I am not fully awake when the phone goes off at 9 AM. Knocking everything off my desk while I fumble for it, I answer it anyway. It could be someone calling from the states. It could be an emergency. And while I don’t have to be at the clinic until 11, I understand most people get out of bed substantially earlier than this. Usually I do, too, here but I’m fighting off a head cold, it’s Sunday morning: I am still asleep. It’s Donna. She’s going to the Lakeside to hunt for The Potato, the horrifically detiorating sarna dog that she’s been keeping an eye on, feeding now and again. With Tyson moving out and Bolsita, the pregnant dog, at Karen’s, we have space to bring him in. Do I want to come?
Usually I am the girl that never says no. But today I hem and haw - I have not even begun the caffeine and nicotine infusions necessary to get me okay. Can we do this later? No worries, Donna tells me. I’ll go check it out by myself.
I haul myself out of bed and am digging around for a soda - forget coffee in this country, unless you go out for it, just forget it - when the phone goes off again. I am still in my pajamas.
Get your ass in a taxi, sayeth Donna, I found him and he’s on his way out. Get down here now. And bring a sheet.
I throw on some jeans, grab my slip lead, a sheet (sorry Lilly) and run out the door, still in the tank top I slept in, flag down a cab.
Donna is by the side of the road in the tourist area where all the bars and restaurants are. She’s going to move the car down closer to us. Keep an eye on him. Toni and Nick are on the way.
Staggering like a drunken sailor, looking like something designed by Pixar to terrify small children, there is The Potato.
I don’t understand enough Spanish to get the gist of the whole thing, but something about his gray color, the white crust that covers a lot of him, reminds a lot of the local restaurant owners of some sort of potato dish I can’t translate. Toni, Nick and Donna refer to him as Papas Fritos - fried potato. I call him The Potato. And he does look a bit like a potato. A flaking, crusty, bald potato with the four random hairs he has left sticking out of his shoulder.
With Donna gone The Potato finds his second wind and starts trotting - trotting - off in the opposite direction. I follow him for a bit, get farther and farther away from where they left me. This isn’t going to work. I need to stop him. I do the unthinkable: I loop the slip lead over his head.
Predictably, the Nicaraguan Street Dog Slip Lead tantrum ensues. He flails, whirls, bites at the lead, yowls like he’s being ax murdered. I remain calm, let him have his moment. He’ll get over it. All the park goers are watching with some interest. White people are crazy.
The good thing about half dead street dogs is that they tire easily. After a few seconds he gives up, slumps down. I half lead, half drag him back towards the meeting spot. Every now and then he has a miniature tantrum, howls, drops to his stomach. I wait it out and he gets back up and keeps going. Eventually we find Donna, Toni and Nick, Kit who has come as well. We drop the sheet over him, jerry rig a muzzle from some twine and haul his ass into the back of the truck.
Time for another mini-tantrum. The Potato tries to get over the tailgate. Nick, Toni and I ride in the back with him, Toni bracing one side, Nick standing and leaning against the cab, keeping a grip on his back end, me on his other side, kind of bracing him, kind of taking pictures.
At the clinic the dogs are all running loose except sweet, shy, Freda who is hanging back in a kennel. She slowly gets up to greet us and dead shock ensues. There in the kennel with her is one tiny little black and white newborn puppy.
Freda’s state has been in debate for a while. She’s been here since before I got here. She is small, not swollen but with enlarged nipples. Yes she’s been getting bigger but she’s been getting food. Food will make you bigger. Heat, I said. Toni, who knows substantially better said pregnant. No way, said I. Look at the size of her.
Should have listened to Toni. Toni is infinitely brighter than I could ever be. And Toni has been doing this day in and day out in Nica for years while I’ve spent the past two years essentially being office furniture in the pet supply industry.
The puppy is small but perfectly formed, black with white markings, like a Boston Terrier, bigger than Bolsitas puppies and wiggly.
We are all in shock.
We check Freda over. She is calm, her vulva is dry. Whatever has happened during the night - the labor, the birth, she has handled entirely on her own and it’s over. I’ve always gotten this vibe off of Freda that she doesn’t want to be any trouble, that she’s just grateful for the food and the care and the affection. While Quixote and Tyson and One Eye will cluster around you, begging for attention, Freda holds back, shyly approaches when the other dogs have fallen back. The way she’s done this - her pregnancy, delivering her puppy - is all in character.
We move her from the outdoor area into a crate inside the kennel with lots of blankets, privacy. She immediately curls up with her baby.
