Tale of the lost pony

 

Well, all right then.  The sun has crested the hill.  I’ve done my chores.  I’ve added nectar to the two hummingbird feeders, filled the three bowls with kittie kibble, and tossed a bunch of alfalfa into the corral for the horses.  I’ve brewed a cup of hot tea, and it’s time to tell a story.

As pets, horses can be a big expense.  Aside from the joy of admiring these handsome huge creatures and getting the occasional affectionate face hugs from them, they need to offer more to make it worth it. One should be able to climb up their backs and be carried out into the day.

Patas Blancas has been through various efforts by three different people to train him, in his four years. Lack of continuity has been our downfall.  It is high time that he cooperate and accept the saddle and bit.  In fact, he does accept certain people on his back.  But to give a good ride is yet beyond his reach.  He is willful.  A good horse will not only accept a rider, but will agree to also work together with the rider to accomplish a mutual goal.  Although he is healthy, and in the spring he was even fat, I have been negligent in his care.  I have made a firm commitment to turn over a new leaf.

Each morning at dawn I separate him from his filly, and lead him to a small enclosure.  Knowing a hungry horse cannot think of anything but food, I give each of them a small portion of alfalfa.  I keep the filly in the corral so that she will not be a distraction to him.  I go back in the house for my morning prayers and first cuppa.

My theory is that in fifteen minutes a day, he will slowly learn to understand and accept basic commands.  I lead him in moves around the 25 foot long rectangle, on a rope, and at the end of each revolution he is rewarded with a slice of apple. 

One day I was returning from a shopping trip to town, when I saw a yearling colt standing in the road, at my fence, communicating with my two horses.  I left the gate open, and he wandered in.  I had no idea who he was or where he came from, but wandering free on the road could not be a safe option for him.  I did not put him in the corral with the horses, but left him free to give them time to adjust to each other.

I started putting notices on my Facebook page, knowing that a few local women followed it.  No one responded.  For three days, I wrote reminders that the little guy was still here, waiting for his owner.  I went around asking if anyone knew of a missing pony.  I found out where the center for registered brands is located, in Canatlan, and went there.  The young man took a copy of the horse’s photo and said he would end out a notice to his list.  Days passed, and still nothing. 

Pony walks up to the fence and goes nose to nose with the filly for a moment.  Then suddenly she draws back and whinnies; an unseen message passed between them, and she did not like it. 

When they are all freely grazing around the two acres here, the pony keeps his distance.  When the pair go down the embankment to the riverbed pasture, he follows along behind them at a safe distance.  They all spend hours down there grazing.

They all three come back up and continue grazing.  If the pony gets too chummy, Patas lunges for his neck.  If he gets too close to the filly, she aims a hind kick at him.  I feel sorry for him.  It looks like they are not accepting him.

Sometimes he goes down to the riverbed alone.  I might bring him his morning rations of alfalfa down there, where he won’t have to fight the othr two for it.  The undergrowth is so thick there that I can walk the length of the area and see no sign of him.  He senses my presence, and before long reveals himself to me.   

One rumor had it that a woman at a ranch called La Luz was missing a horse.  Not knowing where that was, I drove to Rancho Seco, the nearest town down the road and heavily invested in horses.  I drove slowly down the dusty roads looking for someone to ask.  One old man sat on a stone under the eaves; I asked him; no.  I drove on a little further, and saw a bent old man leaning on a cane in the street in front of a car and a house.  He said he knew of this place.  As he described its location, towards the town of Sauceda, I knew that was too far a distance for this horse to wander lost. 

The untamed horse now walks after me, looking for food.  He follows me to the stable, and I close the door behind him.  My firewood guy rides up on his motorbike, asking about the sale of my two horses.  We agree on a price, at the moment he has the money but it won’t stay in his pocket long.  I am not ready to part with them.  I show him the pony and ask if he recognizes him.  He does not, but while the guy is here and the pony is enclosed in the stable, we put a harness on him.  First the guy makes a lasso of a thick rope, and tosses it over the resisting head of the pony.  It slides nicely into place, and we have the means to hold him still while we put the harness on him. 

This week the moon is full.  I am awakened by a strange noise, a thud.  I put on slippers and walk outside into the moonlight.  The two horses in the corral are close to the fence.  The pony is just a few feet away, standing by the locked stable where the hay is kept.  I walk up to him and talk with him a bit.  The still night air is magical.  He remains very still, relaxed, aglow with moonlight.  I freely pat his nose, and then his neck.  It was a tender moment.  My filly had been with me a month before she would let me touch her like that.

