After the hectic pace of the Holidays, combined with the extra work of high tourist season, I decided after I was finished with the ChristmasDreams Project and after the Vidas/Candi spay/neuter clinic in January that I was going to take a break from volunteering for a while, to focus on myself and my own work and personal projects.

And then I saw this picture.

Tiny little puppy, all alone in Playa del Carmen's horrible Perrera

Sylvie, the founder of local animal organization SOS El Arca visits Playa del Carmen’s perrera, or dog pound, almost every day to bring food for the dogs and to take photos in the hopes of finding homes for the animals there.  She’s unable to take on any more animals at her refuge, but she’s still dedicated to helping these dogs when she can.  The perrera in Playa del Carmen is a depressing place–animals are scooped up off the streets, put into small cells and then their time left is limited.  If they are very sick, they are euthanized immediately.  If they’re obviously someone’s pet who just got lost/loose, the owner has a short time to find their dog and pay the ‘ransom’ to get their dog out.  If no one comes for the dog, within a few days, the dogs are euthanized to make room for the next batch of dogs that come in daily.

I see Sylvie’s photos from the perrera every day, but as there is no way to rescue all animals, most of the time I have to painfully look away/put the dogs out of my mind.  But there was something about this photo that moved me–I think it’s that the puppy is backed all the way into the corner, scared and small, with only the two walls to touch her.  I knew I had to foster this puppy until I could find a home for her, so my friend Laura and I decided to try to save her.

First we had to determine if the puppy had been euthanized or not–she was supposed to have been put down on the day her photo was posted.  There was an error in communication and we missed the 4 pm deadline to speak to the vet at the perrera–we waited on pins and needles to see if the puppy was still alive.  When we found out that the vet had had car trouble and didn’t go back to the pound to do the daily euthanizations, we were overjoyed, and called him right away to let him know we’d be by first thing in the morning to collect the puppy.

Thankfully, we were able to show a photo of the puppy to the perrera workers and they went in to get her and bring her to us–I could not have been able to stand seeing all those poor animals on Death Row, their sad eyes begging me to save them.

I was so happy to see her little face

Dr. Carlos, the new vet in charge at the perrera, seems like a kind and compassionate man.  In the past, perrera directors have been difficult to work with and antagonistic towards the various animal charities trying to help, but Dr. Carlos works with SOS El Arca and Tierra de Animales to save as many as he can.  He also gives the dogs food and water, something that wasn’t possible before.  We brought a 25kilo bag of dog food in exchange for the puppy.  He explained that when there aren’t too many dogs and there is space at the pound, he does his best to let the animals live as long as he can, up to 14 or 15 days, in the hopes they will be able to find homes/be saved.

Dr. Carlos, doing the best he can for the stray dogs at the perrera

She was so terrified. Her scrawny little body just trembled.

We drove straight from the perrera to the vets at Coco’s Cat Rescue.  They did tests on her for Parvo and Distemper–thankfully both negative.  They gave her a can of food (cat food, which was all they had, but she didn’t care!) and she ate it like she’d never eaten before.

Yes, I'm a dog, but I like cat food. Wanna make something of it?

All ribs, hipbones, and knobby spine

Coco’s lent me a crate and I brought her home to my 2 room apartment. She has to be kept apart from Vinnie, my dog, for at least a week, to avoid Vinnie getting parasites from her.  Keeping the tradition of naming animals after friends (and my penchant for giving ‘boy’ names to girls), I named the pup “Scottie” after a couple of my closest friends.

Scottie is around two months old, with long gangly legs and expressive, Bambi-like eyes.  She looks like a baby deer when she stands up.  She’s still timid and shy after the hell of what she’s gone through in her short life, but it was only a few hours with me before she would wag her tail when I came into the room to check on her.  She’s already doing her business on paper that I lay down for her, and when she eats, she is so joyful to come by such easily-gotten food that her tail wags the entire time until her bowl is clean.

From concrete Death Row to a King Sized bed--alllllright.

While I thought hard about keeping her, my current living situation is not conducive to having even one dog, nevermind two.  Financially, I struggle even with the burden of keeping my own dog happy and healthy, so despite my love for Scottie, it is in her best interests for me to find another home for her.  Furthermore, if I love this one, get her healthy, and then let her go, perhaps I will be able to continue to foster animals and save more and more, one pup at a time.  Several of my amazing and wonderful friends, unasked, simply sent money to help care for Scottie–my faith in humans is constantly renewed by the lovely people I am lucky enough to have in my life.

