Potato Drama And Freda's Surprise.

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.

The Puppies.

The next morning Donna and I are out at the lakeside looking for an incredibly bad sarna dog when Donna tells me: the pregger dog had a pup this morning. At six am.

We finish what we’re doing - another horrific case we can’t bring in because we don’t have room for - and Donna drops Carissa and I off at Karen’s.

Instead of a birthing party, there are three incredibly exhausted females. Karen, who’s been up with the dog since six, Heidi, another Granada patron saint of the street dogs, and Preggers herself, nurturing four pups but still looking gigantically pregnant and stressed.

Another one was born dead, they tell us. It was awful. It came out with the sack but it was gone.

The puppies look like tiny, homely guinea pigs, blind and rooting around. Mom looks exhausted.

While we’re talking she starts to strain, pant, again. Another one is coming. Like the dead one, this one is still in it’s amniotic sack. Heidi doesn’t stop to think - as it comes out she pulls the sack open, pulls the puppy out. It’s gasping , not really breathing. We all hold our breath. Breathe.

Breathe.

Heidi rubs it’s chest. It’s chest heaves a few times, catches. It breathes.

There are a million street dogs, a billion street puppies, but in this one minute there is so much victory. Karen, Carissa, Heidi and I are between laughing and crying. Preggers is cleaning her new baby enthusiastically.

It was, unfortunately, the last victory of the evening. Time and time again she would start to labor again and time and time again, more stillborn puppies. It is a marathon that never ends - by the time all was said and done it would be twenty six hours. The five live ones. The one that died between numbers two and three. And then another stillborn. And another. And another.

It’s heartbreaking. We take turns digging the grave in the back of Karen’s garden for the stillborn ones.

I go home and pick up some stuff.

That night I sleep in the spare room outside of Karen’s house, within the locked courtyard, feet away from mother and babies. I have a yoga pad, a sleeping bag. I get up every hour to check on her while Karen and Heidi, who have been in with it since the beginning, get some much needed rest and Carissa gets a cab back to her hotel.

Sometime between four and six am the last one is born, a big one, also stillborn. And then, it seems, we are done. Five live ones. Seven dead. Mom - who is nicknamed Bolsita for the bag she had sticking out of her butt - is exhausted and stressed but fine.

It’s decided to go to the vet in the morning, Karen will get a truck and we’ll drive to Managua to make sure everything really is over, there is nothing left inside Bolsita that will kill her. Heidi has to do work stuff. Carissa stays to do clinic duty. We load Bolsita and the pups into the front of the truck and get halfway down the street. There is no air conditioning in the truck. The road is bad and rutted. It’s hot and Bolista is stressed, I’m struggling to keep the pups on the seat with her while Karen drives.

There is no way this is going to work. No way. We turn the truck around and go back to Karen’s.

Donna knows a vet that will come to the house, a decent one. He shows up and says he thinks it’s going to be okay, gives her an antibiotic shot for any infections from all the stillborn ones. Tells us to try to bottle feed the pups to give them extra help.

The surviving pups are so small, so fragile. There are two that we are smaller than the rest of the already way too tiny pups. From the get-go they have trouble latching on to a nipple, seem limper, less energetic then the rest.

We lose the first one a few hours after the vet leaves. One minute he is alive, wriggling with the others in the pile of naked-hamster looking babies. Then he is cold, gone.

The next day we lose another one, the other weak one. One of the stronger ones, one we called Little Hazel because it has the same markings as Karen’s pit bull, starts to get weaker. Heidi and Karen bottle feed frantically, warm them constantly.

I am at the clinic, working on the other sarna dogs. When Carissa, who is leaving, stops by to say goodbye to Karen she gets the news: Little Hazel is gone now, too. A bad blow for all of us, but for no one as much as Karen who has poured heart and soul into this. If there is any justice in the universe, they will survive just because Heidi and Karen, who have done so very much, deserve that.