After a week, I heard that Tocho, here in El Pozole, had lost a pony.  I drove to the last known residence and left a note in the door.  I returned the next day, and found the note untouched.  I knew he had another place, out towards the Sierra.  One time when my horses had wandered off from the river onto the other bank, he had put them within his gates and, after a day, came on his motorcycle to tell me I should keep my horses in check, they were causing damage, the usual tirade.  that day I jumped in my car and followed him the few miles out.  There I saw my horses out in the distance on a slight hill, mixing with the cattle.  There were no damaged fences or crops in sight.  My horses do not rampage.  I called them to me, they ambled down the hillside in their own good time, and walked out the gate I had opened for them.  They returned the way they came, to the riverbed, across, through our fence and up the embankment to their corral.  That’s how I knew that Tocho had another place.

This day I drove back out to that place, as best as I could remember it.  In the dusty roadway there are various tracks leading off into other fenced pasture lands.  I could not find the gate and hillside I had in my memory.  Frustrated, I turned around and headed home.  I had not gone but a few yards when a motorcyclist, passing on the left, greeted me.  I recognized him as the youngest son of Tocho, the youth who had first tried to train Patas Blancas.  I threw my arm out the window and hailed him to stop, as I fumbled with the other hand to switch off the radio. 

I told him I found a pony.  A broad smile melted his face.  “You found my horse!” 

I drove back home, and waited for him.  After a while he returned, with a length of thick rope.  While I waited, I went down to the riverbed side of my property, where the three horses were.  The pony followed me up the embankment, no doubt in hopes that I would have some alfalfa for him.  I got him into the small stable, and closed the door. 

I showed the kid to the stable.  He went inside, and fashioned a halter with the rope he brought.  He removed the harness I had put on him.  While the kid went to bring up his motorcycle, I held the horse still and calm.  I said my goodbyes to him.  He is a sweet pony.  The kid led the horse away behind his motorcycle.  I thought my horse would be happy to be rid of him, this intrusion on his well-ordered life as king of the pack.  I was wrong!

Patas was in the corral as the pony was led away.  He went ballistic!  He whinnied angrily.  He galloped down the length of the corral towards the gate, whinnying noisily.  He galloped back and again, at full speed, to the corral gate, and back again towards the road.  He did it again, dancing and bucking.  It was quite a show.

I think I learned something that day about the nature of the horse.  He had put the colt through days of hazing, teaching him lessons he needed about his place in the herd.  Patas was not rejecting the pony, though it might have seemed that way to me.  As the leader of the herd, he was nurturing him, teaching him the way of horses, teaching him his place in the pecking order.

I am always humbled, when the horses teach me something, increasing my awareness of the nature of these most noble of beasts.  I have waited literally all my life to finally realize my dream to have my own horse companion.  I cherish every day, knowing our time together is so short. 

Here is Cinderella at dusk

Blancas and me, signing off

Life update Feb 2020

Life update 3 years

The last three years in China was fun and educational.  In the end, the bakery was a money pit.  I arrived back to America broke.  Fortunately I had invested what was left of my failing savings in 2008 into a house in Florida.  Do you know about Reverse Culture Shock?  Have you experienced it? 

In that fog, (was it 2017?) I attempted to sell the house.  In the end I did manage to extract enough to serve me as a cushion, my medical emergency fund, a bulwark against my approaching old-age debilitations.

You may recall that I spent 2006 in India.  There I connected with a vague acquaintance from the time when I studied with the Tibetan lamas.  He introduced me to a retirement community designed to bring together Western students of the Buddha dharma in retirement, the focal point being a meditation hall.  I had sent considerable money to him in Mexico to secure me a lot and begin to build my house, which I designed.

He had told me that the shell was finished.  When I first saw it, the outer brick walls had been constructed, but where there should be a sliding door there was a gaping opening, through which a couple of horses and the occasional calf took refuge from the climate.  The floor was littered with fresh and aged poop etc.  Birds had nested, too.