If you would like to adopt Scottie, or know someone who would like to adopt her, please let me know.  Adoptions to the US and Canada are easy and possible, and she will come to you fully immunized, healthy, and will be spayed.  This little girl is so grateful for every ounce of love and affection she’s getting and I know she will make someone a fine companion.

Making herself at home on my bed and in my heart

]]> http://heatherinparadise.com/2012/02/06/1000/feed/ 11 heatherinparadise http://heatherinparadise.com/2012/01/25/unicorn-seeks-unicorn/ http://heatherinparadise.com/2012/01/25/unicorn-seeks-unicorn/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:08:35 +0000 heatherinparadise http://heatherinparadise.wordpress.com/?p=992 ]]>

Prior to the last year or so, I’ve never really dated.  I was a serial monogamist–a good girlfriend, meeting my long term boyfriends at work or through friends.  My last relationship, I was friends with the man for a time and then one day realized I liked him liked him.  So I’m fairly inexperienced at the whole single dating scene and I have come to realize one very important thing about myself:  I hate dating.  I mean, I HATE it–more than exercise, more than dieting. I hate dating more than I hate things touching me in the ocean.

In the last year, I’ve gone on dates where the man was 30 minutes late and showed up wearing a multicolored vest.  I’ve had dates where the man was clearly unshowered, a date with a man with bad breath, with a man who told me my D-cup breasts were small (REALLY?!  How big do you want them to be, jeez?!).  I dated a man who told me he didn’t believe male dogs should be neutered, only females, and a man who told me he didn’t ‘believe’ in using condoms (uhhhh…bye bye).  In short, I’ve gone on some  bad dates with men with whom I’m truly incompatible.  I’ve  had ONE great date in the last year, and it was with someone who lives thousands of miles away, so the prospects of a 2nd date are slim, until such time as he comes to visit.

Ironically, it was something my last bad date said that stopped me in my tracks and made me vow to stop kissing frogs.  We were having dinner at my place–I cooked one of those rare, stellar meals where everything came out perfectly–and he stopped in the middle of our conversation and said, ‘Heather, you really impress me.  You’re smart, beautiful, funny, well-traveled, and you can even cook.  You’re really impressive, the whole package.”  I thanked him for the compliment, but later he committed several of the sins I mentioned above (I won’t say which) and I decided not to see him again.

Because he’s right; I am the whole package.  I’m not perfect, but I’m most of the things he mentioned and even more, and I’m always working hard on bettering myself.  Why would I waste my time with someone who doesn’t bring his A game?  I’m not second string, why have I been dating the bench sitters?  It’s not easy to find a good man in Playa del Carmen, but you know what, it’s not easy to find a good girl, either.  I’m rare as a unicorn and until such time as another unicorn appears, I’m not interested in dating at all.

I’m officially off the dating market.  I’m marrying myself. We get along well and the sex is great–and I promise never to leave myself.

As a little girl, falling down meant
you would appear like magic,
a petite miracle bearing Band-Aids and hugs,
your voice a gentle hymn that calmed me
You’ve skinned your knee,
Show Grandma where it hurts.

Grown up now, I still want to run
at the sight of these tiny butterfly closures
like wishes holding your wound together.
When the doctors split you open,
sawing through muscle and bone,
they saw something no one else, not even you,
has ever seen–your heart,
fluttering helplessly inside
the cage of your chest like
a broken-winged bird;  your heart
with its unchangeable catalogue of events–
that quickened at the birth of your firstborn son
and, years later, tightened
into a fist of misery when he took his own life,
leaving behind only the space
he once occupied,
a paper doll cut from the page
and lost.

Unlike your jagged paperweight of pain,
my rage has rounded edges;
having no memory of him
allows me to hold his death like a gift,
a wordless warning of what not to do to my children.
For you, these unbalanced years
are still just crooked litanies of grief
that cannot comfort you,
his name indelibly written
in the sacred journal of your heart.

And when I stand here before you,
my arms full of flowers and
the weak salve of my love,
wearing green eyes and bone structure you helped create,
I am doing something I learned early from you:

I am saying Grandma, show me where it hurts
as if it was that easy.

My heart is whistling so it can pretend it’s not afraid.

Look, that sucked.  It was late at night and I was taking my dog out for a walk after having left her alone in my apartment for a number of hours, so she already had anxiety about needing to go pee.  Furthermore, the neighborhood dogs were all howling/barking, so that adds to the drama.  We were just outside my dog’s territory–our house, and as I locked the gate, your small, unleashed dog came bounding up to my dog.  I was apprehensive, since I did not know how your dog would behave or how my dog would react to a strange dog approaching her in the area she already feels bound to protect.