At this writing, one is left. Heidi and Karen continue to labor around the clock trying to keep it going. Bolsita, though stressed, continues to do well. Eating, being a good dog mom. After twenty six hours of labor with not one bathroom break, Bolsita finally takes the worlds’ longest pee.

On Karen’s $5000 Turkish rug.

Highly disheartened over the pups, we take the pee as a good sign for Bolsita, carpet aside.

Karen is a saint.

To end on a slightly higher note: Tyson the ditch puppy is going to a new home very shortly. Like within the next few days. A good home, nice people out on the Laguna. This means we can probably squeeze one more into the clinic. Potato, Donna says, the horrible one out at the lakeside. A woman in Maine says if we can get him in and rehilibitate him, get the sarna taken care, of, she will take him, ship him to her home in the states.

The tourism people have been poisoning dogs out at the Lakeside. Potato hasn’t been seen in a day or two but we remain hopeful. Tomorrow we go out on a Potato hunt, to bring him in.

Tomorrow I also get another volunteer, to help since Carissa is leaving. Our first task: bath time for One Eye.

And because it would be disingenuous of me to not say anything: Carissa will be sorely missed. Sent over for a six day volunteer stint with her school, she had no idea what the hell she had gotten herself into. As her classmates read stories to school children, Carissa dug graves for the puppies with us, gently washed the infected amniotic fluid off of Bolsita, worked ten hour days with me. On her very first day we picked up One Eye. Two hours into this first day she finds herself standing next to the pick up truck with me trying to pass One Eye over to her from the bed, where I rode in the back holding the dog. She looks at One Eye - the gaping eye socket, the scabby, hairless, flaking skin, the smell. This is where most people would have made an excuse, backed away, called their advisor, done anything. I worked with career shelter workers who would have refused to touch this dog. Carissa hesitates for only a second, reaches up her arms, takes her, clutches her tight and places her carefully back on the ground, leads her into the clinic.

The girl can roll with it.

Godspeed, Carissa. Thank you for everything.

It would also be disingenous of me to point out something that kind of should be a given: I am not the clinic. I am not barely one tenth of a cog in the wheel that makes this run. I show up every now and again and get to play full time mangy dog wrangler for a while. What makes the clinic - what the clinic is - is an incredibly amazing and dedicated group of people who do this while holding down full time jobs and lives, the people who set this all up, make it run, do absolutely everything against overwhelming odds. Handle the main action of the clinic - spaying and neutering. Requistioning. Bringing in dogs like Quixote and Frida - half dead - and doing awesome work with them. Toni. Nick. Kit. Heidi. Karen. And of course Donna Tabor. And the amazing Dr. Tom who comes in often and just blitzkriegs these surgeries. I have the blog, I have the time, I get to tell the stories but it should never be assumed that they are just mine. Every single day here I am humbled and awed by these people.

The Pregnant Street Dog Saga Begins

The dog had been enormously pregnant for as long as anyone could remember. A small, long haired brown dog with floppy ears - maybe some spaniel parentage - it lurked around Parque Central and Calle La Calzadera, eating trash, trying to beg off people eating on the outdoor patios. It was skittish, everyone knew about it and it was one of the big goals when I got here - bring the pregnant dog in.

I failed miserably twice - got close and then had her take off. Every night we couldn’t get her was another night for her to die giving birth under a car.

Tuesday I am working with Carissa, a short term volunteer, a college girl who only has a week. We’re dispensing sarna meds in hot dogs to the market dogs, much to the amusement of the locals who have no idea what the fuck is going on, only they we keep buying hot dogs for scaly monsters.


Two other market dogs we're medicating but cannot bring in.

