Hello, readers. Yes, we are still here, not blown away by storms, although Milton tried. Still keeping the faith and taking care of the dogs, ongoing pandemic(s) and all.
Old hand Xmul and some new arrivals:
We were wracking our brains how to feed the dogs, our stores being bare of both food and money. Feeding ourselves is generally not too tough around here, there's only two of us and we are beans and rice kinda people. The dogs are another matter.
Things have not been dropping for us of late, a string of bad luck in various areas and rising costs have had us dealing with the bare necessities on a day-to-day basis. Trying to keep up the faith has been difficult.
Recent weeks have also found us both struck down by some sickness, we're still not sure what (yes, there are obvious candidates), both of us at once: not a usual occurrence, raising the degree of difficulty.
In this mood, our friend Freddy pulled up out front in his moto-taxi. He comes by a couple times a day; we are a sort of informal support group for each other since the pandemic hit. He's one of the few people who lives even farther out from town than we do. He also has many dogs, helps us find homes for strays/pups, helps the people at the garbage dump who help strays, etc. He motioned to me to come out, shaking his head: "You're not going to believe it," he said to me.
I went out and was floored to see multiple large trash bags filled with dog food, plus a large box of small, clear plastic bags of packaged dog and cat food.
He related the story to me: a buddy of his was part of a work crew that went to a ranch outside of town early that morning. On the way home around mid-day they came across a very recent road accident: a truck bringing dog food to town had overturned, spilling its cargo everywhere. The driver was thankfully unharmed, but his cargo was a loss. Freddy's buddy knew he always was doing stuff for strays, with us, etc, so thinking quickly he and his crew gathered up as much of the food as they could into garbage bags they had handy. There were rocks and debris in it that attested to its origin. He called Freddy and told him to meet him at the bridge with his taxi, and thus did dog food literally fall from the heavens into our lives and what was it we were worried about, again?
In the days since that happened I have thought of it often. The food from that day has since run out, and most days are a challenge to keep them fed and our spirits up, but thinking of the time dog food fell from the sky does calm me down a little, gives me hope.
With that hope, there must also be concrete action. We must face some realities at the intersection of: us getting older, a lot of geriatric dogs and still quite a large pack, difficulties in finding work, and the continuing pandemic. There are some positive signs for paying work in tech in the near future, but it isn't as near as I'd like, and nothing is a sure bet anymore. Crowdfunding is clearly something we should be doing. We have done a little in the past, but things have changed over the years. We decided to try chuffed.org to raise a month's worth of food and medicine for the shelter (roughly USD$1,000 aka MXN$20,000) and are pleased to say we raised a little over MXN$11,000. Sadly, chuffed informed us that they were dropping all support for Mexican campaigns, and ours would be deactivated on 30 Nov 2024. We have therefore created a GoFundMe campaign and have verified it works.
As you can see, these things are a bit of an adventure in Mexico - many platforms do not work here. We appreciate any support you can give the GoFundMe campaign, just boosting us on social media would be great. There is also more content at the @DogsOfCelestun X/Twitter feed and increasingly on BlueSky, please let us know what you think. All support helps The Dogs of Celestún.
