dogs

Shoot!! I was planning to give a detailed report on the neighborhood dogs, but there’s just no time.  Here are some pix, with no titles or descriptions, but plenty of cuteness.

Rooftop!!

Little Mary Wheeler stayed next door while she was here and that house has a fabulous roof. She and Butch and I spent a couple of lovely evenings there and now our own dog is a dogonrooftop.

(STAY TUNED FOR MARY’S GUEST POST, any minute now.)

This last week…

has mostly consisted of a number of school visits for me and making plans for going home.

We have decided to leave the last week in June and drive home. I’ll be going up to Texas to buy a car to drive back. It turns out buying a car in Mexico to take back to the states is prohibitively expensive, because it would not only need to meet US emission requirements but safety requirements too, which would mean rebuilding the bumpers or something.

Now that we have a plan - I am letting myself think about all my friends and my home and getting very excited to return. It will be very bittersweet leaving here. I have loved it so much - but plan to figure out ways to return.

Here are some pix of the week:

We discovered the fun of combining bubbles and puppies.

We had a party on Saturday and played a very fun intergenerational game of Werewolf.

There have been a number of parades - the people I have asked are not sure what the occasion is.

I spent a few days observing in sixth and first grade classrooms.

And got some nice pix on a walk down a nearby callejon.

Some more about Butch

Just FY everybody’s I, Butch is pronounced Bootch, with a Mexican accent.

She is adjusting very well, playing and getting into the chewing stage with gusto. We invested in some good chew toys right away - luckily.

She came seeming to know to poop outside on the balcony, we are still working on the peeing though. Mikko has risen to the occasion nicely. He is very diligent about cleaning up after her immediately. This is the perfect time for a new puppy, because most of our lives revolve around home. Matthew and/or I are home most of the day. And we have gotten all of our trips out of the way and are happy to take a break from traveling, possibly until our big journey home in July.

The dog below is who we believe to be her papa. We call him Shy Dog because … he’s really shy. We hadn’t seen him for months until the other day when we took her out, he emerged from his hole in the bushes. We couldn’t get close to him, so they never really met face to face

She has the same pensive look.

More of little Butch Napper and where she got her name

Well, her second name anyway:

She does like to NAP!!

So a continuation of the story that led us to this moment- the Friends of Animals ladies just disappeared, the phone was disconnected and everything. So finally last week I went over to the neighbors to tell them that and that I was still interested in the puppy. She came running out, but the white one wasn’t there. She had been stolen because she was pure white. The fellow thought he knew who stole her, so he told us to come back in a week and if he could find her we could have the black one. I was planning to go by tonight. After my little afternoon nap I went out onto the balcony and the fellow was on his roof and he whistled at me to come over.

Here’s Mama Dog (Rasputina) a few days ago.

He looked so sad when we got there Mama Dog was very happy to see us, but the puppy was quite shy. We sat around for a bit and he told me that they couldn’t find the white puppy, but he wanted us to take the black one anyway - right away. She has huge paws and looks like she is going to be pretty big. So even though they like her, they decided it would be better to give her a good home, than it would be for them to have two big dogs. He even had a little bag of dog food ready for us. He decided not to get Mama Dog spayed yet so he can try again, for a white one, I guess. It was a sad farewell. I almost cried looking at his big sad face.

Butch is adjusting well so far - mostly sleeping and a little exploring and whining. I feel like I am covered with fleas, so we will do some basic maintenance and make some purchases tomorrow. I suppose a trip to the vet is on order as well. Yikes - what a big responsibility. But can you even stand how cute she is?

And handsome, yes?

Meet Butch Napper

We now have our own dog for our own balcony (we don’t have access to our rooftop.) Thanks all of you who sent puppy thoughts this way. Our neighbors just decided that we can have her and here she is in our house - all of a sudden. I have more to post but no time now, and some technical difficulties with the camera. Stay tuned.

More walks in good ol’ Guanajuato

Just some more pix from some more walks.

the Puppy Post

So it has been puppy central here on Pochote (our callejon) lately.

Many of you out there may know that one of the elements of this adventure was the possibility of us coming home with a dog.

When we first got here we ran into this sweet lady (see below) a lot. We called her Mama Dog because she obviously had just had puppies, even though she looked barely past her own puppydom. She has a good gig down at the jardin, where she goes along the row of restaurants and stands or sits staring at the patrons with her deep, beseeching gaze and her belly dangling with teats. She really is a particularly beautiful dog and super sweet. (Unfortunately tonight, when I finally had my camera she would not be still enough to get a good picture.)

I had mixed feelings when I found out that she actually had a home right across the callejon from us, but then a few weeks later we saw her cruising through town - the engine, with a long string of boy dogs chugging along behind her. It was right around then that our land lady let us know that she would let us get a puppy, which is normally not her policy. I checked the internets about doggie gestation periods and stuff and decided that if I could have one of her puppies, I would go home very very happy.

Right before our last trip she was clearly VERY pregnant and when we got back she had trimmed down considerably - so we knocked on her people’s door and asked to see the puppies.

There were only two and they are total chunks. (The litter she had just before we got here in September was TWELVE puppies.)

Once we saw the puppies I contacted someone from Amigos de los Animales (Once in the site, look at the newsletter it has the best information.) to help me talk to the family. I didn’t know exactly how to go about talking to them and even though I get by quite well in Spanish, I miss things a lot and I wanted to have someone who could really know the ins and outs to help me out.

We have decided that we are leaning towards the black one, because she will be more like Mama Dog - whose name is actually Rasputina. Oh my god!! can you stand how cute she is??

