And then there were five. Dag, Winter...

The family, as it once was. From left to right: Rusty, Sam, Panchita, Sasha, Benny, Duncan, Winter.
June 19, 2016.
Only three of them are left today. 

When she came to us, the whole lower half of her body — from her waist to the toes of her hind legs — was completely bald. Her tail was a mess of scabs and patches of long, matted hairs. Of course, no one in the building wanted to pet her, or even feed her; unlike the other occasional strays that had wandered onto the company's parking lot lately, most of them recently abandoned and still looking good, no one wanted to encourage this raggedy mutt to stay.

Winter at the Amicorp building, August 26, 2010.
(Note that I framed the photo just so, in order to avoid showing her bald half. I posted this on Facebook that evening, captioned as "I need a home." Nope, no one was interested.)

So, on the evening of September 13th, having witnessed one more disgusted cringe at these intensely eager brown eyes, I let heart overcome reason and brought her home. She needed no encouragement to climb into the car; I opened the rear and called her ("Baby", or "doggie", or some such; she was still nameless then), patting the seat, and she jumped right in. 

Temporary, I repeated to myself as I drove. We'll get her healthy, and in a few months she'll be ready for a forever home. Once her hair grows back — her skin issues, as unsightly as they might seem to the untrained eye, probably weren't all that serious — people would see what I already knew, that this was a gorgeous dog, remarkably smart and with a sparkling personality, who would make a family somewhere immensely happy. All she needs is a few weeks of good food, good shampoo, good meds. 

After all, wasn't this the very reason why we had, just a few months before, bought our own house? So that we could provide a safe haven for dogs without pesky landlords giving us the evil eye? Yes. Yes, it was. 

She was mostly healthy; no heartworm, thank the dog gods, just a bit of tick fever, and the skin problem turned out to be a flea allergy — anti-flea shampoo was all she'd need to get rid of those. But it took months for her fur to grow back. Even three years later, her back end was still kind of scraggly. 

Winter (with Duncan and Rusty making faces) at the doggy beach in Jan Thiel, August 2013 — three years after she came to live with us. You can see how thin her fur was still then.

And by then, well, we were attached.

She was a difficult dog. A larger-than-life personality. And stubborn to match. She was the most aggressive of our dogs — up to that point, anyway. She bit the gardener once. She hated strangers. Taking her to the vet was an exercise in saintly patience. She bullied other dogs, stole food, even provoked a reactive and highly aggressive pitbull at the beach one day. (And barely escaped with her life. Did she learn from it? No, she walked away from that one — after the owner had managed to restrain her dog; I, of course, was useless — with head held high, ears perked up happily, and with a look in her eye that said, "Ha. You should see the other guy.") 

Winter at St. Joris with Benny and Jopie, November 28, 2017. This was the spot where that Pitbull encounter happened. Might even have been this same day.

She was better off here, with us, where she wasn't judged, or punished; where she'd be loved anyway, in spite of her misbehaviour — maybe even because of it. And she seemed to fit in the pack, somehow; Panchita, always the Alpha, seemed to know how to make her authority stand even for Winter. And Rusty, always calm and playful, became Winter's favorite sidekick. 

We didn't know how old she was. Throughout those first months of frequent vet visits, we came to the conclusion, based on her general health, that she must be around 5. She had obviously had several litters of puppies — who knows what happened to them — and her teeth were in terrible, terrible shape. A few were missing already, and several others so damaged they needed to be extracted. She probably has another five years, we were told. 

On the front porch, October 27, 2016. Clockwise, starting from bottom left:
Benny, Rusty, Winter, Sasha, Panchita, me.

Five years passed, and she was still going strong. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done. After another three, she started showing only faint signs of age. A bit of stiffness in the joints after walks, some more teeth that went missing or had to be taken out. And we suspected she might be losing her eyesight somewhat. But she was still feisty, full of life, and stiff joints or not, she still seemed to believe the world was hers and the rest of us just lived in it.

And then, about 2 years ago, Rusty had a seizure — and a week later, Winter had a suspiciously similar one. We did all the tests (the ones available here on this island), but couldn't find a cause. No damage done, it seemed; they were both fine afterwards, as happy and healthy as before. Phew, we thought, having no idea that it was the beginning of the end. 

The last time — according to photo record, anyway — that Rusty and Winter managed a hike.
St. Joris, May 2019.

Back in June this year, kidney failure was determined. For both of them. Rusty's was acute, but Winter's wasn't quite so bad, so we hoped — especially after Rusty declined so fast, and we had to put her down in July — that Winter would give us a few more months. Six, maybe. Maybe even a year (though the vet kind of winced at that). 

