Puppy Love Solves Pandemic Fatigue

Melinda Palacio

When Pandora sleeps, it's time to write. 

I can check all the boxes: zoom fatigue, social distancing fatigue, mask fatigue, fatigue of feeling fatigue. However, adopting a puppy has filled me with a welcome muscle fatigue brought on by a dog bred for retrieving ducks. This puppy can play fetch until your arm feels as if it will fall off if you have to throw the ball, stick, or toy one more time. I named the two-month old Labrador Retriever Pandora, meaning all gifts, and she is certainly a gift to cure all sorts of malaise that can come with life in Covid-19 lockdown. 

The sight of her eager face in the morning sets things right in the world and makes me forget about the pandemic she was born into. Since early May, the nation has experienced a shortage in dogs and puppies. Shelters report no available dogs. I know of at least four friends who have adopted puppies. La Bloga’s own Michael Sedano took in a gray kitten. After my dog Montezuma passed, almost eight years ago, I thought I’d never get another dog, the heartbreak is too much, but I had been missing having a furry companion to fuss over. I’ve come very close to rescuing dogs who seem to have the type of personality similar to my old dog, a beagle crossed with a Labrador Retriever. Montezuma was a smart dog and won the sit-stay competition at PetSmart during his puppy training class. 

Having a pet makes staying at home a lot easier. On occasions when I venture out in the real world, I can take my dog with me since most restaurants and cafes are now outdoor only establishments. 

There are downsides to having such a young creature. Puppies don’t come with automatic training. There’s potty training and rules to teach, such as no biting, no chewing on shoes or tables or hair. People have warned me that having a puppy means losing a pair or two of good shoes. My strategy has been to hide my shoes away from puppy level, but, so far, I’ve only succeeded in hiding my shoes from myself. The social distancing imposed by life during a pandemic also poses conundrums for puppies. How can you socialize dogs when people can’t socialize. Places such as PetCo and Petsmart no longer offer group puppy training classes. 

Today, Pandora is three months old. I look forward to beginning her puppy training this weekend. She’s pretty smart and learned how to use a doggie door in two weeks. I trust she’ll pick up basic commands easily, especially walking on leash. At least, that’s what her trainer told me. With the abundance in people adopting pets, dog trainers are in high demand. Nathan, the dog trainer, tells me puppy training is more for the human than the puppy. I’ll let you know how that worlds. One thing I have learned is the full extent of the word Retriever. Pandora is the perfect example of a yellow Labrador Retriever. 

Once Upon a Sato

The other day I was pleased to come across a news piece about tween-star Selena Gomez and her work with stray dogs, satos, while filming in Puerto Rico. Besides being impressed that such a young star was being photographed feeding stray dogs rather than shopping in her Uggs with a diamond-collared, pocket-sized, purebred pooch in her arms, I was also grateful to her because this is a cause that has become dear to my family’s heart, particularly after our most recent trip to La Isla Bonita.

Since I was a small child I was aware of the stray dog situation in Puerto Rico, it’s hard not to be. Each store parking lot has at least a half dozen, mangy-furred, weary-eyed critters begging for food and lying under cars to avoid the blazing midday sun. But for me it was also because opinions about the creatures varied so greatly in the Davila branch of my family. My mother was brought up to believe that dogs were livestock to be kept outside and employed as security. But her stepmother, my beloved Mamita Nivea and my grandfather’s second wife, collected stray dogs like most people collect knickknacks. There were always at least a dozen mutts ranging about the house, smalls ones barking at you from under the rattan furniture, large ones loping around the exterior of the house, their fur caked with the tar from my grandfather’s trucks. Nivea would sit on the porch in her rocking chair with at least three or four of them draped across her body, their eyes closed with pleasure as she scratched behind their one remaining ear. But my grandfather hated them. I remember sitting on the porch one day as he shuffled out in his pajamas yelling towards the back yard, shaking his cane and waving a gun. I screamed as he shot at a stray that was scurrying by the pool. “They’re only blanks!” he yelled at me as if I should have known, my ears ringing from the blast. The dog took off into the bushes, its stringy tail between its legs. “If I don’t scare them away that woman would take them all in until there was no room for us!” he muttered as he shuffled back to his bedroom, cane in one hand, and gun in the other.

But he is looking down from heaven in dismay as my beloved Tía Georgina has taken after Mamita Nivea rather than him. From the day she moved out of my grandfather’s house and on her own she has grown and nurtured her own brood of disheveled but well-loved hounds, her real estate choices dictated by the now thirteen dogs that live with her. The back of her SUV always contains two large bags of dog food and a container of water. Over the years while traveling with her around the island we’ve stopped by the road on the way to El Yunque to feed the strays that wander by the road, on a side street in Humacao, and every trip to the supermarket includes a meal and fresh water for the parking lot’s canine residents. I always smiled and accepted this as an integral part of this woman I loved, but an odd one. But it wasn’t until this February that she managed to pull me and my son Carlos into her efforts…it wasn’t until then that I really began to understand.

Once we had settled into my Tío Esteban’s condo in Luquillo, Georgina arrived to take us to lunch, but said she had a stop to make on the way. We drove along the narrow side streets, wondering where she was taking us. Finally she pulled the car to a stop at a dead end. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing: there was nothing there but trash and palm fronds rustling in the wind. She asked Carlos to help her get something from the trunk, and I saw them hauling a massive bag of dog food towards the edge of the trees. I should have known. I resigned myself to watching her feed some gristled old mutts when suddenly seven tiny creatures came stumbling over the bank, all long legs, fur and ribbed torsos. Carlos and I stood transfixed as she carefully poured piles of food on the ground and the family of puppies watched with careful eyes from the shadows of the trees. Half of them looked like boxers, the other like any number of dog breeds all mixed together. The mother watched in the distance as Georgina poured some water into a discarded plastic to-go container she found on the side of the road. Carlos tried to coax them closer, but they would skitter with any movement of his arm, any step closer. Realizing we probably wouldn’t get to pet them, we contented ourselves with watching them gambol about, tumbling over one another on the grass as they waited for us to leave. We watched them begin to eat in the rearview mirror and felt happy we had helped fill those small bellies for at least one day.

Needless to say, we went back the next day. And the next. By the end of the two weeks, the boldest one would stand near as we poured the food, his brother and sisters a few feet away. As we cooed over them, my aunt offered to ship them to anyone who might want to adopt them stateside. Carlos and I lamented our asthma, our allergies. Otherwise, we would have taken at least one home. Carlos’ favorite part of the vacation was not the hours of body surfing at the beach, the shopping in old San Juan, or even the generous gift of a Nintendo DS from Titi, but rather the daily ritual of feeding the puppies. We talk about them often, even now, realizing with not a small amount of sadness that they will be full grown by the time we visit next year: that is, if they survive. A sato’s life span is not a long one, and our only hope is that the efforts of people like Georgina will pay off in no-kill shelters, and more comprehensive neutering plans. And the press attention that Selena Gomez’s visit brought is sure to help, but there is a long way to go to change the society’s perception of the canine species. But until then, when we visit the island, we will always have a bag or two of dog food in the back of our rental car, and though I’m not sure my mother would understand, Mamita Nieva is looking down at her great grandson Carlos and smiling.