We stop in an area with benches to rest and lo and behold, there she is, hugely pregnant and rooting through the trash. And me with only a quarter of a hot dog left. I lure her over but don’t try to slip lead her. I throw some cordovas at Carissa. Please, I'll sit with her you go get meat. Meat. I don’t care what, any. Just get us enough meat that I can bribe her once I get a lead on her. She’s probably going to go batshit when I get the lead on her and raw meat might keep her quieter. Carissa takes off into the maze that is Granada’s Mercado Central in search of raw meat. I sit with the dog. For a while she stays with me, then she wanders off. I follow her and lose her around a corner, under one stall in the midst of a billion. Fuck.

Poor Carissa is waiting where she left me, 2 lbs of beef in her hand.

For the rest of the day it’s hide and seek. We see her, get close, and then she’s off again, around a corner, under a bench, gone.

I am killing poor Carissa who is not used to walking for hours in this heat, through the fragrance of the meat market, stuck with the woman who always forgets to eat. She’s exhausted and her blood sugar is about to give out. The girl is a serious trooper but this is a little much to ask on day one from her. Particularly as we're also doing clinic duty on the dogs in care twice a day.

We decide to call it a day. Right as we’re walking towards a café, there’s Preggers. She appears out of nowhere from around a corner. We take off in her direction. I throw some beef at her. She comes over. I give her more, she relaxes and eats. I slip the lead over her head. She tenses for a second. More beef. She relaxes. Slowly we lead her through the market, towards the street.

Occasionally one of the vendors will ask us what we’re doing. Carissa, who speaks Spanish, explains. Instead of the usual amusement I expect everyone’s reaction is the same: Oh good, how nice, God bless you.

She is no one’s dog, no one feeds her or calls her theirs but they don’t want to see her die in childbirth in front of them.

Carissa runs recon as I lead the dog through the market.

By some miracle of shitty timing we find the only two blocks in Granada with no goddamn cabs on them. The dog is being incredibly good and sweet but I can tell she’s exhausted. Carissa manages to flag down a cab. In a miracle of a different kind the driver agrees to take her. No cab will take dogs. None. I'm going to pay out the ass for this kindness but I don't care.

I am trying to haul her enormously pregnant ass into the back of the cab when a horse driver passing stops, gets down, pushes me aside and lifts her into the cab. The stars are aligning for this dog. No one will help with the street dogs - no one.

Karen and Paul, an expatriate couple who have noticed her and tried several times to get her have volunteered their back house for her. We move her in. She has a bag sticking out of her ass - something she ate and can’t pass. I give her some mineral oil.

The next day I take a much deserved day off. She apparently is acting distressed and Donna and Heidi, another woman, take her to the vet in Managua. Very constipated, though she passed the bag, full of parasites but mostly okay. A goddamn miracle considering how she’s been living. She could go at any second , the vet tells them. Any time now.

The Trailer For The Real Story

We got the pregnant one and are in the midst of a street-dog birth crisis. So far five born live, five dead. Whole story later, but for right now, some pictures.

Heidi saves the last one to be born alive. It was actually not breathing but was she got it going. By this point in time we were all near tears. This was about eight hours into labor.


Mom takes over. Left on the streets all of them, including the mother, would have died.



A different story, also coming. Another one we're medicating on the streets but can't bring in due to lack of space. The locals call him 'Papas' or Potato because of his lack of fur. A nice dog but, yeah, gross. We need room. We need homes. Obviously ones looking like this are cleaned up and treated before we start looking for homes for them.

A Brief Pictorial (No, Honestly, Brief. I swear)

I'm too exhausted for a proper blog entry. All snarkiness and whatnot aside, it's been an exhausting few days. We've brought in three dogs, all in various stages of distress, and began treating some of the street dogs with mange we can't bring in. The people who usually do the clinic stuff frickin' rock - they are machines, really. And all of them have other stuff they need to do first, Peace Corps stuff, other projects. As the only person here who can one hundred percent dedicate myself to clinic stuff I feel obligated to hit hard. Maybe a bit too hard.

In the absense of my usual snarkiness and verbosity, I'll do a little pictorial, instead.

