On Their Way

If all goes well, and thanks to considerable help from a vet friend at Save a Sato, Rafael and Carmelito will catch a plane from San Juan to Minneapolis this Sunday.

snow. seriously?

Cargo hold, Delta airlines, with a stopover in Atlanta to stretch and pee. Maybe they’ll have time for a Cinnabon. I can’t decide if the whole idea is hilarious or just crazy. Dogs do it all the time, apparently, but I simply can’t imagine.

We’ve decided to try fostering them ourselves but since 5 boy dogs sadly continues to seem like too many, they’ll enter the PAWS program and live with us only until they find permanent families.

We’ll let you know how their arrival and acclimation goes. I only know them from that one afternoon on the beach, really, so we’re strangers to one another. My main hope is that a long conversation about potty training is all it will take.

Rafael and Carmelito

(Find the beginning of this story here.)

The day before our flight home, we decided to go find the hound dog. We had reached Adri from Amigos de los Animales and asked her advice. “You HAVE to take him home,” she said unequivocally. We had no idea how we would get him certified healthy to travel, in an approved kennel, USDA paperwork in tow, in less than 24 hours. But others had done what felt impossible, so we decided to see what unfolded if we tried.

The sidewalk in front of the gated community was empty. We walked up and down beaches, drove skinny roads, no hound dog. Very kind people gave us advice, even asked around on our behalf. No hound dog. After a few hours we drove back to the hotel, deciding to try to let it go.

Rafael patiently wearing his binocular-strap leash

Tropical storm Rafael put a damper on our afternoon plans with forecasts of torrential rain and flooded roads. With nothing else scheduled, we gave the beach search one more try. And curled up against a concrete wall was the black and white dog, the hound’s friend!

Up and down the beach again, we talked to lifeguards and park rangers who knew the perro cremito we were searching for. He and the black and white dog were always together, they explained, but thunderstorms such as those from the previous night often drove away stray dogs to seek shelter.

The black and white dog had moved to the shade of a big tree. With a few coaxing words, this time he plopped on the ground, head between his paws, and looked up at us. We petted him for a while before deciding to try a makeshift leash. Binocular straps over the head went well and he followed us reluctantly around the park. We started calling him Rafael. He walked around, plopped down, even got a little playful. But still no hound dog.

Rafael in a free-spirited moment

We hung out under the tree debating what to do. We were leaving before dawn the next day. Was I really going to try to get Rafael into our car and find an open vet’s office? Then do what with him overnight? How much was this all going to cost? We have three dogs already. Hearts can expand infinitely, houses can’t. Four young male dogs living together? But even though Rafael seemed relatively OK (if you overlooked the skinniness and the missing fur) we couldn’t help thinking the sweet guy was unprotected from going the way of so many other homeless dogs—hit by a car, the victim of meanness, disease or starvation.

Then a shout came from the other side of the park and a ranger shooed the hound dog in our direction! At the sight of him, Rafael escaped his makeshift leash and bounded over to his friend with more excitement than we thought him capable of, giddy with the reunion. In daylight, the hound dog was even sicker than we had thought. Despite being very young, he seemed lethargic and weak. His skin was coming off in flakes with hardly any fur left to tell that he was caramel-colored. He was hot to the touch and open sores showed on his feet and the top of his head where his mange was the worst.

Carmelito in the car

Our decision had been made. The hound (now Carmelito) followed us happily to the car again, where this time he placidly allowed himself to be picked up and put in the back seat, and Rafael did the same.

Adri miraculously helped us find an open vet’s office. I tried taking Carmelito in first but Rafael scratched and barked frantically at the car window at the sight of us leaving. Dragging the two petrified dogs behind me, I stumbled into the vet’s office with leashes wrapping around my legs. Rafael promptly lifted his leg against the column in the waiting room to the amusement of two seated women holding blanket-wrapped Chihuahuas.

Rafael and Carmelito were stunned at the newness of everything. Plastic chairs. A pop machine. A cat in a carrier. Carmelito shivered in the air conditioning and they both sought constant reassurance.

Reassurance at the vet’s office

Once in with the vet, Rafael got popped up onto the exam table first. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t nip at us in fear, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to be mean. The vet took his vitals and pronounced the missing fur to be a flea allergy. Great news – no mange. Once vaccinated, blood samples taken, he was done.

Carmelito was a different story. Rafael propped his feet up on the table to watch his exam. Carmelito had a temperature of 105 degrees from a skin infection related to his mange so he couldn’t even be vaccinated. The good news was his mange is hereditary and therefore non-contagious (yikes! hadn’t even thought of that). But he was also positive for ringworms and conjunctivitis. He couldn’t travel anytime soon.