The ensuing dog fight let both of us know how our dogs felt about each other.  After we managed to separate them, as you know, I unleashed verbal fireworks the likes of which Calle 28 has possibly never heard.  While I’m not proud of myself for cursing, I am giving myself a pass because I was so upset at what was such an avoidable occurence.

I certainly didn’t appreciate your coming back around again a bit later to somehow try to make what happened my fault.  I’m sorry you got bit and I’m sorry your dog got hurt–part of why I was so upset is because I don’t enjoy dog fights and I don’t want my dog to either get hurt or hurt another dog.  If we would have been able to calm down later and talk rationally, I would have said these two things:

1.  Don’t ever put yourself in the middle of a dog fight–you are guaranteed to get bitten.  You don’t even know which of the dogs bit you–I kept pulling my dog back, but your unleashed dog just jumped onto her again and again.  At a certain point, it’s got to be on, since I’m not going to just allow my dog to get hurt because you weren’t in control of your animal.

2. Leash your dog, period.  You derisively made remarks about my dog not being perfect and needing a muzzle.  No, my dog’s not perfect.  Dogs are unpredictable, which is why she’s on a leash and always under my control.  My dog doesn’t need a muzzle, your dog needs a leash.

I have stewed about this and felt bad about it for days, but the bottom line is that none of this would have happened if only you had chosen to follow the law and had kept your dog on a leash.  For my part, I promise to try to not come so unhinged should this happen again–I can imagine it was frightening to witness my almost totally out of control temper (totally out of control would have been me hitting you when you touched my dog) and for that, I apologize.

regards,
Heather and Vinnie
Responsible Dog Owner and Normal Dog

See, we're nice when we're not provoked.

Each year, one of my dear friends, Maria, holds a ‘Let it Go’ ceremony on the last day of the year.  In the past, participants would write all over a helium balloon the things they wanted to ‘leave behind’ in the old year and not carry with them into the new year–things like anger, fear, heartbreak, what-have-you.  This year, we learned that balloons cause harm to marine life, so we decided instead to write lists of the things we would be letting go of and burn them, and like the mythical phoenix, our new resolve could rise from the ashes.

We gathered this morning at a small Mayan ruin in Playacar, on an incredibly gorgeous, sunny day across from the sparkling Caribbean Sea.  After a brief, but personal and touching ceremony, each of us burned our lists and let it all go.

My friends, I wish you peace, love, prosperity and good health in this new year and may you find the strength to let go of the things that are weighing you down and holding you back from happiness and the things you want for your lives.  I believe in me and I believe in you, too.

It was a beautiful day to let go

The Lo gets a ride on Kat's strong shoulders

How many years have you seen, dear tree?

I got chills thinking of how many rituals and ceremonies these ruins have seen

Shawn lets go

Burn, baby, burn

Loretta lets go

Kat lets go

Maria lets go

My list was thoughtfully-created and well-burning.

Finally, I would like to leave you with one of my favorite poems by e.e.cummings:

let it go – the
smashed word broken
 open vow or the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear

so comes love

How I loved watching the parade of humans dancing around me, the noisy, bright, sloppy spectacle, crazily beautiful in its discordance.  We’re fat, we’re skinny, we’re old and young, smart and simple, wrinkled and fresh-faced, but all of us dance and sing, tell jokes, laugh, smile, wink and flirt to get love and attention.  We all need it and deserve it, and if we are true to ourselves there will inevitably be someone–the right someone–to give it to us.  Some of us dance in public with visible scars and the rest of us only with the scars we wear on the inside, but despite the sometimes difficult and painful chore of living and no matter how many times we get knocked down, we get up, we move our bodies, shake our tail feathers, sound our barbaric yawps over the rooftops of the world– announcing that we are here, right now, today.

How could I not love a world so full of hope and faith in the process?  This holiday season, I wish you love and peace in the coming year, and urge you to remember every day that our time here is short, but that our lives matter.   And when someone asks you to dance, you really should just dance.  What harm is there in dancing?

Several years later, after I’d moved to Playa, I continued to see this boy working the bar circuit, now a bit older and with his skinny ankles and feet sticking out of pants he’d outgrown.  One night, in a seeming effort to appear ‘cool’ or like an old-timer, an ex-pat man with whom I’d become acquainted coldly said (in English the boy could not understand) “Go away, kid.  You’re just not as cute as you used to be, sorry.”

I’ve now lived in Playa del Carmen for over 7 years.  I don’t much visit the tourist zone anymore, but I still from time to time see that boy, who now must be about 12 or 13 years old.  Well past the cute and viable money-making stage, he is now a wisened boss working the streets, managing a core group of little ones who I can only assume are his brothers and sisters or other family members.

