Everything you say about the street dogs is spot-on, and it absolutely breaks my heart.
My wife and I were in Puebla last week to finalize our residente temporal. We're back in the States now with our 2 basenjis, but I can't get all of those roaming dogs in Cholula and Atlixco out of my head
I love that you've adopted Loo and Tigre! How do you deal with the emotional reality of the rest of them?
Thanks Shane! Congrats on your progress with the visa, that's a huge accomplishment. Seeing all the strays is tough, and I wish I had a better answer than "you get used to it" but there is some degree of truth to that statement. We're satisfied with the number of dogs we currently have but we do feel that urge to get more, and we know a couple of people who each have 5+ dogs, our builder Antonio 1 (his name is explained in one of my posts) has 11 dogs (!!!), our iron guy Lalo has 3, Edgar has 3, and so on and so on. So even though I think I accurately described some of the cultural aspects at play here in Mexico when it comes to dogs, people do definitely love them and adopt them with some frequency. But the sheer volume of strays is both somewhat surprising and heartbreaking.
There are things people can do to help out. There's a routine clinic which happens in our village which does spay/neuter services, and I told the folks who run it that I'll volunteer the next time it happens. Small amounts of money also make a big difference, and since we got both of our dogs from Frida, and she continues to rescue more, we've given her some money to help offset her not-insubstantial costs. And there are individual people who run rescues here that can be donated to. At the most basic level you can also give food scraps to stray dogs; even just loose tortillas can make the difference between life and death. All of those things help us, to some degree, feel a little better about the strays here.
Excellent post Jacob!
Everything you say about the street dogs is spot-on, and it absolutely breaks my heart.
My wife and I were in Puebla last week to finalize our residente temporal. We're back in the States now with our 2 basenjis, but I can't get all of those roaming dogs in Cholula and Atlixco out of my head
I love that you've adopted Loo and Tigre! How do you deal with the emotional reality of the rest of them?
Thanks Shane! Congrats on your progress with the visa, that's a huge accomplishment. Seeing all the strays is tough, and I wish I had a better answer than "you get used to it" but there is some degree of truth to that statement. We're satisfied with the number of dogs we currently have but we do feel that urge to get more, and we know a couple of people who each have 5+ dogs, our builder Antonio 1 (his name is explained in one of my posts) has 11 dogs (!!!), our iron guy Lalo has 3, Edgar has 3, and so on and so on. So even though I think I accurately described some of the cultural aspects at play here in Mexico when it comes to dogs, people do definitely love them and adopt them with some frequency. But the sheer volume of strays is both somewhat surprising and heartbreaking.
There are things people can do to help out. There's a routine clinic which happens in our village which does spay/neuter services, and I told the folks who run it that I'll volunteer the next time it happens. Small amounts of money also make a big difference, and since we got both of our dogs from Frida, and she continues to rescue more, we've given her some money to help offset her not-insubstantial costs. And there are individual people who run rescues here that can be donated to. At the most basic level you can also give food scraps to stray dogs; even just loose tortillas can make the difference between life and death. All of those things help us, to some degree, feel a little better about the strays here.
Loo and tigre are so adorable. I’m so happy these pups found you. Life is so much better with dogs.