A Few Weeks of Ivermectin/How This Whole Thing Works/The Only White Prostitute..

Anyone want to guess who this is? Anyone? Anyone?

This is The Potato after three weeks of ivermectin, antibiotics and regular food. And I cannot take any credit for this whatsoever - I was out gallavanting around the country while Donna was down at the lake taking care of him every morning. I just saw him for the first time in weeks a few days ago and I was dead shocked. All the scabbing is gone. He has hair. His ribs are no longer visible. He looks like a dog. Not much of a dog, true, but a dog. Holy crap.

He actually even has kind of a sweet face.

No he has not been brought back into the clinic and it's highly unlikely that he ever will be again. He's too feral. We can get close to feed him and to occasionally pat him but he has not forgotten his confinement at the clinic and makes damn sure that we get nowhere near him with anything like a slip lead. He doesn't growl, he just sort of skitters away.

Donna got him into sort of a routine where she goes down to the lakefront every morning at the ass-crack of dawn with a big bag of food and whatever meds he was on. The first few weeks she had to hunt him down, the infamous Spud Hunts, but eventually he realized we weren't trying to pull him back in and now he waits for her at the same spot every morning.

And now he brings friends. The little black and tan female he seems to always hang around with who just gets in rougher and rougher shape. She's started developing sarna as well so now she's on Ivermectin hot dogs as well. We're also going to put her on a once a day antibiotic to deal with the mystery cuts on her head. If anything she is schitzier, more nervous than The Potato himself. Despite being older and slower, she's good at dodging hands. Definitely not a candidate for being brought in which is good thing as we are way above capacity as it stands. As I said before, the idea behind Casa Lupita was never to be an animal shelter. But she'll be treated on the street.

There's also another dog, this one in pretty good shape, a really pretty little brindle and white thing. Sleek. Like the othere two she is feral to the core - she comes up for the food but you can't get a hand close to her. Which really is a shame because she's a beautiful dog. But unlike The Potato and his girlfriend, she is either younger or much better at street life and aside from being a little skinny is in good shape. When there's a vet around she's definitely a good candidate to be grabbed, fixed and re-released.

Aside from the three dogs there's a cat who hangs out and waits at the same spot for Donna, too. I didn't get any pictures of it but it's a hugely pregnant black calico. Nicaraguan animals kill me. In New Orleans after Katrina the hungry dogs just ate the available cats. Here they all sit around together and wait for the food truck to arrive. The cat belongs to someone at one of the restaraunts and just shows up because it seems to like dog food. It eats right near the dogs and no matter how many bowls the dogs eat - finishing one and waiting for Donna to pour more in - they never try to grab the cat's stuff. It's all very civilized.

A Few More Quick Notes On The Clinic.
It occured to me the other day that in my orgy of photo posting I've never really put up pictures of the clinic, what it looks like or how this whole thing works.

The clinic is one room in a school house. I guess at one time it was a music room but then they pulled out the stuff and put in an operating table and vet stuff, some cages were added last year. Prior to the existence of the actual clinic a few ex-pats had arranged a spay/neuter clinic here with a visiting vet and used someone's house for it.

The school house has a huge courtyard and when I was here last year there were three cement kennels in it. Since then three more have been added. The dogs very rarely use the kennels - they're primarily for the spay neuter clinic. But some of the dogs are locked up while school is in session. The rest of the time they live in the courtyard, some of them hanging out with the kids during school hours.

The way Nica schools work there's a huge break in the middle of the day. During that break I go in and let out the ones that are locked up, do morning food and meds, fill everything up. I then go back after school is out to let everyone out again, do their dinners and their meds, hang out with them, that sort of thing.

Inside the clinic itself we have an operating table, a little fridge, some shelving that acts as the pharmacy, a sink and counter, a bank of cat size cages that weren't here the last time I was here. Over time a lot of equipment has been brought in through some means or another - an anesthesia machine, all the surgical equiment, a pressure cooker that works as an autoclave. It's literally one tenth of the size of the operating room we had at the bloated, overfunded shelter that I used to work at. That said, when the doctor is in they put mats down on the floor for recovering dogs, set up every available inch of space and roll through surgeries at a rate even the most well funded, well set up clinic would have trouble matching. It's a machine.

When the actual surgery clinics are going on the school isn't open - aside from the two-stage school days here a lot of schools, including this one, aren't open on Friday. And literally every inch of courtyard and clinic space is maximized. The dog size crates we have are stacked outside in the shade. Dogs are tied out to posts in the shade or under trees prior to surgery. Twenty three animals in one day. Think about that.

Holy fuck.

Non-Animal Epilogue: The Only White Prostitute In Granada.

All the chicken ladies in my neighborhood seem to have closed up shop for the week. The closest one is the only one I make a point of never going to. Unlike the other chicken ladies, she's mean eyed and nasty, her food is always cold. I've never gotten sick off of her but she's always had some bitch issues.

Most of the other chicken ladies know me - if it wasn't for fruit, yogurt and chicken ladies I long since would have starved to death. They know my Spanish isn't great, they joke around with me, give me extra chili, are friendly. I might be an odd gringa but I'm sort of their odd gringa.

But the Chicken Bitch is different. It's actually a chicken family - an older woman, the mean-eyed younger woman, some guy, a few other people - all sitting out on the sidewalk with their grill and their table selling food.

Last night I am shit out of chicken lady options and go back to her. While she's putting my food in the banana leaves - I don't know how there's a goddamn banana tree around here left with any leaves on it from the chicken ladies and the vigaron ladies - the older woman starts talking.

People, my spanish isn't great but I do speak some. And the word for tattoo is the same in English as it is in Spanish. She's whispering - not quietly - to the boy and laughing but I'm picking up some of it - tattoo, dress, street.......whore. Whore. The word for whore is the same as the word for bitch, really, and I'm never anything but friendly so I'm pretty sure it's being used in the hooker context.

There's a million things I can think of to say but I don't say anything. It's fucking outrageous but getting into an argument with them won't do anything. I go home royally pissed off.

My roommate is helping me with my Spanish homework and I tell him about it. Don't let it get under your skin, he suggests. Just don't go back.

When my other roommate gets home I bitch at him about it. He's been here forever. He just shrugs. You know how this place is. It's a sidewalk culture. All they do is talk about other people. Everyone out there is talking about everyone else all the time. They all watch everything everybody does and talk about it. Besides, it's a weird cultural thing - they don't know you and most tattooed Nicaraguan women are prostitutes.

They really do think I'm a hooker. Honestly.

Wouldn't they think a hooker would have a better bicycle? And while I will cop to running around in sundresses and lipstick all the time I look way more like a librarian than a hooker.

Later the same roommate that tells me they probably do think I'm a hooker borrows my bike to go to the same chicken lady. I can't take offense because he lives off chicken lady food, too, and has shown me where all the good ones are. He offers to tell her that I'm not a prostitute. Don't bother, I tell him. Let them think what they want to think.

When he comes back he tells me they looked at him funny when he pulled up on my bike.

They probably think he's a man whore now.