A big chunk of that medical fund went into finishing off that house.  Far more than was prudent, given that the infrastructure was of such inferior material.  Curtains I made and put over the windows blew in the breeze.  This area is prone to wind storms, the gusts seem at least 80 mph.  It has knocked down my gas tank (breaking the valve which resulted in a cold fog as the gas rushed out in the middle of the night).  The cement roof has begun to cave in.  One day the rain inside the house was so intense, I left and went into the village to spend the day elsewhere.  There was no where I could sit or stand and not be dripped on.  Eventually we painted a waterproof coating on the roof, and installed a beam across the living room ceiling to forestall the cave-in.

I live on a hectare of land, between orchards, oat and corn fields, and pasture land. It is about 6,000 ft high in the Sierra Madres.  This valley is perhaps one mile wide.  The mountain ridges that enclose it are low, maybe 800 feet.  It runs mostly north/south, which makes for gorgeous and ever-changing sunrises and sunsets.  The Fall is rainy season, where the land is lush green and a morning mist shrouds it all in mystery.  The rest of the year is dry, prairie-like.  A trickle of a river meanders through it in a deep gorge where it passes through my land.

It is a beautiful and isolated place to live.  If only a community had grown here, it would idyllic (even though retired Tibetan Buddhists are eccentric people, not the mellowed out hippies you might wish to find here where weed grows freely).  Sadly, the community is a bust.  The meditation hall was never built. There is no spiritual community here.  Two kms away there is a tiny village occupied mostly by widows, very provincial people.  My home is too far for any of the ladies to walk to.  None drive.  The widowers ride bicycles, but none are inclined to risk the scandal of visiting me here unchaperoned. Since we are in this valley, a small dip of land, the cell phone reception in this small cluster of homes in the village is zero.  People walk in the street if they wish to use a phone.  This inhibits easy intercourse.  I can go weeks without talking to anyone.

I did purchase a wifi plan, using its own box and SIM card, to provide myself with internet at my home.  I get great reception, in this wide-open spot.

One house, immediately adjoining mine, is for sale.  For a mere $10,000 US you can own your own 10 meter wide brick house.  The brick walls are painted but not finished, the floor is not tiled.  It has a functioning kitchen and bathroom with gas water heater and well water.

There is another brick house, with a large floor layout, that is nothing more than a shell.  The fourth house structure is two stories, the roof room being the meditation room.  A Canadian guy paid for its construction and visits it twice a year.  He is a bachelor, a recluse, very awkward.  He doesn’t like to do outdoor work, is not handy at all with tools; not much support to the ongoing task of maintaining the land and infrastructure.  I have ongoing problems with the well and water distribution system. I am trying to tame the land; the ‘orchard’ has twelve surviving peach saplings, at last count.  All other trees I’ve planted have died, probably for lack of water.

I am a cat person, as you may recall.  One of the nearby farms had a lot of cats, before they got a dog.  I took one of those kittens, an unusual calico with gray instead of black as the third color.  She proved to be sterile (for a couple of years, anyway).  She cycled in and out of heat but produced nothing.

When I moved onto the land, there was a white dog living on the adjoining farm.  The farmer lives in town, which is about 15 minutes away.  She was like a Maltese, but very bedraggled.  She even had a bald spot on her neck, which turned out to be from scratching fleas.

This dog, which after procrastination I finally name ‘Chula’, attached herself to me.  I tried not to adopt her, but she tried harder and won.  I cleaned her up, she proved to be very pretty, and the folks in the village were quite surprised to see how she turned out.  I had her for two years, before she got separated from me in the city of Durango, in a Sam’s Club parking lot.  At first I felt relieved of the responsibility, but after a couple of months I started missing her a lot.  She had taken a one-month road trip with me November 2018, when I drove to Vermont to empty out my storage there.  She was a trooper.

Stray females would wander on to the property, lovely dogs each one, but large animals.  I turned them all away.  Then a villager handed me a tiny white bundle.  It would have been rude to turn her away.  Of course, she could not compare with nor replace Chula.  I named her Peanut.  She was a pup, a bit wild.  Not like the sedate Chula, who already had maturity and a couple of litters behind her when she came to me.

I felt ambiguous towards Peanut. Then she got pregnant, her first cycle.  Way too young for pups.  She turned out to be a terrible mother.  She didn’t like nursing her pups.  The milk dried up after four weeks, she barely had enough to feed them.  They could wander off in the house and get stuck somewhere, and scream, and she would sleep on.  She never learned to grab the scruff of the neck to move them out of danger.