She didn't. Not because she didn't want to; she was feisty and full of life till the end. But that was her; we couldn't expect anything less. She hated weakness, and she was loath to show any herself, even when she should have. For her, it was always death or glory.

There was this one time, some five years ago, when I took her on a walk to this new beach I had heard of and wanted to find. (That's Curaçao, full of secret little coves everywhere.) I miscalculated the distance and parked way too far. We did find the beach, but by the time we started making our way back to the car, it had been over 2 hours — in the searing island heat. I was running low on water both for me and for the dogs, and we were all exhausted. 

Secret beach finding mission, November 30, 2017.
Gorgeous place, but the water was too rough for the dogs to do anything more than soak their paws in the surf. Which meant they didn't cool down much by the time we started back on the 1.5 hour hike to the car.

About halfway to the car — still about a kilometer left to go — Winter finally sat down in a scrap of shade from a thorny bush and refused to keep going. We rested for a bit, but with little shade available for the rest of us bigger folk, and with water down to the last inch in the container, the other dogs were eager to keep moving. So I picked her up and carried her. Oh, no, she was having none of that. She wriggled and bit until I put her down again. But she really just couldn't walk. So we did that dance — pick her up, struggle with her in my arms for some twenty steps, then set her down — almost all the way back. When we were close enough, maybe three hundred meters or so, I left her in a shady spot and power-walked with the other dogs to the car, then drove back to get her. Did I find her waiting? Nope. She was sauntering, at her own short-legged pace, down the blistering red earth of the path, towards us. She must have thought I was abandoning her (which broke my heart), but did she show it? Fear? Relief? Not at all. She acted like it was all good, this was the plan all along. Nothing to see here, move along. 

The car was parked at that far-off first windmill — or the last one, from the perspective the photo was taken. No shade anywhere from here on, so this is the spot where I left Winter and dashed ahead to get the car. When I drove back, she'd made it just past this clump of cacti.
November 30, 2017

That was Winter.

So, as she became more and more blind, as her body began to fail her more and more, she refused to give in. She put up a brave front, and wouldn't back down. But the joy was seeping away, and no matter how lionhearted she tried to be, things were slipping out of her control. Her bladder, for instance, demanded she go out in the middle of the night — sometimes multiple times — to empty it. With all the dogs sleeping in the bedroom with us, and with her poor eyesight, that caused problems. After waking up to a few skirmishes (and a few puddles on the floor), we decided she was better off sleeping out in the hallway. She seemed fine with that — the hallway had become her safe spot during the day, too. But, as months went by, that hallway became her whole life. We noticed she was going outside less and less, and often requiring assistance to navigate the other dogs lying along the way to the patio door. In a combination of her loss of sight and the kidney failure, she was becoming more and more disoriented, more and more prone to bump into another dog — and, if this was Benny, for instance, or Jopie, the consequences could be painful. 

So it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: she was afraid of going outside, so the other dogs saw her less and less, and would attack her more, so she became more afraid and went out less. In the end, she slept maybe 22 hours a day. She flinched every time another dog passed by. She couldn't find her way to the patio. She couldn't negotiate the three steps on the front porch. Her hips weren't cooperating. Her eyes weren't, either. 

Was she in pain? Maybe. We wouldn't know it, because she wouldn't show it. But, after discussing all these symptoms with the vet, we agreed that she was definitely living in fear if not pain. And, inescapably, we grudgingly came to the conclusion that had been staring us in the face: her time had come. If we waited for her to show real feebleness, then we'd have waited too long: she was simply too plucky, too unshrinking, to do that. It was up to us to stop her suffering before it became so intense that she simply couldn't hide it any longer.

And so we did.

Rest easy, beautiful girl.

Grief is the price we pay for love, so we're doing our best to embrace it, to celebrate her life and, in gratitude for the time she gave us, cherish the hole she leaves behind. She was the last of our first generation of dogs: Panchita, Frida, Rusty, and now Winter are all gone. Each of them taught us so, so much. Each of them changed our lives in ways we never even considered possible. They put up with our ignorance, patiently repeated the lesson again and again until we learned it. Their love was pure and unconditional, and we barely deserved it — but, by the time they began to leave us, they had prepared us enough to deserve the love of the other four-legged bundles of joy they left behind to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Dag, Winter. Maybe we loved you "in spite of" — but you loved us "in spite of", too, I think. Thank you so, so much for that.

Agility (and Animal Welfare Awareness) Day @ Wilhelminaplein!

I won't try to catch up all at once with everything that's happened in the last — whoa, 11 months! (Has it really been—? Yes... yes, it has. And I'm sorry for that. I love this blog.) I'll start with last weekend and — maybe, slowly — work my way back to some highlights.

