Rumors of an oven to burn killed dogs in Catemaco have surfaced.
Catemaco has a large number of street dogs. The most noticeable ones are the ones with 3 legs and a fourth one dangling, others with skin resembling craters on Mars, more with eyes so full of pus their vision possibly equals Picasso. Many ramble with the ties that they escaped from.
In female heat season, dozens of male dogs with stupid looks on their faces pursue usually tiny female conquests in all of Catemaco's colonias.
Whenever the street dog population gets to the point where locals begin complaining, an undocumented kill program goes into effect. Poison is laid in hidden areas, midnight stranglers walk the alleys, and for a few days the downtown area is surprisingly free of canine mascots usually well fed by uncollected garbage from the butcher shops of the central market.
I am one of the dog killers of Catemaco.
Of six canines I rescued from Catemaco streets, only 3 survive.
My first love, "Pinche Perra", a husky, now more than six years old, found me near Playa Azul, and only took a week to stop biting me.
The next puppy dog "Bobbi" broke my Popoluca's heart after rescuing him from certain death near the Canseco bridge and healing him only to see him run over by a speeding taxi on the Malecon.
"Hellman" puppy named after someone said we should name him "Mayo", was thrown over my fence in my beach resort in Escuinapan. 800 pesos of veterinary bills restored him to life and later he went to live to a hopefully happy live with our electrician.
"La Pulga" chihuhahua arrived as a left handed present from someone who had too many of them. I hated the little useless monster and forced the family to give him away.
Adult "Bobbi 2", came with an abandoned house we rented and proved his wildness by biting our neighbor. He remained almost uncontrollable except by his boss, me, until I moved him to my beach resort where he promptly dug through 3000 pesos worth of dog proof fences and fought with a highway 180 truck and lost.
"El Guapo", possibly the ugliest dog in Catemaco, wagged his hairless tail at me when moving to our offices on the Malecon. He was living in a culvert in front of us and I mistakingly fed him once after which he refused to budge from my side. So I spent 80 pesos on anti mange medicines and some antibiotics and within 6 weeks he was growing lots of hair on his almost bald body and gained 8 pounds. My Popoluca by then was getting uppity about my hairy and diseased strange dogs and I moved him and "Pinche Perra" to the beach resort and they lived happily for a while. He liked sleeping atop the screen atop the well there, unfortunately, the screen, possibly rusted, broke and he fell into the well. It was a rainy Sunday, when noone was there, and I still imagine him swimming in circles and howling before drowning.
So now it's just me and my "Pinche Perra" who sleeps under my bed, under my computer station when I am there, in my truck when I let her, or wherever I decide to sit.
She is smart enough to never to do anything that I need her to do against her liking and is a real pain in the ass. The only time she listens is when I say attack, and she pretends to know how to bark and bite. O yeah, and "vamonos" when she knows she can jump in my truck and hang out her face to the wind and visit strange places with lots of doggy smelly.
Unless a do good organization in Catemaco provides a canine shelter, I will support the killing of street dogs in Catemaco. There are just too many of them. I would like this to be done humanely, without strangling or poisoning them. A crematorium is a functional step. Dogs that lived, walked and ate with us while unconditionally loving us, and were abandoned for one perverse reason or another, deserve better than to just be killed and dumped into the garbage.