Tyson was the puppy we pulled out of the ditch. He is already a royal pain in the ass - always underfoot and chewing everything in site. Just like any puppy. To see where Tyson came from or what he looked like half dead in a ditch, see my previous post.
Quixote got here long before I did. He's a the big dominant male that's been at the clinic for a while. He was in terrible shape when he got in - wish I had pictures - but now looks like any dog you'd see at any dog park in the states. Aside from his dog-dominance issues he's a sweetheart - it's impossible not to like him.
Frita is also since before my time. She came in about ten days ago. She has bad sarna but is already apparently a lot better than she was before. She is a sweet little shy thing.

We brought One Eye in two days ago. One Eyes is ROUGH. The eye socket is still open and it looks like the eye might have been gauged out. Most of her hair is gone from the sarna and the tips of her ears are destroyed from it. She's almost on par with Scabby, the dog we brought in the last time I was here. That said, her energy level is good, she's a sweetheart and she'll eat whatever you put in front of her. She gets along with all the other dogs. There's a scar around her neck from an old cord that must have been put on, got too tight and cut into her skin. She was someone's dog and you can tell. She likes people.


The other dog, the brown one, we didn't bring in. We don't have the space and his weight is good. Instead we're treating him on the street with ivermectin pills for the sarna.

No pictures yet, but will have some tomorrow of the pregnant dog we finally got today, after days of chasing. It involved a mad goose chase through the market, a pound and a half of raw beef and the bribing of a cab driver but she is in care now.* The puppies are kicking so it doesn't seem she's carrying dead ones, thank god. The infection could kill her. She's staying with an incredibly nice couple that donated a spare room on the back of the property. We're thinking she's going to pop at any moment. Pictures on her tomorrow.

We need a lot of stuff, in some ways. With some fencing and building supplies we could put up three runs in an ex-pats back yard and bring in three of the other really bad ones. But really we need homes for these guys.

* The best part of this is that I was wearing a little sundress and the girl working with me was carrying an eight pound papaya. Quite a show.

Now Things Start To Get Scaly

I cannot seem to get over this very American thing I have of never carrying cash. A lot of places take cards here but never, it seems, the ones I go to. Luckily Donna comped dinner at Café Chavalos last night - all visa, no cordova on me. But this morning when I go to meet her for breakfast Thalia, the woman from San Francisco who runs the vegetarian restaurant on Calle Martirio, breaks it to me as she brings over my café con leche. No cards.

Luckily Donna is running late so I haul ass up to Parque Central and get some cash out of the ATM, change it with the money changers out front, make it back before she even gets there.* As I’m rounding the final corner to go back to the restaurant I hear my name. In a distinctly American accent. I turn around and it’s Nick, one half of the Peace Corps couple, the people who have been running the clinic (on their own time, not the Peace Corps), the past few months. It’s good to see him.

It turns out he’s meeting us for breakfast, too. As we wait for Donna he catches me up on the clinic. Two dogs there now - both street dogs. One female who might be pregnant, one incredibly nice big male who unfortunately beats the snot out of any other dog he gets around. No vet but the ability to do neuters. Nick’s been over there twice a day caring for the two dogs. The bitch had bad mange but is almost over it and is gut wrenchingly sweet. Once she’s clear she’ll go to their house. Another dog, a three-legged one named Tripod, is bunking down with them until it goes to it’s new home later today. I get invited on the field trip to drive it out to Naidame, a little town about 20 kilometers outside of Granada. Field trip. Yay. Sure.

Donna has arrived but is waylaid in the doorway by some people. Donna is always waylaid. It takes her a few minutes to untangle herself before she can come sit with us. It’s like going out to eat with the Pope. I half expect paparazzi to turn up and start taking pictures of her. How this woman has absolutely no ego - which she does, none whatsoever, is beyond me.