When it came time to find her a sire, of the dogs that hung out here, I chose a black one that had a similar body but long legs and pointed ears.  The week that she was in heat was a lot of work, beating off the big dogs and isolating the two small ones to court.  He managed to impregnate her, and so began our nine-week wait.

The owner is employed as the farm manager to a large piece near mine.  He is a cool guy; I think he lives in Canatlan (the town 15 minutes from here).  I don’t know anything more about him.  He has a gentle smile and demeanor.   Before the pups were born he walked over to my place and said he would like one of the pups.  His dog, the sire, had died from dog-fight wounds.  We hoped for a black one to replace him.

The pups were finally born.  Three of them came, two boys and a girl, but no black one.  Two look like Boxer-colored  twins, and one white one.  The twins are boy/girl.  The white one was the biggest.  As they grew, it became obvious that the white one would have the long legs of the sire, the other two would be squat sausages like the mother.  At the moment, seven weeks along, the twins really do look like little sausages, but I’m sure as they get bigger they will develop a more normal physique.

Meanwhile, as they grow older, the white one is transforming into a heart breaker.  She is not white after all.  A feint shade about the color of champagne is emerging.  He is no Alpha male, he sleeps a lot, and is affectionate.  I thought that would be the dog Julian would choose to replace his, but now I doubt it.  I think that if he takes any of them, he will choose the Alpha male twin.  I hope it works out that way, because I am leaning towards getting rid of all of them except Champ, my champagne dog.

Remember that gray calico?  When Peanut was two weeks pregnant, don’t ask me how, the ‘sterile’ cat got pregnant.  So now I have her, five kittens, three pups, a dog and another stray cat. The non-resident neighbor farmer has a plow team that I also interact with.  A beautiful black horse, not trained for riding, and a skittish jackass.  I could write a long essay about our adventures, but I won’t here.

You write me about the men in your lives; for me, it’s the animals that share my love.

This life is not fulfilling; I need a small circle of friends for support.  On the other hand, if I follow the pattern of forebears, I should have about five more years of lucidity before the Alzheimer’s kicks in. I think to move to either Morelia or Oaxaca, each deeper south into the Mexican heartland.  But then what do I do with my investment here?  Who would buy this house!  People in Durango, an hour away, do come this way to look for a second, country home.  But none have stopped to inquire here at my door. To complicate things, the hectare is owned by a non-profit association.  I am trying to buy my piece of it, but that is complicated.  So I could have to walk away from my considerable investment.  My monthly pension is not enough to live in a city, I think, without the supplement of the proceeds from here.  If I am right about having only five more lucid years, do I really want yet one more stressful move and re-acclimation?

It is unfortunate that after my long and wandering life I have never acquired a friend to join me here as companion.  I think, one good buddy who drinks coffee and plays board games is all it would take. 

So, here I am.  If you ever get to traveling this way, you will find me here.