So. This past weekend.

I-Animal (an animal welfare organization here in Curaçao) had its yearly Animal Day celebration at Wilhelminaplein — an open space, kind of like a city square, in Punda (downtown Willemstad) — and we were invited to join the agility run hosted by Yuka's Hondentraining. It was free of charge, geared to demonstrate the potential any dog, regardless of breed or previous training, has for conquering the agility course — and the fun they have while doing it.

More importantly, I think, it's a great way to prove Cesar Millán's point about training humans (and rehabilitating dogs). Any sort of "dog" training is, at its core, a way to establish (or, ideally, deepen) the bond between human and dog — and the agility run is a fantastic way to demonstrate it.

Out of the seven-pack, I chose to come with Duncan... For several reasons, which I can get into at length for another post, but in short: he's not the best-behaved (so the training would benefit him and me) but not the worst, either (so I could feasibly be setting him up for success); he's also really food-oriented (unlike, for instance, Sam), which makes everyone's life easier. But, mostly, I chose Duncan because we have a bond. A good, strong, special bond.

Bond which would be put to the test.

The Wonderful Story of Djoeke Giliam

Just before leaving for Holland--literally; it was a Sunday and we were leaving on Tuesday--I interviewed Djoeke Giliam, a woman I met a couple of years ago through the dog rescue foundation we were both involved with at the time. Ever since I began working for the Amigoe Express, I'd wanted to write a piece on her. Many reasons, but the bottom line is that she's the greatest human being I've ever met.

No exaggeration.

She has the largest, kindest heart. She's a fundamentally and intrinsically good person. She cares, deeply and selflessly, about the world. She wants to make it a better place--not in any dramatic, Let's-Change-The-World-Order way; she understands that small things are the biggest change-mongers.

And she lives with thirty-six dogs.

An absentee blogger's excuse

So some seven weeks ago, I got a desperate call mid morning: someone had found a box of puppies, less than ten days old (their eyes were still closed) in the street. Seven puppies. Who needed to be bottle-fed. Who would, most probably, die anyway. But an animal rescuer that gives up before giving it not just the best but everything is not an animal rescuer at all.

So I took them in. Just for a week, they told me. Another volunteer, with better facilities (remember some members of my seven-pack aren't exactly friendly, and I had no idea how they'd react to puppies, of all things), would take them in the following weekend.

Okay. A week is doable.

They arrived in a donated cat carrier, all seven of them, asleep and twisted around each other like snakes. I took out the one closest to the front and held him in my hand, and my heart sank. These puppies were newborns. Two days old, three tops.

I prepared myself for heartbreak, sooner or later. Probably sooner. Then I prepared a batch of milk substitute, also brought by the volunteer. Each can costs Naf. 50 (about USD 30); raising orphaned puppies has become a luxury.

I can't understand how it's possible, full into the 21st century, that we haven't come up with a better solution for feeding infant animals. Let me tell you: bottles do not work. They hate them. It feels artificial; there's nothing, let alone flesh, surrounding the nipple for their little paws to press against; there's no warmth, no furriness. And there's air going through along with the milk, which is, of course, Not Good.

Seriously. To any inventors out there, I'm begging: please--please--come up with something better.

One puppy did die, the day after I got them. He probably (we weren't going to do an autopsy on a tiny days-old body) aspirated some milk into his lungs, which caused inflammation and infection, and he asphyxiated. He died literally a minute before the vet got to him. Not that the vet could've done anything. No one could. (I keep telling myself that. Doesn't seem to work.)

That first week was hard. I camped out on the sofa, the puppies in a laundry hamper next to me. I slept when they slept, which wasn't all that much. I brought out the bottle as soon as I heard the first whimper. At that age, they need food (and liquids) every two hours, but they didn't like the bottle, so they drank very little. Slowly they began to understand that that ugly plastic thing that tasted funny was, strangely, where the food came from. Slowly they began to drink more, faster.

I ended up keeping three--fosters, not permanent additions to the family... at least not yet. Another foster took the other three. A load shared is a load halved, right?

Ochoa (black) and Snijder, 4 weeks, discovering
the pleasure of sticks--and of fighting over them.

When one began to open his eyes, we were able to calculate exact date of birth (count back ten days, presto): June 18th. We called them the WK pups (WK being the Dutch abbreviation for World Cup). And since they came to me the week before the NL-MX game, we named the three brown ones after Dutch players--Persie, Snijder, and Fer--and the black ones after Mexican players: Ochoa, the biggest one (seriously, he's double the size of his siblings), Rafa (for Rafa Marquez), and--oops, the third one was a girl. We tried several variations, but ended up with Nena (baby girl in Spanish). Her future mom is going to call her Nona.