Once we order we talk strategy, plans. There’s a hugely pregnant dog in Parque Central in the early stages of sarna that needs to be brought in before it pops. The couple from the bar last night offered to let it bunk in their backyard if I can get it. Donna knows of a puppy out in the barrio, towards the other school that is going down quick. We need to get it.

We talk about the meat market dogs, covered in mange and mean as shit. There’s a short term volunteer coming out who can possible get them invermectin pills in meatballs. The meat market dogs sleep in the same stalls the little kids use as bathrooms.** Whatever little kids aren’t covered in the mange yet are only biding their time.

After breakfast Nick goes to do some errands and I head off with Donna to find the barrio puppy. We drive down to the end of the street, past where the paving ends, onto the rutted dirt road with pigs rooting by the side of it. It’s only a mile from my house but it’s light years away.

Through the houses you can see glimpses of Lake Nicaragua, clean and pretty in contrast to the decay of the barrio.

Across the street from the school Donna stops, there it is, she tells me. I look out the window and see nothing, a pile of garbage next to a ditch in front of a house. I look again and there it is - tan and white and boney, bloody in spots and unmoving. A puppy or what was one. We get out and I get a closer look. I stand over it and it doesn’t stir. It’s gone to meet baby Jesus. There’s no way this thing is alive. No way. Then I see it’s chest move ever so slightly.

Donna goes and talks to the family and I loop a slip lead around it’s neck. It doesn’t move.
Carro, the family says. It was hit by a car. There’s a million little kids all of whom are delighted by the sight of the enormous gringa poking at the sarna dog. They tell Donna to take it. One of the kids makes a clicking noises and the puppy slowly, painfully lifts it’s head.

And then all hell breaks loose. Time for the show, kids.

Here was my critical error: the sliplead. The dog comes to with something around it’s neck and freaks out, immediately alive and whipping around on three legs, baring it’s little puppy teeth at me, snarling. Slip leads work great on American dogs that know what a collar and a leash is. On Nicaraguan dogs it has the same effect as pointing a gun at the them. I’m at a loss here, holding one end of this while the half dead dog goes bonkers.

The kids are giggling their asses off.

Es veterinario, Donna says helpfully. Not exactly true but explaining the difference would be useless and no one cares.

One of the little kids comes up and grabs the puppy, still thrashing around, and dumps it in the back of Donna’s truck. The kid is maybe six. Humbled I climb in the back beside it. When I get the slip lead off of it, it pushes itself against my leg, slumps down in defeat and fatigue. We rattle out of the barrio, the scared puppy pressing itself against me with every rut we hit.

At the clinic we set up a cage for it. I carry it out of the truck and it stays limp in my arms. We get it on the table and I give it some injections - ivermectin for the mange. Antibiotics - well, just because. It’s a good puppy. It squeals a bit when the first needle goes in but makes no attempt to nip. It’s ears are crawling with ticks. The two other dogs living there come over to investigate. Puppy immediately goes after Quixote, the big dog aggressive male. Shockingly Quixote backs down. Three months old, more dead than not, this poor little nine pound thing is still one bad motherfucker.

We lock it up, leave it to rest.

Donna and I go to the Parque Central to look for the pregnant dog. We come up empty but inventory the other park dogs, what can be done for them. Neuter this one, get some ivermectin in that one. There’s another sweet older dog running around, similar to Teddy. We make plans to come back at night and bring it in. If you try to do it during the day people will say they own them, try to get you to pay them for these mangy, sad street dogs.

Later I meet Nick and we take Donna’s truck to drive Tripod and his new owner out to the their house in Naidame. The new owner is another Peace Corps volunteer - a younger girl from Hawaii. She cuddles in the back seat with Tripod while we roll past fincas, little roadside stands, some contruction. ***It’s a pretty drive.

The town is small, dumpy. I feel bad for her. She’s the only one there and you can tell she’s lonely. The dog will be good company for her. We haul ass back to Granada to get Donna her truck before Café Chavalos opens.