Pets

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the pets

The nights are cool here, but not freezing yet.  I got busy with the chainsaw that Jhampa brought us, and cut up most of the firewood I collected in the spring.  I have a good supply now, enough to take the chill off the coldest nights, but not enough to be self-indulgent. Guy's visit has been pushed back a month. Jhampa tells me that Armando will be coming, but I have no idea when.  I wrote Armando and asked him to call me the day before, so I am sure to be here and not in Durango.  I'm going to work with him to find a good plumber.  He seems to have better access to the tradesmen in Canatlan. The leaky pipe from the water tank is getting worse again.  That whole piece needs to be replaced. Our neighbor to the right has two horses he uses for plowing.  One is a jackass, kinda wild.  We enjoyed having the horses foraging our fields for the past couple of months, but Juan moved the horses out when I told him I think they are finished cleaning up the place; I didn't look for them. I suppose they were down by the river.  But yesterday they were back again.  Blacky is in our field tied to Juan's fence, with not much to nibble on underfoot.  Jacky is roaming, having better luck at finding fodder.  Blacky was clearly happy to see me, whinnying until I went to him for a talk. I had an entourage. I picked up Peanut from Sylvia's on Thursday morning after returning from Ben's wedding in Georgia, as you know.  She was in heat.  The black dog had waited for her the full five days, as far as I could tell, and he got first crack at her.  The next door neighbor Lalo's two big dogs also took up vigil, hoping against hope.  Soon the house was in full siege. They jump up on the doors and windows to keep an eye on the object of their lust.  Peanut is no longer free to roam and romp as she used to.  I carry her in my arms to the car and take her up the farm road.  The small black dog follows us afoot, but the other two do not.  She runs freely there.  I let him mount her a few times, but not anymore.  I think the deed is done.  We'll have puppies between Christmas and New Years.  My clothes take a toll.  The big ones jump up on me while I carry her to the car, and tear my clothes, and muddy them if there's been any moisture.  I do a lot of laundry these days. Even when she remains in the house, they follow me.  Now that her desire has wanted somewhat, I walk her on a short leash here on our land, and carry a four-foot long pole.  When she needs privacy I swing the stick 360°, until she is done.  It keeps them at bay.  Gradually I am letting the three of them get closer to them.  She wags her tail and enjoys ‘kissing’ them.  But as soon as one gets close to her tail, I poke them with the stick. I had to turn to the internet to find hope.  How long will this last?  How long is gestation?  The answers were vague and conditional, but I take comfort where I can.  It could last a few days to 21, but the average is 12.  Okay, seven down, five to go.  Actually, I think she is coming out of it.  She no longer seems so eager to receive the males.  Gestation is nine weeks, which brings us to the end of December.  At least I know that the puppies have only one father, so they won't be so varied.  I don't know how that effects size of litter. This is all an experiment, a learning experience.  She'll be spayed after this.  I have midwifed many kittens (and a couple of puppy litters too, but only the delivery phase), so I was curious to round out my midwifing experience with domestic animals. I am slowly putting in a bed of alfalfa.  I've removed the corn stalks from the 6 by 8 ft plot.  Next I will till and level it.  Apparently November is the month to seed alfalfa, so I'll get it done.  Then we can have green smoothies.  You might look up some recipes for healthy drinks, and join in.  Here they like alfalfa and cucumber mixes.  Yummy on a hot hot day!  I want to have seeds for alfalfa sprouts, but YouTube videos tell me they are very hard to collect, being very small.  Still I have to try.  I think I mentioned that alfalfa is a perenniel crop, so we can cut it and it keeps coming back.  The horses will like hands full of that; easier to keep on hand than carrots. Would you believe, some animal likes to eat peat moss!  That 55 lb  bale had been broken into, and an eighth of it was gone.  I thought it was the horses, but I checked the next day and more had been eaten and the horses are gone.  I repackaged it and stored it more securely. The rototiller blade got bent, I don’t know how.  I had it straightened, and now I can do the last tilling of the peach ‘orchard’ (if 12 young trees constitute an orchard), and the alfalfa plot. It is pleasant working on these cool days, although the sun can still be intense at midday. Peanut seems a bit stir crazy, so I’ve opened the front door (and locked the screen door) so she can visit with her entourage a little. She sits there, in the pool of sunlight, still casting pleading eyes my way.  Just another week, Sweetheart; hold on.

Retire to Mexico

It's been a long time in silent exile.  Maybe not long to you, since I am out of mind, but for me counting the hours, days, weeks, months without familiar social interaction, three years since arriving here has seemed like forever; a lifetime.  A prolonged time of waiting for the other shoe to drop, as I try to build a home in a wilderness..

Once again we have arrived at rainy season.  It is late this year.Some crops have failed, including my own experiment in farming, a crop of oats.  My fields are green with weeds.

I had been chronicling since arriving here three years ago.  I have profiled for you a number of the most familiar local characters.  I was waiting to polish each one before posting it.  Two years of writing about Mexico have vanished, digital code wiped away by computer malfunction.  Three more years of the book on my bakery experience, plus all the files of recipes from the bakery, all gone.  The Cosmos is telling me I am not to bother my silly head with authoring a book. No one cares about my quirky life; it is just one of millions.

Two years ago the rain was so plentiful that the flat bridge that crosses our 'river' at the entrance to our village was overflowing with maybe two feet of water.  Villagers have to cross that bridge to get to the highway and the bus stop.  The old people hung back, waiting and hoping for a kind neighbor to stop their truck and offer a lift the twenty feet across.  The river was swift and scary.  This year, in spots across our valley the creek has dried up completely.  The driest I have seen it yet.

I came here to join a community of meditators, others following the path of Buddhist compassion and lovingkindness.  No one else got the vision; I am alone.  The village is about two kilometers away from the tiny village of El Pozole.    I am in the midst of orchards and pasture land.  My companions are the birds,  dogs, cats, horses.