The tiny one that died was Chicharito.

This past Wednesday they turned 7 weeks old. The week before, at 6 weeks, they got their first vaccination--and just in time, because a parvo epidemic has hit the island. May and June produced a record number of abandoned puppies, and most of the little ones are sick now. Several have died--including, today, one of the WK family, Persie.

Beautiful, smart Persie. Run free, little one.

I'm heartbroken. He didn't live with us for more than a week, but it was an intense week. He was the one that least liked the bottle (opposed to Ochoa, for instance, who got over the plastic discomfort pretty fast once he figured out there was food at the other end), so I spent a lot of time with him on my lap. My chest. My arms. He was the first one to open his eyes. The first to crawl out of the basket. The first to walk. He was so, so smart, and he would've been a fantastic adult dog. The world has been cheated out of a canine jewel.

I know I've been neglecting you. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry, too, for ending on such a sad note. It's a sad day. On the other hand, none of them had halfway good chances of making it, and here they are, five of them, alive and healthy and strong--and four are going to fantastic homes. The fifth one will find his "golden basket", as they say in Dutch; it's just going to take a bit longer. Which means we get to enjoy him all the more.

Oh yeah, cutie. You get to stay in this pack a bit longer.

Romy's Story (Part II -- The Seven Dwarves)

Missed Part I?

How did we miss Romy's pregnancy? Easy: she was probably three days pregnant when we picked her up. All initial vet checks showed no signs because it was too early. And canine pregnancies go fast--before you know it, it's too late to do anything about it.

Romy at the vet on Oct 15 (2012)
Three weeks before giving birth. Looks very
un-pregnant, doesn't she?

Which is exactly what happened.

So Romy was going to have puppies. A problem in itself: in an island where homeless dogs are too many to count, where animal rights culture is a step up from non-existent, finding good homes, even for puppies--perhaps especially for puppies, because everyone wants them while they're young and adorable, not so much later when the cuteness is marred by their potential for destruction--is not an easy thing.

There was another problem, however. A more immediate problem. Romy's foster had upwards of 17 dogs. Romy would have to give birth in close proximity to them. Even separated by the iron fencing of the kennels, everyone could see this wasn't a good idea.*

Nassau (Part I): The Lesson

Nassau was the beginning of my formal training in dog behavior. I didn't even believe in dog trainers. In my mind, they were all nasty control freaks that used dogs as an outlet for their inferiority complexes, forced them to perform circus tricks for human entertainment. Punishment. Whips.

I had a lot to learn. And Nassau didn't waste time teaching me.

She bit me the first time I met her.

Romy's Story (Part I)

Romy's story was first published in Quiet Laughter,

October 3, 2012

The last weekend of September [2012] I got a call from CARF. "There's a dog at the dump," the woman said. "We've been feeding her for a while, and we think she's ready to be caught and brought to the vet. Can you foster her?"

Romy, at the dump, the day
before she was rescued.

Uh, yeah. But--at the dump? The garbage dump? They threw her away like garbage?

"The rescuer will meet you at the vet's Monday morning."

The rescuer called me Sunday evening, a lovely Dutch woman, wife of a Marine officer, unfortunately only stationed here in Curaçao for a few more years. Why can't people like these stay around forever?

When I walked into the vet's waiting room, she was holding a reddish-yellow dog, smaller than I thought, on her lap. Huge eyes, all sweetness. Her legs were stiff from fear, but she let herself be moved over to my lap and we cuddled while we waited. She was so dirty--he-llo, garbage dump--that I got a rash all over my arms and neck. Nothing that a good shower didn't cure, though.

Sasha Number Two

Ah, little Sasha. With you began one of the most pleasurable, most challenging, most chock-full-o' learning years of my life.

She lived in an empty lot behind Goisco (the Curaçao version of Costco). The owner and employees of a nearby restaurant fed her for at least two months. No idea where she came from, how she got there, what kind of life she had before. One thing is clear, though: if she had an owner, s/he will burn in brimstone and magma for all eternity.

Sasha is terrified of humans.

Three different organizations tried to catch her. Everyone was afraid she'd go into heat. She's so little. So defenseless. The idea of every dog in the neighborhood after her horrified us all.

But no one could get close.

The trust method failed. Cornering her failed. Epically. A trap was invented over a weekend. Chicken livers were cooked. The lure carefully set, a monitoring station set up a safe distance away.

Nope.

How I Became A Homeowner

Photo credit (thanks, Claudia!)

Ah, Rusty. Another dog I didn't name, another dog from the office parking lot. But this dog changed our lives in more tangible ways.