Did I mention that the road was out? And that I have a dog problem?

Aside from the lamb, etc., there was one other pleasant surprise waiting for me in Salasaka. A little dog. She seemed pretty badly beaten up, and scared, and hungry (emaciated, in fact). Definitely stinky.

You can probably imagine what happened next.*


Anyhow, one of the women I live with told me that she just sort of showed up at the house, but that she had a suspicion that her daughter had brought the puppy there, and just didn´t want to fess up. (Her daughter is 12 and an avid lover of animals. Aside from the pig, the cow, the guinea pigs and the chicken that she takes care of, she has a dog, several coy fish, and two cats.) However, since the little girl dog showed up, the actual dog tenant of the house had refused to come home.

Even so, I started giving the puppy some food and water, as she made herself more and more comfortable. Then I found the 12-year-old, to get the back-story. Apparently, some neighbor kids had been stabbing the puppy with agave leaves (which are also semi-poisonous) and throwing rocks at it. Being the good kid that she is, she yelled at them and took the puppy away and up to the house. Yet, the dog couldn´t stay there, which we both knew. So, we hatched a plot that I would bring the dog to Baños and find it a home. Easier said than done, as it turns out.

If you´ll remember, the road to Baños is still out (they are in the process of fixing it, really they are!). Also, I had to somehow get the dog past the neighbors, who would probably want her back; which no way, now how, was going to happen, and I definitely wanted to avoid that confrontation. So, I cajoled little puppy into my empty felt shoulder bag. She fit, with room to spare. We set out, first in a truck from the house to the center of town. Then, there was the convincing the bus driver to let me bring her onto the bus (“Look, she´s just right here in the bag! She won´t do anything! I promise! She´s just a puppy!”) He relented, and we rode as far as the next town, in order to catch another truck up to where the road collapsed. No trucks came, though, for whatever reason. Finally a father and his two kids pulled up, asking me if I knew whether the road to Baños was open or not. I kind of lied and said that I had heard that it was, and that I was trying to get there, too. Predictably, he offered me (us) a ride. His kids thought it was pretty cute that the puppy was riding along in my bag, with just her little head sticking out. It was cute. They pet her the whole way to the roadblocks. She only trembled a little. The family decided to wait in their car until they actually opened the road, which the police said would be in a few hours, which I doubted, but whatever. After thanking them, I went on ahead, walking and hoping to catch a truck at least up to the summit of the mountain that allows you to bypass the collapse.

So, after all of that, we are finally almost to Baños de Agua Santa, and I find myself standing in the back of a parked pickup with two Quiteños and a Peace Corps worker from Boulder. The driver doesn´t want to leave, since there are only four of us (which only earns him $1). So, we start trying to encourage other potential passengers to get in. “¡Trasborde! ¡25 centaditos!” It works, and pretty soon we are 12 people and a dog in the back of the truck. We leave for the summit. Little dog girl has still not so much as uttered a peep throughout the entire trip so far.


Now comes the fun part: namely, the descent. The descent is along a switchback path down the side of a steep mountain that, if it should rain hard enough again, will definitely come down. Luckily, it is not raining (yet). How bad can it be, I am thinking to myself, as I watch grandmas in skirts with canes making their way along the beginning of the path. It was a 45 minute descent, sometimes through slippery mud, sometimes at a 90 degree pitch. These are tough old ladies, is all I have to say. By the end, the dog is sticking her head further out of the bag, sniffing at the eucalyptus. I am concentrating on the burning sensation that has settled into my thighs and calves. Finally, almost home. Only one more truck to catch. This time, it´s a vendor truck, with the cooking appliances taken out to make room for transporting people from the site of the collapse. This time, we are 17 humans and one dog.

We make it home, 3 hours after starting out. This would normally be a 25 minute journey. By now, the dog has a name. It´s Lila (pronounced liy-la in Spanish). She doesn´t seem to want to come out of the bag that she´s called home for most of the evening, but eventually does, and then goes promptly to sleep (after being briefly traumatized by a much-needed bath).

Luckily, there is a combination vet/animal pharmacy around the corner from my apartment, which like everything else in town, is open on Sundays. The vet is amazing and kind. We get the basics out of the way first: she definitely has parasites ($1) and she needs a parvo vaccine ($2) to be street legal. She is severely underweight at 5 kilos and 9 or so weeks old, especially for a medium sized dog. I buy some fancy weight gain dog food for $8. And a little cat collar for $2. And some Frontline for the fleas that I´m sure are on her. And some little bowls for her food and water. So, about $20 later, Lila is well on her way to being a non-abused, non-parasite-ridden puppy.

As of tonight, Monday night, after the anti-parasitics did their magic, she is like a different dog**. Silly instead of lethargic, eating and drinking plenty, and making herself right at home in my favorite chair. She is still pretty shy with big scary people who are not me. She won´t go to the bathroom inside (yay for dogs born in the country). She also won´t go near the actual bathroom, which she now associates with a form of abuse that she´d never encountered before the other night (that is, a bath). She walks nicely on the little leash that I crocheted, albeit with some coaxing. She also happens to have a bunch of the same habits as Nina (like the whining and the forceful yawning). It is sure nice to have a little dog around, even for just a few days. As I write she is warming herself up, crammed next to my computer.



I am not looking forward to finding her a home, that is for certain.











*I would like to preface all of this with the fact that there is a huge stray dog issue in most of Latin America, and that, despite my so-called dog psychosis, I have never even contemplated bringing one home. I swear. I have befriended some of the strays (they know a sucker when they see one) but without ever even thinking about bringing them home. There are just too many. This particular dog, however, was different.

**Do not, I repeat, do not, ask or wonder about the horrible creatures that were living in her intestines.