Rosie, Rocky and JoJo are growing like Spring weeds.
This shot is from March and they're noticeably larger now.
March Rose
Sean and Rocky with Daisy behind
Group shot from March with Rocky in the foreground
Ruby is a year old now and was 2x the size of JoJo last month
Silly Mo (and sisters) have been here 6 years
June is a crazy genius and will be turning 2 any day now (with her Gemini twin Zoila). Cookie is only 2ish but has already been a big sister many times
A whole lot of happy dogs in my way!
Sometimes you have to do parkour to get around this place
An especially cute lineup at the gate:
Perl, Monkey, Shirley, Bette and Murci
JoJo on the beach this month in her new collar
Rocky (blue) and Rosie (red) evening wrestle
Cookie and Elewah enjoy another beautiful morning
We're looking for
a larger piece of land where we can build to accommodate our peculiar
lifestyle. It would be great to have help during that transition; to
that end we'll be posting on Helpx again soon. If interested, contact
me.
It has been too long since I've updated. So much to cover!
Nov 16, 2015 Tupo arrives. He was the runt of the mosquito shack litter.
Cookie again proves herself to be a patient big sister.
No one else wanted the little guy and we were worried he wasn't eating enough, with so much competition. Tupo means something like runt in Mayan. Closer to 'the last little bit'.
The traditional 1st bath photo.
A quiet pause after a long day.
Tupo naps on a beard pillow.
Zoila shows Tupo how to dig a hole.
Big sisters are the best! Cookie wrestles with Tupo.
December 1st we brought in Coco, the 2nd smallest of the litter.
She was a little skinny and had a sore leg, but was otherwise fine.
Cookie makes Coco's acquaintance.
First bath for Coco.
She had enough dirt in her ears to grow a plant.
Coco and Hazel meet.
Coco checks out the yard.
She is calm and sensible (and pretty) like her mother Sola.
Monkey is recovering from surgery to remove bladder stones.
She's doing great now, but needs to be on the same expensive diet as Maggie. Apparently the little white shaggy dogs are prone to it.
Otto, Monkey and Tupo.
Monkey poses with the stones Dra Sandra removed.
Just to keep things interesting, we had company over the holidays.
Sweet Xmul was here and Kiki's 2 dogs stayed for a few days.
PupG kisses Xmul and Zoila hangs out with her new little buddy, Chiquita.
Group shot with Zoila and sister Junebug in surgical collars.
They have both been spayed and recovered beautifully.
Siblings Coco and Tupo nap on Sean.
December 12th, not quite 2 weeks after Coco's arrival, Sean brought the last unplaced pup home. She's bigger than her siblings and shyer.
We call her Nico.
Nico's 1st bath. Mega and Steve say hello.
She has a skin problem that we had diagnosed at the clinic on Sunday!
Dozens were treated and/or vaccinated (5 in 1), one dog had to be put down, and they managed to neuter 2 -despite not planning to preform surgeries this time! Pretty good considering we were thinking of canceling it.
Nico is all legs and paws! Her dad must be Ringo and he's a big boy!
It's been hard to find a rhythm again without Tori.
I remind myself we've been lucky to have known so many of our friends for many years.
April may be adorable but she's a warrior.
Matriarch Zasu is the epitome of aging gracefully.
Henry has been with us since the beginning.
He and Xmul at sunset.
Xmul and Mo have been friends since they were puppies.
We planted a pineapple top back then and it finally bore fruit! 4 years for one little pineapple! It was really good though!
Our sweet nervous Bosha has gone back to be with her original person. She had been unable to care for her 4 years ago, but things have changed and she wanted her back. Bosha loves her and we knew she'd be happier in a calmer home. We'll keep an eye on her and make sure she stays up to date on her heart worm preventative.
Bosha heading to her new home.
Making the next clinic happen has been weighing heavily on me but I
seem to have been rendered inert by grief. Maintaining the dogs and
mustering enough enthusiasm to pacify them is all I've been able to
manage. We had hoped to have Cookie spayed then, but we couldn't wait
any longer. Many people with dogs here don't have the option of going to
a vet in the city. Another clinic is long overdue!
I can't set
the date until we've raised enough to cover costs; we aren't in a
position to cover a deficit at the moment. This time the vets will
be doing mostly females, increasing the amount of anesthesia needed -so
we need to raise at least 1200US to cover costs.
We are securing
a larger space this time around and Dra. Sandra will be bringing more
vets. The incoming mayor has voiced an interest in allocating funds for
future clinics. We hope that will happen and think that a good 'buzz'
surrounding this clinic will improve the chances that it will.
Cookie's surgery and recovery went perfectly.
If you've seen my Twitter feed (or you know us at all) you know we brought in the 2 puppies that were in a burrow down the lane.
Junebug the pup and Eddie the rooster regard each other.
Zoila spends some quality time with Monkey.
Zoila and Junebug like the beach!
They weren't so sure about the water.
We've finally started getting rain so everything is nice and green, and the mosquitoes haven't been too bad (yet). Some things don't change; hot days and early mornings are a constant, as is Stella's willfulness. She can't be trusted off the leash. Every time I forget, she reminds me!
Clever, lovely Stella.
We've been gloomy but the weather has been beautiful.
Sean, Rufus, Cookie and Linda.
Our little Cookie is nearly grown and needs to be spayed soon.
She and Amber are just about the same size.
She's got an inch or 2 on our old friend Henry.
He had a few more teeth removed recently and is feeling fine.
Cookie and Linda remain great pals and sparing partners.
Cookie has reach but Linda has a better ground game.
Elewah is surprisingly tolerant of the pup.
Maybe she notices a resemblance?
Elewah, Daisy, Cookie and Mega.
Pretty Xmul keeps an eye on the cats' evening shenanigans.
So many sweet faces at the gate!
They all want to know where I'm going.
This is a view from the other side of our gate.
I'm headed to that farthest tree, on the left side of the road.
One of the local strays had puppies and they're in a burrow there, under some tree roots.
Sean once saw four but I've only seen two. This striped angel...
and this little cutie.
The smaller brown girl is the Mom and is obviously still nursing. I think the other dog is her offspring from a previous litter. They both hang out under vehicles parked at the neighbor's place. They are too skittish for us to get near (we've been trying).
We're concerned that the burrow will flood when we get a hard rain so we built a little storm shelter next to/above it. It's a big plastic garbage can that I split in half lengthwise, weighted down with an old rubber kitchen mat and some limbs. Their burrow is to the left in this picture and the camouflaged shelter is in the center.
We aren't sure how much we can do for these girls. We can't raise every dog we find but we dread having even more fertile dogs living nearby -for their sake and ours*. The adult females will be pregnant again in no time and if these 2 survive 6 months, that will be 4 fertile females nearby! That will mean unending noise, an influx of males and an avalanche of puppies. Shit. We had the stray that lives around the army base just north of us sterilized a couple of years ago, and that has worked out great! We would do the same for these girls if we could lay hands on them.
There is a small window of time while we have access to the young ones. I think they are around 3 weeks old, maybe a little younger. Soon they will be too skittish. It rained last night and today they were still crammed in the damp burrow that they've practically outgrown. We'd be happy to foster them if there were homes for them to go to once they've been socialized and inoculated. If anyone is interested, get in touch!
This is the only time I've spotted one out of the burrow.
* We are both well aware that a likely scenario involves us on our knees, at night, in the middle of a downpour, pulling puppies out of a flooded burrow and bringing them home in our pockets.
