Embracing failure
it's so much easier than trying to succeed
Page #354 Not Everyone Wants to be Saved.
Pulling chapters from my Rolodex of Obvious Life Lessons, this took me a long time to learn. Like more than five decades. The meth head living in my side yard and using my mailbox for her Home Address so she could receive govt checks in Tulsa, the carpenter in rural Georgia with such a soda addiction that he could barely function without a three liter for breakfast and yes, even starved, lonely, tick covered dehydrated dogs in the desert.
They may all appreciate a toilet, a mailing address, a side job building your kitchen cabinets or some tick pulling and a couple solid meals but then they’re off. Doing what they’ve always done, going back to where they were on their way to before you showed up on your white horse.
After a couple decades in the restaurant business I’ve seen a lot of transient folks. Everyone is on their way to something better, bigger or different when they work in a restaurant. Or so they think. College grads are off to get a real job (that will pay half of what that bar gig paid), real estate agents are just in between listings, homeless guys are washing enough plates to get enough of their drug of choice to spin out for a few days. Everyone comes back. The smart ones professionalize and end up making paper earrings at home in their cute loft whilst working 3 nights a week, hogging the good shifts, doing some manager duties and pulling down five grand a month and traveling for 8 weeks every year.
I’m not sure why enjoying your life in your 30s is so suspicious. Most could stop right there but we’ve been brainwashed to think that there’s “more” and there might be, but not for everyone. Artists and creatives need that kind of lunky bang around time and a 9-5 will murder that immediately. Anyone who’s ever been energized by a 13 hour bar or kitchen shift but obliterated before lunch on a fluorescent tube light desk job knows what I’m talking about. The cut of our jib is indeed, different.
Street dogs (specifically Mexican street dogs) are like bartenders who have figured out the three day gig and aren’t interested in your domestication. Others will definitely take the 2x a day kibble security over the excitement of finding an entire pig leg in the trash outside of the wedding venue down the block. Street dogs are freelancers who aren’t afraid of a 1099.
I dated a few indigenous immigrants back in the day. Mostly because I was fascinated by their feral ways and how they were tied to nature. I say dated because I don’t have a better word. Ran around with? Moved into my house to warm the bed in colder than you’d think Georgia Mountain winters? Finish tiling the bathroom mosaic and join me later in the shower? Yes. I have a bit of feral dog in me too, I suppose, I was domesticated by force. Be a lady, know proper fork placement, hospital corners on the flat sheet, know if the chifferobe is a Chippendale, pay your bills, mauve lipstick only.
But a dark brown Aztec featured guy who smells like coconut shells and figs who only lives by instinct made me feel alive. Dating nice guys with 401k futures held zero appeal and anyone who’s watched even 3 hours of true crime shows knows that those are the guys who will snuff your lights out and put you in a swamp face down. One guy I knew, “Calixto” used to sleep one night a week on the slate tile so he didn’t get too soft. He knew his days were likely numbered in the memory foam toppered bed of the white lady, and he wanted to stay tuned in. We led separate lives for sure, he wasn’t someone I was going to take to a restaurant for a 4 course meal or anything. I’m good at compartmentalizing.
So I understand when the older male alpha dogs from the streets join me inside the gates for a few months or even a year and then decide it’s time to move on and starve a little and get in some street fights. A sailor I knew told me once, “Life is a series of filling your plate and clearing your plate. And then you start again.” He loved getting out on the high seas but he also kissed the ground when he returned with only a waterproof rucksack, 2 pairs of flip flops and a ton of stories. After he was done with the landlocked folks and out of stories, he’d start getting pouty and making the rounds of phone calls to friends who worked at the marina in Ft. Lauderdale. Any delivery gigs coming up? He was a lousy boyfriend but he lived The Life.