One dog in particular is worth remembering.  She died only yesterday.  Petunia is mostly pit bull.  A guy tried to foist her onto me, as just the protection I needed on my isolated farm. He had found her in the street all skin and bones, and 'rescued' her.  But he was not interested in adopting her. She is a kind, gentle, affection playful senior of 8 years.  As much as I loved having her around, she saw the place my little Maltese mix had in the home.  The little one sits on my lap, goes in the car with me everywhere, is generally pampered.  And so Petunia tries to climb on my lap, when I am sitting in my recliner watching TV.  One night she came home with a lame hind leg; we never discovered the nature of it.  It could be a sprain, or arthritis, or who knows.  It makes it harder for her to climb up onto the recliner. At 55 pounds, she makes a large impact on my small home.  She tracks mud in, jumps on blankets, rubs against clothes, causing more laundry and mopping.  After about a year, the limp equally mysteriously disappeared.

She is a vagabond, a nomad.  There is a home in the village that maintains kibble for her.  This home is the home to a number of dogs; people bring their puppies to Sylvia.  She always finds homes, except when her own kids or grand kids adopt the puppy. Petunia would lie in the sun in front of the house.  She would protect the little dogs against the big digs.  She is very protective.

She would roam.  Across the street from Sylvia is a house being renovated.  In this village family properties are in clusters, so the three houses across the street belonged to her three aunts, only one of whom is still alive.  One empty house is being renovated by a son-in-law of the deceased sister.  He lives in LA.  He is an alcoholic, a retired person who never quite grew up emotionally, being the pampered youngest child of a large brood.  He escapes from an unhappy marriage by coming to El Pozole many months at a time, supposedly to remodel the house.  When his wife comes to visit her cousins for a few weeks a year, she is sad at how he has destroyed her childhood home.  These two love Petunia, and try to care for her when they are around.  Petunia feels adrift.  She comes to me for chats, and to just lie unmolested in the sun.

About a year ago she had an ulcerated mammary.  After Jose returned to LA, I took her to the vet.  He cut the mammary.  He also took out her uterus, saying that we were dealing with cancer and that the cancer originated in the uterus.

Last week Petunia came to me to show me her wound.  An ulcer had erupted, between nipples.  As soon as she came in the door, after looking me dolefully in the eye, she laid down and showed me her wound.  It was leaking like a sieve.  Blood was pouring out.  I cleaned it up, tried to bandage it, put antibiotic cream on it, but it bled all night soaking through her bed.  I took her back to Jose and Marisela and suggested they get medical attention.

Later in the day we texted; they said they had an appointment three days away.  I was beside myself with this news; I saw it as an emergency.  But I do not have the money for Petunia's care; this couple from California does.  I was helpless to intervene.  When the appointment came I went with Jose to keep the appointment.  It was a new vet; Jose said it was a cousin.  We waited an hour.  We phoned. There was no vet.  The phone number written on the wall was a Durango number.  I suggested that perhaps the vet's main practice was in Durango, and he came to Canatlan certain days.  From long experience with Jose I know that he is about the worst communicator I have ever known, one of those who talks but doesn't listen.

We went to the vet who did the cutting a year earlier.  The qualified vet was not there; only his father was in attendance.  He cleaned up the wound and sewed it up. I was startled when a spurt of blood came from the wound.  At this point we were still thinking that Petunia had impaled herself on barbed wired; this spurt made me question that scenario.  We were yet to learn that the cancer was still active inside her.

A few days later they texted me that they were taking Petunia down to town to have the ulcer cut out.  I texted back, "Get a second opinion" 

Within the hour we were in my car headed to Durango.  We found a vet.  He explained that she probably needed a complete mastectomy on the right side of her body.  To ensure that it would not spread further (we had no measure of how widespread the cancer was) she would need chemotherapy. To do nothing would be to allow the cancerous ulcer to grow until it killed her.  It was just a matter of time, and a lot of pain.  Because Petunia is a quiet dog, using barking only to communicate to dogs, not to humans, the humans presumed she was in no pain.  But when she would visit me she would look into my eyes for minutes at a time, trying to tell me about it.  Our choices were to spend hundreds of dollars on a now nine year old dog, in a situation where she could not get adequate hospice care given her nomadic ways; let the disease take its course until she died; or a mercy killing.

I held my own counsel and let them talk it through.  I knew it would be easy to find a gun back in the village, and quickly dispatch the situation.  Jose was of the same mind, but Marisela was in tears thinking of the dog's termination by whatever means. 