We agreed that the vet would board the dogs until either a rescue group could hold them or they could be shipped. I left exhausted and emotional, grateful that they’re both receiving good care but with no clear plan for bringing them back.

~~~

Fast-forward two days, an update from the vet. When they tried to put the dogs into separate kennels, Rafael promptly escaped but didn’t run away. They found him curled up in front of Carmelito’s run a few hours later. While both dogs are heartworm negative, Rafael has anaplasmosis—a tick-borne illness like Lyme’s disease—and also cannot travel for two weeks since his immune system is compromised.

Waiting to be examined

We still don’t know how everything will unfold. The transportation logistics are very complicated, and we’re full of equal parts hope, frustration and confusion. We could foster them for a while in a pinch, but five dogs are too many for us to love well in the long-term. Our fabulous local rescue group can help find them new homes but then they’re with people we don’t know, and perhaps not adopted together. What if their new families just put them in outdoor kennels with little human contact? What if they let them run away? They’ll both need special care getting used to being inside, getting used to cats (do they chase them? we don’t know), not to mention ongoing vet care… They’re both afraid of everything right now and so desperate for approval and love.

Napping in the car

We wonder if we’re crazy sometimes, but we made a commitment to them when we took them off the beach, and we can’t look back. It’s only two dogs, after all, but this is a chance for them to find families and lead healthy happy lives. I’ve never put so much energy and money into dogs that I’m not going to keep and the effort has connected me to them in a way that makes letting go very hard.

I’m sure I’ll learn something important from all this.

Updates to follow.

Satos

Puerto Rico became our vacation destination when Olga was invited to speak at the International Association of Forensic Nurses’ Scientific Assembly in Fajardo. We’ll both go! We’ll practice our Spanish. We’ll bring along our goddaughter and have a blast.

The first thing I noticed was the heat. (Do they employ many weather forecasters? Except for when a hurricane threatens, every day is a gorgeous 80 degrees with occasional showers.) Beautifully-dressed people (I’ve never felt so frumpy). Lizards everywhere. Really, truly aquamarine water, just like in the movies. Lots of noise and chaos compared to rural Wisconsin. With elections right around the corner, campaign party cars toured neighborhoods, blasting boisterous music and proclaiming their candidates’ virtues.

Then I started to notice the dogs. Dogs trotting down the highway. Others less fortunate, recently dead. All shapes and sizes, all colors, looking for food in alleyways or darting through traffic or snoozing in corners. One brave scruffy fellow napped in a shallow pothole. Another little guy with very short legs and disproportionately tall ears lay underneath a traffic sign. A deep dark scar ran across his forehead (a car, I wondered? or worse?) and he gave me a blank stare when I approached.

We bought dog food, thinking the least we could do is help a couple of dogs not have to scavenge that day. Most dogs were too skittish for me to approach, or I couldn’t read their body language well enough to tell if they meant to be friendly, so we placed piles of kibble strategically and hoped for the best.

One night on our way back from a beautiful kayak trip, we saw two skinny dogs sleeping on the sidewalk outside of a gated vacation community. I hopped out, dog food in hand. A black and white one warily kept his distance but I could tell that he was missing fur in patches. The other one, a hound mix with floppy ears and a long skinny tail, seemed to have full-body mange, all crusted over and swollen. But he came right up to me and when I bent to say hello, planted little kisses on my chin. He seemed so happy to be noticed that he completely ignored the kibble and followed me down the sidewalk back to the car, wagging his tail hopefully. We drove away, heartbroken.

Back at the hotel, five dogs loitered in the courtyard. Two playful puppies, all legs and ears, scampered and barked at us just out of arms’ reach. Their mother slunk away into the bushes and we left more caches of food around the perimeter, hoping nobody shooed them away before they could eat.

That evening, I started doing research about homeless dogs in Puerto Rico. Turns out that despite all the loving people working to spay and neuter and care for satos (“sato” is slang for street dog), some estimate the number of homeless dogs to exceed 200,000—clearly no match for the resources. There seems to be a two-pronged effort. Some are spaying and neutering homeless dogs, even offering assistance to pet owners who can’t afford the process. Others are rescuing dogs off beaches and streets and shipping them to the continent for adoption.

We donated online to several groups (here’s how you can do the same)…

Protecting Animals in Eastern Puerto Rico (PARE)

Amigos de los Animales

Island Dog

Save a Sato

The Sato Project

…but I couldn’t stop thinking about the little hound. No way was I taking him to an overburdened shelter with a euthanasia rate of 97%. And the rescue groups were already so overwhelmed that their best advice to tourists in my situation was to take the dog home.

(Read part 2 here.)

Hello friends!

Hello, Mirasol Farm fans and friends. Not sure I want to start a full-fledged blog, but for now I’ll tell an evolving story of two street dogs in Puerto Rico who stole our hearts and who might be on their way here to start new lives.

Maybe later we’ll get back to talking about organic farming and herbal skincare.