After we drop off the truck we go back to the clinic. Puppy has eaten nothing and made a huge mess of his cage. We pull him out, feed the other dogs. Puppy gets pills this time - a capstar to kill the fleas on him, an allergy tablet just in case. He limps on one leg but it doesn’t seem broken. Again he delights in menacing Quixote.

Nick sits with him and manages to get him to eat a bit.

Nestor, the quiador for the school, shows up while we’re there****. He takes to the nasty, smelly, scabby little puppy immediately. He watches it snarl and snap at the big dogs. It needs a name, I tell Nick. Nick consults with Nestor in Spanish. Tyson, Nestor suggests. Like the boxer. So Tyson it is.

After everyone has been fed and cared for we leave, parting ways in front of the school. Toni, Nick’s wife, has been out of town but will be back tomorrow. We make plans to do dinner when she gets back, invite the short term girl who’s supposed to be showing up.

I go home and scrub for a long time. The likelihood of me having gotten something off the dog is below slim but it’s a psychological thing. I always feel itchy after dealing with street dogs. I take my slip lead, a book, some money, head back towards the parque to grab some food and have another go at the pregnant dog.

My new roommate, a nice older british guy, is watching television in the courtyard. So you’re going back to work then, he asks me. Something like that but not quite. Going to eat, too. Have you eaten at all today? he asks. With Donna, breakfast. Well make sure you eat your food - don’t feed it to the dogs.

(Interesting side note two: Aside from café owners in Liberia, other residents that I barely know are also watching out for my caloric intake. Rest assured. Other side note along the same lines: walking everywhere makes me hungry. I kill an enormous hamburger and some ice cream that night)

After I eat I walk around the park, finally spot the pregnant dog. She gets close but seems to sense my intent and takes off, enormous stomach wobbling. I follow her for a while but it’s a lost cause. Plus the streets are full of folks having a Saturday night and I can almost guarantee that the dog is going to flip it when I get her on lead. I generally try to avoid making huge scenes if I can help it. Disappointing but it’s time to pack it in. We brought one in today.

It’s still early enough that I could go out, visit some friend’s bars and restaraunts, socialize a bit. But I know the house is empty - all the other residents are out doing some such things and I can use a little solitude. I wander home to my bed, a book, some music.


*Yes. This is still safe despite my oopsy at the border. I changed the money right next to the bank security guard and got a wicked good rate.
** Gross, yes, but true.
*** Finca: A farm or ranch. Granada is a big city but a lot of Nicaragua is pretty rural.
****Quiador: one part handyman, one part caretaker, one part guard. Pretty much every non Nica family has one and all business have at least a security guard. Nestor, who is about eighteen, has been there since the last time I came.

Being Reabsorbed Into The Fold and the Importance of Blessed Dinette Sets.

In the states I can drive a car, work a reasonably complicated job, handle a mortgage, do all sorts of things. Here I am stymied by a $12 cell phone. Totally stymied. I got into college with less effort than it’s taking me to figure this out.

The instruction book is entirely in Spanish. Entirely. I try to decode it to no avail. The last chapter in the manual is called ‘juego’. Juego? Isn’t that the word for juice? How is juice involved in this?

Jesus God. I am helpless.

I bag the whole thing and go to Lilly’s toting phone, manual, and box. Help. Please. I fuck around with my blog, read some emails while she fixes the time, figures out what my number is, messes with it. Lilly deserves a combat medal for landlady-ing. She hands it back to me, reads me numbers to put in my address book. Her. Donna. One of the other people living in the house. The peace corps couple that helps at the clinic.

Lilly has a new cat, Esquina, Spanish for corner. I ask her about it. Some kids had it in a plastic bag on the corner outside the café she tells me. Donna chased them down and took it. She was yelling at them ‘Give me that kitten, you little fuckers”. I adore Donna. And they handed it over to her and here it be, lounging on the sofa in the courtyard next to Pacino.

