Dog Refuge Work

I haven't written about the dog refuge work in a while. Although we can all say we are too busy with work or "doing" or catching up on Queen of the South on Netflicks, in truth, sometimes you just need some time to gain some perspective. Sometimes things are not pretty and they make us cry and so we need a little time for the heart to heal before we share it.

We ran several steralization clinics. In all, we had about 20 to 25 dogs spayed or neutered. It was the first clinic I was involved in. The process was amazing. Two vets work side by side doing two dogs at a time. Another vet tech and a helper weigh the dog, give them a shot to knock them out, and shave their little bellies. Before all this gets going, all of us go and round up dogs and check them. If they ahve been fixed, then they get to wear a lovely green ribbon necklace. We had gone before the vets to clean all the kennel spaces we had, so when the dogs were done, they can be laid down on cardboard to rest. Costs - we pay the vets 500 pesos each for their day, drugs are provided y an organization called APAOAX or Huelas de Ayuda, and the rest of the work is volunteer. Near the end of the day they steralized a pregnant female. The doctor's view was that better to have one steralized female than a non-steralized one AND all her pups, so they abort the puppies and fix the female. Paulina, one of the volunteers, burried the unborn babies. She was digging the hole as I drove away, exhausted and emotionally shattered.

Vet doing surgery on Espumita.

This girl was already done.

This little one is in recovery.

We built dog houses. These dogs had barely any shade, so one of the volunteers had an idea to build them dog houses to chill in, get out of the rain and the sun. We built them over four weeks, a total of 20 little chelters, I think. The dogs made me laugh a lot when we were building them. They would be in the little houses before they were built, trying to help with spacing, wood cuting. Those of us who built them laughed a lot, and sweat in the sun, and measured and remeasured and cut and drilled and cut ourselves on sheet metal.

Just Chillin'!

Front patio is a much desired location.

I brought my cousin Bianca to the dog refuge. I am always a little anxious bringing friends and family to the refuge. I pee in a bucket and wear clothes I would be generally OK with tossing out at the end of the day. I have come home with scratches that have gotten infected and left long scars, bite marks, scrapes and usually muddy and smelling like dog poop. The refuge is a long slow process, and I worry that people will come and think: this place is terrible. And it is, in some ways. And in other ways, it is a place where the dogs can live and eat and not be hit by cars or die of starvation. I have had friends cry and others be overwhelmed and stand there and just hold puppies. And then there are others that just love the dogs up while there and help shovel poop and are happy to go and have seen it. Bianca's issue was she only had two hands to love up the dogs, but the third one was happy for a leg hug.

All this puppy love and only two hands!

Are they really lining up for snuggles?

China died. China was my fave little wavy haired shy black furred girl. She would run away from me, but when I eventually caught her, she accepted the snuggle. A dog that went out for adoption, a big black god the adoptive family names Valentin, dies with blood coming out of his nose. He had a respitory infection. They tried antibiotics but waited too long. China had a cough and she died this last week. The vet has been to the refuge and was taking samples. Tia Migue had a cough medicine she has given in the past and I took a pic of the bottle and will wander down to the vet to talk to her today and see what can be done. The dogs are not all vaccinated, nor do they have their rabies shots. Put it on the list of things we need to do, but to good thing is that we had the vet in and are trying to address the issues. We can't have dogs adopted out and then die in someone's home. I was so sad, but I was happy Valentin was loved as an individual dog in the days he was with us here, and I did manage to love up China and give her a name. I am learning that saving them all is near impossible.

China and I. 

I ran over a dog. Well, actually, while I was turning around outside the refuge and it was pouring rain, a dog ran under the car and I did not notice, and Carlos was in the car (he usually watched to make sure there were no dogs under my car). I was heartbroken, and we went back on Tuesday with the vet and he went to the vet to get xrays. I have to go today and follow up and see what happened in the end. My heart is too raw, I cried the whole time I held him while the vet examined him and determined he was coming to her office. We used a strap as a make-shift muzzle and his yelp of pain when we moved him shattered my heart. But it also made me mad and determined. We need to get all the dogs inside and partitioned off for their safety, and we started that last week. That way we can also have people go in and adopt safely and not have dogs jumping all over them, and I can drive bags of dog food in and not be worried about running over dogs. Our plan is to also have an "intake" area for when people dump off dogs in the middle of the night, because people do that.

Carlos mixes cement as the Tia supervises.

Posts were put in by Don Feliciano, and we are putting in a cement base along the bottom to try to prevent the dogs from digging under the fence. Try.

The Refuge, with the beginning of a new division.

Work never ends, but sometimes my funds and my energy do. I spend money I shouldn't helping, buying, building. I spend gas money to get there and back. I spend time there when I should be working on 100 other things. We are a small group of people with help from the Municipality for food and water, but we are far from a place where we can just "go to clean", though we need that, too. However, a few folks have offered to help, and I now feel like I am in a place to engage that help. Many freinds have helped with money and I hope they will still find some room in their budgets to do that.

In my head, I have plans. So I am taking another page from Trina's advice book and I am going to write them down.