Then we get back to the matter of The Potato, who has no such compucture about being a problem. Two of us have to hold him for the ivermectin injection. Toni stands over him with the needle. It takes her a second to even find a place in what passes for his skin to get the needle in. Then we have to wrestle him into a kennel where he sets forth to howling his brains off. Later in the day Donna will come by and, seeing him still hepped up and noisy, let him into the yard with the other dogs. He will promptly dig himself a hole and stay there. When I come at night to feed and medicate he will stubbornly refuse to move, prompting another 20 minute wrestling match to get him back into a kennel for the night followed by more vocal doggy histrionics.
The Potato is a drama queen. Spunkiness wise, this is a good sign. Yes, he is going to be a big pain in my ass for a while but he’s going to be just fine.
Before she leaves Kit calls her friend at the Laguna who is interested in a puppy. The friend came out earlier in the week and met him, thought he was cute. He’s home and wants Tyson, is willing to take him today. Kit will drive him out. We pack him a bag of food, say our goodbyes and less than a week after being half-dead in a ditch, he trots out the front gate to his new home, ready to raise hell and eat furniture. We’ll see him again in a few weeks when he comes back for a brief visit to get fixed. Godspeed, Tyson. Try to behave yourself long enough for them to get attached to you .
Tomorrow Quixote leaves for his new home, somewhere around Rivas.
That will leave us with One Eye - now named Porsha, Freda and her baby, and The Potato. Something tells me The Potato will more than make up for any work load lost by the departures of Tyson and Quixote.
Postscript: The next day I get to the clinic to do food and meds and find a note from Toni: call me, major Potato problems, is the essence of it. I talk to Nick - Toni and Karen are taking Bolsita and the remaining puppy to the vet in Managua. The Potato screamed all day, interrupting classes at the school, harassing the neighbors no end. He may not be aggressive but he is nowhere near tame. She injected him with a mild sedative but he is still screaming his brains out.
It is decided to move The Potato to Donna’s patio. We get him over there and he immediately tries to get out the gate. Donna calls a handyman to construct a barrier there. The patio has two stories and we block off the stairs to the second story.
While we wait for the handyman there is a Potato Bathing interlude. This is so completely grotesque I will spare everyone the details. But we get a lot of the crust off. And the new volunteers, a 14 year old girl and her mom, are troopers about restraining The Potato while I scrub bits and pieces of crust off of him.
We leave. I go back to my house for the most needed shower in the history of bathing. As I’m getting cleaned up I get a frantic call from Donna: The Potato is on the loose. Apparently he broke through the barriers to the stairs, went over the broken glass on the security wall and jumped the two stories to the ground. She’s got him in her sights, please, get a cab.
When I get there he is ambling down the road to the lakeside, bleeding from cuts from the glass. As we follow him in her car we talk. There is no humane way to contain this dog. If we tie him up, he will hang himself trying to get out. He wants nothing to do this.
The other street dogs we have taken have been eager to be off the streets. We were joking the other day about how One Eye would sign a lease for her kennel at the clinic if we would offer her one. For other dogs this is the only life they know, the only one they want. We are doing nothing but traumatizing and hurting him. He doesn’t want to go to Maine. He wants to stay at the lakeside. He needs help, yes, but on his terms.
We decide we will make sure that he makes it safely back to the area he hangs out at the lakeside, bring him medicine for his skin and the new cuts in meatballs, hope he doesn’t get poisoned and leave him be.
It’s all we can do.
Halfway back to the lake he tries to wander into someone’s yard. We decide to drive him back to where we found him, where we know he’ll be as safe as he possibly can be. For the last time I wrap him in a sheet, wrestle him back into the bed of the truck, restrain him as best I can. The blood from his cuts leaks onto me.
At the lake we leave a bag of food with one of the restaurant owners. Today I go back with his meds. He’s not around, the restaurant owner tells me. But he was this morning, he had some water. I leave some more food, laced with medicated meatballs for him. Tomorrow morning the other volunteers will go back over with more food and medicine.
Es vagaro, the restaurant owner told me and Donna of The Potato. A vagrant. He always has been.
Quixote leaves today or tomorrow, a new home near Rivas. That will leave us with Freda and her puppy and One-Eye (nee Porsha). As those two improve, with the puppy there, I’ll continue to treat the dogs in the market but we won’t bring any new ones in.
This will lighten my workload some. Hopefully, as these guys get better a home can be found for One Eye (not that Porsha isn’t a nice name but she will always be One Eye to me) and we can bring in someone else.
One Eye is appallingly sweet, loves people, loves other dogs, passionate about food, surprisingly playful. Anyone? Anyone? A Nica Street dog of your very own….
With these guys the trick is not to see what it is but rather what will be.
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