The ex-pat couple that lives around the corner projects movies onto the side of a building every Friday night. They have a little slideshow/documentary about Calle Santa Lucia they always play first. It starts at six but by the time we head over at 5.45 the street is packed. The whole neighborhood - young, old - turns out for this. I sit on the stairs between Lilly and Esperanza, an elderly Nica woman from across the street. Two American women who rent apartments at Santa Lucia Social Club come out, too. Aside from us and the guy who owns the house and does the slideshow, the rest of the crowd is Nica. It’s already a street party - people are visiting back and forth.

The first few strains of classical music play and the slideshow starts. Everyone goes silent and then it becomes audience participation. A picture of the hot dog stand starts everyone cheering. Everyone loves hot dogs. Same for a picture of the tomato vendor. Those are good tomatoes. A picture of a couple kissing slides across the screen and every whistles and hoots, ay-yay-yay, suggestive noises, even the elderly people are laughing.

The Pulperia on the corner gets big cheers, as does a picture of the street sign for Calle Santa Lucia. Another street sign, for a street a few blocks up, gets hisses. Everyone is happy, laughing. A picture of the house of the ex-pat who does this comes up. Everyone whistles and hollers. He raises his hands above his head. The music changes to an upbeat Nica pop song. The teenagers clap with the beat.

A few pics of the bicycle repair shop on the corner are crowd pleasers. A picture of the sign for the funeral home elicits some hissing. Dead people don’t go over too big. There are photos of almost everyone in the neighborhood and whenever someone’s picture comes up everybody ribs them, hoots, whistles, laughs. There has to be fifty people out with more gathering and everyone is laughing, enjoying themselves.

In the states this would require ten different kinds of permits and several noise complaints. Here it’s what happens on Friday nights. The Calle Santa Lucia show followed by a movie projected on the wall. Tonight it’s a James Bond thing but most people drift off after the slideshow.

After the slideshow ends we mill around on the corner for a while, chatting. Lilly introduces me to some of the Nica neighbors. I chat with one of the American women staying at the Social Club. All of a sudden an older woman in a batik dress walks up on the sidewalk. I recognize the voice before I turn around. Kit, my clinic compatriot. I stand up and she hugs me long and hard. We catch up.

We are, she says, going to Corn Islands in June. Has Donna talked to you about that yet? No, I say, I haven’t seen Donna. She came by to see me this morning but I was still asleep. Kit’s in a hurry, she wants to leave for her house at the Laguna before it gets much darker. She’ll tell you, she says cryptically. We’re going.

As she leaves drums start up in the street. A procession turns the corner - a priest, some altar boys, a bunch of people carrying a statue of Jesus holding the cross, a truck with a loudspeaker on it blaring prayers and hymns. It’s followed by a herd of vendors - cotton candy, sweets, cheap toys, ice cream carts. We stand in front of the Social Club and watch. People are hauling tables out of their houses and onto the street. I am Catholic and have no idea what the fuck is happening here. Lent, Lilly explains. Every Friday during Lent churches take turns doing these blessings and processions. They’re blessing the tables.

I grew up steeped in Catholicism and I have no fucking idea about the hows and whys of table blessing. Even still I adore it - it’s pure Catholic theater - gaudy and public and compelling and completely indecipherable.

Between this and the slide show ask me why I love it here. Go ahead.

After the parade moves on I go in, grab my laptop, head out. The plan is stop by Café Chavalos, see Donna, then head to the vegetarian restaurant with wireless access, finish some online stuff, go to the square and buy a card for my brand new $12 movi-star* cell phone. It doesn’t happen.

All the chavalos are gathered outside restaurant, smoking cigarettes, looking tough. As I walk up they start hooting, whistling, mama mama, bee-yoo-tee-ful. When I turn to walk up the stairs they clam up, look embarrassed. They didn’t realize I was coming in. Oopsy.