Tonight, my memories of this boy put me in mind of a short story I’ve loved for many years, called “Salvador, Late or Early,” by Sandra Cisneros.  Please allow me to share it with you.

Salvador, Late or Early
Salvador with eyes the color of caterpillar, Salvador of the crooked hair and crooked teeth, Salvador whose name the teacher cannot remember, is a boy who is no one’s friend, runs along somewhere in that vague direction where homes are the color of bad weather, lives behind a raw wood doorway, shakes the sleepy brothers awake, ties their shoes, combs their hair with water, feeds them milk and cornflakes from a tin cup in the dim dark of the morning.

Salvador, late or early, sooner or later arrives with the string of younger brothers ready. Helps his mama, who is busy with the business of the baby. Tugs the arms of Cecilio, Arturito, makes them hurry, because today, like yesterday, Arturito has dropped the cigar box of crayons, has let go the hundred little fingers of red, green, yellow, blue, and nub of black sticks that tumble and spill over and beyond the asphalt puddles until the crossing-guard lady holds back the blur of traffic for Salvador to collect them again.

Salvador inside that wrinkled shirt, inside the throat that must clear itself and apologize each time it speaks, inside that forty-pound body of boy with its geography of scars, its history of hurt, limbs stuffed with feathers and rags, in what part of the eyes, in what part of the heart, in that cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and knows only what Salvador knows, inside that body too small to contain the hundred balloons of happiness, the single guitar of grief, is a boy like any other disappearing out the door, beside the schoolyard gate, where he has told his brothers they must wait. Collects the hands of Cecilio and Arturito, scuttles off dodging the many schoolyard colors, the elbows and wrists crisscrossing, the several shoes running. Grows small and smaller to the eye, dissolves into the bright horizon, flutters in the air before disappearing like a memory of kites.

As many of you know, each Christmas I volunteer my time in the interests of helping local children of lesser means to get their wishes to Santa answered by finding generous and compassionate donors to purchase toys.  For many, if not most of these children, it will be the only gift they will receive all year.

Christmas Dreams Playa, the organization founded by Playa del Carmen locals, is still seeking about 60 gifts for low-income, Special Needs kids.  If you are planning to visit the area and would consider donating a toy or two, please contact the group on Facebook or leave me a comment on this blog.

I dedicate this blog and my efforts this holiday season to that gum-selling boy and the thousands of others just like him all over the world, who  have never gotten to enjoy just being a child, and whose names I will never know.

Photo from the files of Roger Schulz, Playa's 'Santa'

At the end of it all, once I am through the misery and the suffering, when I have strangled the lies of the way things were, quieted the obsessive drone in the brain that says Him, Him, Him and uncovered the hiding places of The Ways In Which He Actually Sucked, I find myself.  Myself, again.  Faithfully intact, with a heart that is still honest and unafraid.

“Let’s do this shit again,” my heart says.

My new name is Bruno.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me when I took El Niño to his new home, so I have no photographs of him with his new family.  As I walked back to the car to drive away and leave him, my arms and my heart felt strangely light and empty.  It was weird to realize that we were at the end of that race, that we had done it, that all four of Margie’s puppies we’d been given charge over had been brought to good health and had found new homes.

I credit and give thanks to my dear friend, Russell Granger, for having the heart and compassion to assume the commitment and responsibility of caring for these defenseless animals and heeding Mahatma Gandhi’s call to ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’  Russell, I’ve said it many times and I will say it again:  I learn so much from you and aspire every day to be more like you.

I can’t be remiss in thanking Coco’s Cat Rescue for their support, nor the support of the hundreds of people who read Margie’s story on this blog, Facebook, or Playa.info.  Your good wishes, donations, and help in getting these pups adopted were invaluable.

Only Margie remains homeless, but she is being well cared for by foster dad, Russell, while we continue to search for the perfect home for her.  Russell said that after each of her puppies left, she would look for the missing pup for a couple of days, but is now a healthy, playful, active dog.  For the first time in her short life, Margie gets to run, jump, play, and simply be a dog.  No more worrying about starvation, illness, or caring for puppies.

Smart Margie. When she needs to go out, but Russell's not up yet, she gently nibbles his toes to wake him up

It’s hard to believe it has been just two months since this family came into my life in such a significant way.

Family meal time

My blog will now move on to other topics, but I will carry this story in my heart for the rest of my life.  Goodbye, puppies.  I will never forget you.

From left to right, Monkey, Chiquita, El Nino, Sophia

*all photos by Russell Granger.  Of course.