so dogs…but it doesn't really matter. The property is clean and quiet, and I pay on time each month and don't bother him ever…no one needs to know it's 12. Sometimes more. But it's because of this ambivalence in town I'm able to do the rescue work. I like autonomy and I cringe when I read about all the gringos moving to Merida, it's starting to sound like a big humid Mayan HOA meeting. Rescues getting kicked out of neighborhoods because the villagers have signed a petition (Canadian Carens) but I can see both sides, if you have 45 dogs next to a vacation rental with a pool, you might be bumming out someone's paradise. So I'm not trying to be part of the noise and smell problem while fixing trying to lessen the stray dog problem.
If they had love for dogs here, I wouldn’t be necessary and wouldn’t have stayed here. I wasn't planning on doing a dog rescue and I definitely wasn't planning on living here, I didn't even want to drive THROUGH here. There's no reason to stop here, not even for gas. But I was dropped off after the car wreck and stood in the middle of this vacant beach with hundreds of cartoon dogs limping and coming by to say hello, could you please pull this colony of ticks off my ear and please get this sandspur out of my toe webbing? If you could let us drink from a water bucket that would be greatly appreciated. We don't want to bother you but food scraps are hard to come by.
But mostly? these dogs liked to go walking together. Walking! They still played and romped and splashed on the beach and came by to visit me daily. Starved and riddled with parasites, they really just wanted to spend some time together with a person and go for walks. Happy to be pet and not kicked.
That's why I started opening the door for more. I had to move closer to town because on foot living a couple miles from the nearest tienda in the desert heat was rough. I could get a kid on a moto to haul kibble sometimes but it was sketchy and dangerous over there and without fencing there could easily be 40 dogs laying on my porch ready to chase the fishermen on bikes or little kids who throw rocks. It was chaos. And barktastic.
And not for nothin' we had NO trash bins on that side of town. An empty beach but for sure no rules or support.
The best I can get over here from the municipal employees is an acknowledgement of errors. Yes, the dog situation is epic, yes people keep breeding and throwing in the street, yes they die all over from dehydration and disease. Yes the teenagers run them over like rats for fun. No we don't have plans for a sanctuary no we don't own that land near the school that's federal. No, there's no funding. No, there's no employee who could work at a shelter. No. No. No.
Asi es. That's how it is.
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Thanks for reading. For more info on the rescue visit linktr.ee/lolasdogrescu