Calixto the Guatemalan called himself un perro sin dueno in a combination of resolution and sadness. Proud to be scrappy but feeling like he could be replaced in a heartbeat by one of a million other scrappy immigrants crawling over, under, through the tunnels/fences/walls/borders that barely hold. He was right and after 25 years of living like that he couldn’t do much else. It’s rare to see someone slide into a more polished role of the Domesticated Dog. I know one guy who married up and got a fleet of delivery trucks and built a solid transportation business, and he loves to tell the story about how he was eating out of the trash and on drugs for decades until she turned his life around. But I know that somewhere in his busy schedule and trips to go skiing in Whistler, BC, with his shiny family, he is still eating out of the trash some nights. By choice. A dark and darting eyeball rarely lies.
So it was with Rubio the blond pit mix
who loved me but hated being in the fence and around other rescues and how it’s turning out with Dusty, the big boi Xolo mix who had a ripped to the bone forearm and a wire tied so tight around his neck he could barely swallow. November 2021 I was in Hyper Rescue Mode, I Can Fix This! As I carried his bag of bones heavier than he looked body back to my patio. It was a Saturday and the mobile vet was in town so I called him Come Quick! like it was an emergency.
I’ve learned after 2 years in Mexico there are very few actual emergencies. Even exploding gas stations and dead bodies on the road. Asi es.
Urge is likely a better word…sort of urgent. He gave Dusty several shots, one which was a sedative. I’ve learned it is often the first order of street dog business. You cannot help what is flipping out and the sleep will do them good. Also you cannot help if the caretaker is tending to a bite, so there’s that. Then antibiotics and flea shots. I put him on a bed in the laundry room away from other dogs and a pile of chicken and water. After days he woke up, ate and drank and peed the kind of awakened kidney pee that foamed and lasted for minutes. His hair grew back, his ripped toenails came back in, his eyes came into focus, his ears perked up. I had fixed him, saved him, put a bandana on him and walked him on a leash and watched his muscles come back. I will save ALL THE DOGS. I felt amazing.
18 months and 12 dogs later he’s not so sure he wants to live his healthy survival life with EVERYONE forever, he has started to leave the compound and sleep under the carne asada cart around the corner. Neutered last year, his fight and wander needs are less but he’s still street. He’s stopped eating if he’s inside too many days. He growls at the other dogs, nothing major just a grumpy leave me alone snarl. He’s a big scary dog but actually quite passive and kind. That’s the best dog to have actually, you don’t REALLY need a dog who will bite. Just one who looks like he might. He gets occasional bones from the carne cart guy and they are nice to him but leave him out at night and I cannot catch Dusty to come back home.
The heat this July is exhausting for all of us and I can’t wrap my head around why he’d prefer to lay on a sidewalk that could fry an egg instead of coming in the AC but I’m sick of pulling him like an old donkey back to the yard where he pouts and goes under the bed away from the rest of us. So I’ve stopped trying. I’ve let him be free. He barks at drunks and scares some of the fat bitchy cleaning ladies at the motel on the corner but there are 100 dogs on any given road in this town, Dusty isn’t the problem. I’ve failed and it’s fine. He’s gone back to where he came from sleeping on the sandy shoulder just shy of truck tires. He walks by our gate and ignores the other dogs. He looks at me like a passing train. This must be how it feels to have teenagers.
If anyone complains I’m just going to say Call Animal Control (we don’t have one) and stop trying to force fix things I just can’t in backward, rural, remote, weird Mexico. Today Dusty scratched at the door to come in from the street and I ignored him. I went for a walk with a couple of dogs who LOVE the domesticated life and ignored him some more as he followed. He walked behind us, just far enough to not BE WITH us. I ignored him. He crashed the door to come INSIDE when we returned just like he does to crash it to GO OUT. Desperate like he was being chased by a bear. It rained and there was a horrible wind last night. I’m guessing street life can be a bummer on Saturday night dodging drunk teens drag racing and trying to find cover in sandstorm. I let him in and said nothing and he laid in his corner by the door, immediately falling asleep after a week of having his head on a swivel. Rumspringa over.
I cannot save all the dogs. I have failed. Feels great.