But!! They are not sure that they want to get rid of them. I have offered to pay for Rasputina’s sterilization in exchange. And he was planning to think on that idea and let me know. But then he found out that Veronica, (the woman from Friends of Animals, who was helping me out, and holding the white little cutie pie,) has wiener dog puppies so now he wants to trade for one of them - unspayed. So now it is very complicated. So I need all of you to look at this picture and send togetherness thoughts our way to us and the puppy. (Mikko wants to name her Pudgie - I am trying to get him to think of some other options so he can decide on the best one.)

These are some other little puppies that the boys in the callejon were trying to get us to take last week. I’m not sure where they are now - no one will give me a straight answer.

So - if Mama Dog’s puppy doesn’t work out - there will certainly be many options. I so want one of hers though.

If anyone is interested in adopting a street dog or puppy, Amigos de los Animales is an excellent way to do that. And if you are south of Portland on the west coast we could drive it home to you in July.

4 days in TJ

This is a bit of an epic post, but Tijuana is a bit of an epic place. It is all so big and heavy. I have just barely scratched the surface. Our friend that we stayed with has a blog about living there.

We traveled up Baja through miles and mile of this type of landscape .

This is the first of 6 military checkpoints that we had to stop at. They just chose a few random suitcases to go through, then showed the crowd pictures of things: drugs weapons etc. that they have gotten at that particular checkpoint. I got reprimanded for taking this picture, but he didn’t make me erase it.

At about 2 in the morning they made a bunch of people, including Matthew get off and frisked them. Mikko and I were sleeping like babies, so missed the whole thing.

When we woke up the ocean was right outside and the hillsides were covered with wild flowers.

Jesus was there to welcome us at some point. He’s such a nice guy.

I was very attracted to the dashboard of our bus.

It was much colder, so far north, than we were used to. (Mikko was still a little sick too.)

We were greeted, at our friends’ house by their nine month old Chihuahua, Xoloitzcuintle, Xolito for short. He was a sweet companion, when he wasn’t humping your arm.

Our friends live less then a block from the beach, about 5 or 6 blocks from the border.

This fence runs all the way along the border, so basically is the northern border of Tijuana.

This was a park that represented the friendship between Mexico and the US. They started building the fence just before NAFTA, long before 9/11. The powers that be knew how NAFTA would trash the Mexican economy and that people would be coming north to look for work - so we had to be sure to lock them out.

Families used to picnic on either side of the fence. There were always vendors on the Mexican side selling delicious things, so people would pass food through this hole to the US side where they were miles from a McDonalds. La Migra closed the hole though. There is no one on the US side anymore, except immigration police watching the fence.

The wall has become a site for a lot of art. This shows how once the wall was built and the doors were locked it forced people to risk their lives crossing the desert.

On a lighter note- we went to a soccer game on Sunday. The Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente. (Xoloitzcuintle, is that crazy looking Aztec, hairless dog, BTW.) This is a shot of their fans. They were as loud and rowdy as the Timbers Army in Portland.

And one crazy Mexican hotdog. The Xoloitzcuintle colors are red and black which is why the hotdog comes in a red tortilla, of course.

Unfortunately, they lost. Which was a big deal - I blame myself. Generally when I go to a Timbers game their winning streaks come to a halt too. Sorry.

Another picture I wasn’t supposed to take - so I’m posting it even though it doesn’t really show anything. According to Lynn, the new soccer stadium and everything around is owned by the ex mayor of Tijuana. Including his own private zoo, pictured here. (We could hear lions getting intimate, I believe.)

On Monday we planned to go to some museums to see some artwork of a friend and just generally do some touristy things. Little did we know it was the official holiday celebrating the nationalization of oil, so everything was closed. We saw some pretty park benches though.

The next day we ventured across the border to do a little shopping. I guess I wasn’t supposed to get this picture either.

Ah the beautiful US of A.

And a good ol’ American hotdog.

We found good sushi in Tijuana the next day.

And dropped by a workers’ rights office.

So nice to be around some radical politics, after the ultra conservative GTO.

Though why peace, workers rights and the environment are radical is a mystery to me. (Actually, unfortunately it isn’t a mystery, just a travesty.)

Then on Wednesday we got a ride to the airport, past our last glimpse of the wall, and the art on it. Each cross represents someone who has died making the crossing. At this point more people have died than in 9/11 or US casualties in the Iraq war, since the wall was built.

Lucha belated (thank the lords for TV)

Those of you who follow the Lucha schedule must have been shocked to learn that we were out of town on January 19.

It was a difficult decision, particularly after a guy that works in the parking lot on the way to Mikko’s school - yelled after us one day, “Are you going to Lucha on Saturday?” He must have recognized us from a past match. (This is also an indicator of my Spanish - I am so used to tuning voices on the street out - but the words drifted into my head and I turned around and saw he was talking to us.)

I think I offended him when I said there were no stars fighting - he let me know it was all stars - but also that it was a particularly big one that would be televised soon after.

Last week he let me know the time and station and we went over to some friends’ house to watch it yesterday.

Saw some cute dog action on the way.

And I have to say… Lucha just doesn’t translate on TV. Maybe it was the venue and being for TV but it was just brutal and violent. There was a lot less comedy, and less acrobatics and less love. Maybe it was this particular match, but Mikko and I agreed that if this match had been our first experience with Lucha, we wouldn’t have tried again.

The highlights were the minis - we liked Octagoncito. (Not pictured)

And a new element: Lucha drag queens - of sorts.

This is Yuriko, she was quite a brutal rudo who ended up using a big metal pan on her opponents.

Pimpanela and Casandro were quite the acrobats, they were also the victims of the afore mentioned metal pans, later on. So uncool.
I’m glad we saw it. And I’m really glad we didn’t stay in town for the match. And I still look forward to the next more low key match that comes to town.

Some more cute dog action on the way home.