Author: doug

Dog-in-the-woods update

I asked a question yesterday, and I meant it as a question: why do people do this?

I think we’re getting closer to an answer.

We heard the dog barking again today on our walk. We had food and water. As we got close to the brushy area of the dog, I veered off, hoping — ridiculously — the the six dogs of our entourage might follow. Of course they didn’t, so I went to see what Syd had found.

The dog had been moved. Chained to a different tree, 15-20 meters away.

The big bowl was there, again overturned. Syd rinsed it out and filled it with water, and left a “disposable” (I know…) plastic container with food. The dog barked the whole time. Our dogs were not really a problem. But look at this picture:

dog-update

Note that I can’t get close enough to get an image of the dog (close in to center, white paws at 1 o’clock), nor Syd, nor Jordan (black dog). In other words, the dog — in addition to being moved — is more hidden.

Of course, the dog totally betrays his position by barking, but he also barks defensively the whole time Syd provides food and water.

So, what to make of this? Mariana the Vet informs that this looks like a temporary arrangement. Family visiting for Easter (sorry, the secular Semana de Turimso — Tourism Week), building a fence, construction, whatever: needing a dog out of the immediate space for a limited amount of time. Not wonderful, but not bad. Not cared for as you or I might like, but not left to die.

Of course, time will tell. But, as I said yesterday, I am not in a rush to judgment. Hopefully, it’s all a non-event: some people parked their dog in the woods — horrible as you might think that — because they needed the dog to not be in their space for a bit.

Ya veremos. With time we will see.

And we will be watching.

Why do people do this?

abandoned-dog

My routine now includes afternoon walks with my goofy dog and Syd and his five dogs in who-know-who-owns-it 170 hectares/500 acres of scrub in Villa Argentina north.

Yesterday, we heard barking in the middle of it. Where barking shouldn’t be. We changed our return path to pass by again, but heard no more barking.

Today, we heard the barking again, and bushwhacked to find a scared, barking dog, chained to a tree. But with a little plastic bag of dog food. But also with a large bowl, presumably for water, overturned.

With six dogs in tow, we made little progress in connecting. Syd returned to leave it water.

Being Easter week, probably best if it stays there: our favorite vet in the campo is fully booked with pets until Monday.

Previously, Syd discovered the remains of a dog similarly chained, and left to die (it could have chewed through a rope). But there’s evidence of some care here. But still a chain. I’m not racing to judgment.

We’ll do what we can.

Irónico

delivery

You don’t need much knowledge of the Spanish language* to recognize that “delivery” is not part of it.

And you can easily understand the value of a word like parking in place of estacionamiento. But in this case, the English word — with four syllables — is actually, and unusually, shorter than its Spanish equivalent: entrega.

Go figure.

*Castilian, or castellano. There are eight other languages spoken in Spain.

 

Money laundering

We have a casita (little house), currently unoccupied and predictably filled with all the stuff we don’t want somewhere else. Recently my wife suggested removing a piece of furniture, so I gathered what little was in it, including a couple in inexplicably filthy USD 1 bills our son had left behind.

money

So I washed them with soap and water.

It didn’t really help.

The kitchen lighter

lighter

We bought a used gas barbecue grill without a functioning lighter. So I bought one of these for a few bucks. I was amazed how quickly it ran out of gas. Taking it apart, I see that, even though it has room for a regular lighter’s worth of gas, they’ve made the tank smaller. Because they can. Because you can’t see it. What a rip!

So I’m back to turning on the gas and throwing a match through grill. *POOOMP*

Yesterday this was a house

burnt-house

A bit before 10:00 last night, at the corner where Syd and I unleash dogs before wandering 170 hectares of scrub land, thee was a roaring fire, and explosion, and the end of a small, neat wooden house.

garafa

The explosion would have been the garafa, or 13-kg “supergas” tank. Interesting that it shows just this small tear.

Anyway, no one was home, and perhaps — some people here speak in a very garbled manner, and the neighbor is one of them — someone untied the Boxer dog in the yard before the explosion, though that’s a little hard to imagine. And he said that two guys on motorcycles had essentially firebombed the house.

The bomberos arrived in a fire truck 50 minutes later.

I think I know how I’ll decline to donate to them when they next come around begging for donations.