It’s so good to see Donna. She looks the same - busy and social and in control. I compliment her on a prestigious award she won from the US government for citizen diplomacy. She just laughs.

There’s a new couple there, she’s from Australia, he’s from London. They own a restaurant here. We talk for a long time. She used to be a high powered personal assistant to a billionaire in London. They had a Mercedes SUV, a nice house. They bagged it all to move here and do this. It’s a better life, she says. Some things are just more important, more fulfilling than money.

I understand. I like them enormously and they’re well traveled, ridiculously funny.

We have extra room in our side yard, they tell me. We can set up some runs for street dogs who need some rehab. We talk about an enormous pregnant sarna dog roaming around in Parque Central. I’ll try to get it tomorrow I tell them. I have a slip lead. Donna agrees. Do it, she says. We talk about another dog, a sweet older dog with mange who hangs out on La Calzadera, begging off the restaurants. We should bring that one in, too, if we can. It’s small, cute, personable. It should be in a home.

We have room, the couple tells me. Do it. Good people.

Tomorrow the Sarna Dog rodeo begins.

Donna brings up the Corn Islands. They have a huge dog problem out there- we were contacted by some people. We’re going out in June with a vet team to do a spay/neuter blitz. You’re coming to assist.

I have to leave on the 25th, I tell her. She waves me off. It’ll be before that. It’ll be fine.
The feral cat issue comes up again. We only have one trap, she tells me. We need more.
I have a friend coming on the 20th, I tell her. I’ll see if she can help, maybe wrangle one up. If anyone can get their hands on a cat trap and get it through customs it’s Kristen. Leashes too, she says. We can use some leashes. Soft slip leads, some collar and leash sets.

I keep meaning to leave but the conversation never slows. Everyone else leaves, the restaurant is empty but for the four of us. Glass of glass of wine arrives. The conversation deteriorates to True Stories of Horrific Intestinal Distress, gossip about the ex-pat community. It gets later and later. There will be no cell phone card tonight.

After about four hours I manage to peel myself away, head home. Futilely I try to fire a text off to the states but it won’t go through. I fall asleep to the sounds of horse hooves hitting the pavement outside my window.

A note on the nature of slideshows, table blessing parades, Nicaragua: Nicaragua is not Mexico. In Mexico and a lot of other tourist areas you get manufactured events, fiestas put on to give gringos a display of what street life is like in Central America. What happens on Calle Santa Lucia, in Parque Central, is entirely organic, natural. No tequila company is selling shots at the slideshow. You cannot buy large velvet sombreros. No tour buses follow the Lenten parades. If every ex-pat and tourist was to leave Granada tomorrow, tables would still be blessed, chairs would still be pulled out onto the sidewalks for evening social hour. Not to say there is not tourist crap in Granada - there is plenty of it. But these things I describe are not tourist events. It’s just daily people in their daily lives interfacing with their communities, having fun, taking care of each other.

A little whiny gringa side note in contrast: Another Nicaraguan exercise in futility - cotton balls. I go to four different farmacias, a ton of Pulperias. Not only does no one know what the hell I’m talking about, no one has them. I draw pictures, write the words down. Nothing. I get offered cotton pads, rolls of gauze, q-tips, but no cotton balls. I’d like to say this is a serious clinic issue but in reality I just use them to clean my face. Even still it’s annoying.

A couple of picture notes: the religious pictures are not from Friday night - they’re from the Lenten parade down Calle Santa Lucia today. Different Jesus statue, no table blessing, same idea. The dog is the dog from Calle La Calzadera who is known to everyone as Teddy and who we decided not to bring in as the bar owners feed him and he’s in pretty good shape, sarna aside. There are bigger fish to fry.

* no, it’s not some sort of super glamorous phone. It’s actually a cheap Nokia - that’s just the name of the company.