My Dog Eats Garbage

And other disgusting things. Her favorites are water bottles, water bags (very Dominican, you’ve got to see them), juice cartons, paper-especially very easy to shred like toilet paper, and since you can’t flush it here, she really likes to get her paws on used toilet paper, and of course there is bones and other animal products which abound at my house because the yard is where a lot of animals come to chew on grass and I live next to a fried chicken stand (so there are chicken bones everywhere) and across the street from the butcher (so there is every other kind of bone everywhere).

I recently related to a friend via email that owning a dog in this country is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was the kind of thing I didn’t realize I actually felt until I was writing it and I’m still not sure that level of drama is appropriate, but it sure is tough. Every day, or at least it feels like it, she has some new medical issue for me to try to deal with.

It started with the bones. As I mentioned, they’re everywhere, something one doesn’t need to worry about in the US. I’ve heard chicken bones are the worst but that all bones are bad for small puppies. Even if I watch her 24 hours a day to keep her from getting at bones, she’ll manage to find them. So I either become her enemy for pulling them away from them, or give up. Then it was fleas, all the time. Her mom has an infestation that I really hoped someone would take care of, but they haven’t, and I didn’t want to keep her from playing with her mom, especially during those first few, very important, weeks. The good news is I got some flea meds from the US and I think they might be working. Then it was that she hardly eats her dog food. Personally I think that has to do with the fact that she knows there are bones all over outside and the dog food couldn’t taste as good as the bones, so she waits. Then I was pretty sure it was parasites which are super common here. She’s had all the shots she can have to this age already and I gave her a de-parasitic medicine and still she doesn’t eat so much. Around the same time people started to tell me she looks pretty thin (which I think is more a result of how fast she’s growing and not that she’s not eating enough) she started to get brown dots in her coat that hadn’t been there before. People here are terrified of anything that makes skin darker, which I guess I’ve found out includes animals. They told me it’s because she’s sick but the change in color isn’t just on her skin, it’s on the fur as well so I really don’t know. Another hair-dermatological ailment is that she’s over 3 months old and still hasn’t needed a haircut. I saw her sister a few weeks ago and she had much longer hair which was in need of cutting. I was totally prepared to write that off as different genes (which I do think it is) but then I’ve noticed she’s been shedding a lot as well. That didn’t make me too worried though because I’ve heard with the changing seasons people’s hair will fall out and mine sure has too in the last few weeks. Perhaps comparing humans to dogs was where I made my first mistake. Finally, ticks. This is the problem that has given me the most to worry about. I first noticed them when I came back from a trip away and they were everywhere. She must have been so miserable scratching at them. They’re huge, difficult to grab (so I’ve been using tweezers which Lina now hates), disgusting, and borough into her skin so when I do finally get them, they make her bleed. The worst (this next part is not for the faint-hearted) was when I had to pull about 8 of them out of her ears. That didn’t just make her bleed but it also left the blood to mix with a large amount of crud which I hope was just dirt and not tick droppings. She now also doesn’t like q-tips.
So when I pet her these days I’m not just petting her, I’m searching for ticks almost constantly, and finding them much too often. Hopefully her next dosage of the flea meds (which are also for ticks) will kick in and get rid of them once and for all.

The logical answer is to go to the vet. Thing is I have a vet, the brother of my don and my project partner’s husband, who lives close by and offered to help. I am thinking of getting a new one in Santiago but getting in and out of there is going to prove to be very challenging and most likely every time I go I’ll need to spend the night in the city, if not two nights, which by myself isn’t so easy on our salaries, but with a dog as well will be even more difficult. More importantly than the money is the time away from my community that that will require. So perhaps you see why this is a bit more complicated than it would be in the US.

In other ways things are going well with her. She enjoys belly rubs and lying under, on top of, or near my feet. She’s got some good toys from the US that she loves, which makes her a bit more spoiled than her Dominican neighbors. I’m trying to start to train her, working on not barking, biting, chewing things or jumping on the furniture. When I get that sorted out, (if I get that sorted out soon, if not I’ll start anyways) I’m going to start training her to come, sit, heel, etc.
In other animal news: rats, all the time, everywhere. I’ve cut off the routes to their sources of joy in my house which are of course garbage, food, but also interestingly the crayons that my family brought me from home. But they still like to come visit. The only way to really get rid of rats here is to have a cat but I refuse to get another animal, for many reasons, so I’m going to have to buy traps. The pigeons are also up there between the ceiling and the roof and I’m pretty sure they are here to stay. One fell through the hole in the ceiling in the kitchen the other day. Getting it out was funny… I’d been sweeping with the door to the kitchen closed and when I got up to the door I flipped when I saw the huge, gray pigeon just sitting there on my floor. I backed away then went back for a photo. A few hours later I went in to finish sweeping and it didn’t care for that and finally made its way to the large hole in my window covers and flew out. I also have found a number of large spiders of late, but none are tarantulas. They are almost that big, but I’m pretty sure they don’t bite, so I haven’t disturbed them. I think of it as one more thing to eat mosquitoes, which have I mentioned are SO much less of a problem in my new house than they were with my host family? Perhaps it’s the spiders (although there were a good number of those in the other house too) or perhaps it’s that I’m very vigilant in covering my water.

Seriously, I used to get 4 or 5 bites a day minimum there with full sleeves and/or repellent, and here I get that many in a week, often without sleeves or repellent!

So we’re a big happy family here, and even with all of this, people ask me how I’m able to live alone.