The next day Petunia was put to sleep in Canatlan.  Early in the day I visited them to drop something off they had left in the car.  Jose tried to persuade me to come with him.  The job did not need the two of us, he was a chicken.  Marisela was no better.  I offered to take her on my own, but Jose did not like that.  It is just as well, because I had a lot of work to do on my farm.  I said my goodbyes to her, and that is the last I will see of my good friend Petunia.

Because of the topography, I guess, there is no cell service in homes.  If someone wants to use their phone they must go outside into the dirt street.  This prevents me from developing closer relations to the other seniors in the village.  No casual chatting by phone.  None of them drive, so none has ever been out here to visit me, or see what a house I have built.

The exception is Berta, but she is worthy of her own story.

I did eventually manage to get a wifi box from TelCel, the main cell provider in Mexico.  Through that I get to watch Netflix and Prime Video.  I also have a satellite, dish, that dishes up old movies and old NCIS.  I see adds for Bull, but this shows after I have gone to bed.

I am so desperate for companionship that I have continued to talk to my boyfriend in Chongqing, China to come live with me.  He is a city guy; he would be miserable isolated on the farm. He would also have to give up all his government pension and benefits.  He professes his undying love for me, but is no fool.  He would treat me well if I moved there.  It is tempting.

My home is beautiful and comfortable.  I have a guest bedroom and bath.  In a narrow valley being bordered on the east and west by hills, the views can be breathtakingly beautiful.

Exiled in Paradise

Spaying Dog

Spaying Dog (Chula)

                There are a number of veterinarians in Canatlan.  Jim had experience with some of them, but I have learned to discount his experiences as relevant.  Not speaking Spanish, he often gets things wrong. On the main thoroughfare that leads into the town there is a block of wide avenue.  The hospital is on one side, the other side is lined with shops of all variety.  There is diagonal parking, yet there is seldom an empty space.  This is where I struck up a friendship with CeCe, the nurse who runs the ‘Angel’ Pharmacy.

                I had been checking into the veterinary shop there for many weeks, hoping to find a brush for Dog’s fur.  The old man implied that his son the vet isn’t there; he might bring brushes with him.  So I learned that the vet is a younger man, who is not there often.  One day I was lucky enough to pass by when the doctor was in.  I chatted with him for a while, and in the end agreed to bring Dog in to be spayed. 

                We had a mix up about where the surgery would take place.  I waited at the corner near my apartment for half an hour, expecting him to pick me up.  I finally called him, and he said he was at his shop waiting for me.  We walked the few blocks in minutes, and the process began.

                He began the anesthetic immediately.  I held her until she was limp.  He was actually going to do the surgery right there in his shop, behind the counter! 

                As we talked I learned that he had worked for many years in San Miguel Allende.  He was impressed with what the foreign community had organized there.  On a monthly basis, all the vets and techs would assemble at one facility and in an assembly line, sterilize a hundred dogs in a day. 

                I thought that if he had that much experience, Dog was in good hands.  Let him operate wherever he wanted.

                I went back for her about an hour later, and carried her home.  She slept easily.  He had given me pain killers and antibiotics for her, but I did not use them.  The wound seemed clean.  Sure enough, as days passed, she was obviously pain and infection free.

                A week later Jhampa came to town.  He observed her wound, and agreed that this was a good doctor.  When his Shi Tzus were spayed, the wound was ugly red from sub cutaneous bleeding.

                It will be months before her belly hair grows back.  Until then, her big teats hang down for all to see.  Days later I ran into the vet again, and I asked him if he had left the uterus in.  I believed that, like humans, the uterus produced necessary hormones.  He informed me that the latest research shows that in fact, this is not the case with dogs.  Leaving the uterus in can result in cancer of the teats. 

                I asked the vet to estimate her age.  From the history that I had gleaned from Juan, I figured her to be around 5 years.  Juan had told me that she had had at least two rounds of pups a year apart, she had been living there in the countryside for maybe three years, and that she was not a pup when she arrived.  The vet did not narrow it down beyond a span of from 3 to 6 years.  I was a little surprised, because when I spent time at the ‘Pet Resource Center’ in Brandon, Florida, the age of the stray dogs were always written down, as if the vet could pin point it.  Now I understand that these posted ages were vague estimates.  At any rate, now she can live out whatever years remain without going through the trials of puppy birth and all that it entails.

          The cost was almost as high as in the States.