When Negra, our host family German Shepherd, gave birth to a litter of four puppies, I could barely contain my excitement. I couldn`t wait to have a canine companion once I moved into a house by myself. Little did any of us know that Negra wasn`t much of a mother. Her innocent little puppies died one by one. The first Negra accidentally crushed under her weight, according to my host mother. The second and third died mysterious deaths, but I imagine it was from starvation, as Negra didn`t breastfeed as often as she should have done. I essentially witnessed the fourth and final death.
Yesterday, May 6, was one of those days. It should have been the end of the weekend and a chance to look forward to the opportunities of the week ahead. However, today turned out to be a holiday, a free day of mourning declared in honor of the passing of a former President. And Sunday is already a drinking day, so with the prospect of a long weekend ahead, the men hit the bottle extra hard. Usually, I would try to go out and visit people over the weekend, but it proved worthless, as all conversation devolved into pissing contests or interrogations about why I didn`t have six Panamanian women carrying my seed. So I tried staying home and reading. Unfortunately, that was a bit unsettling as well. I`m currently reading Into the Wild, which isn`t the most uplifting story. Plus, it was rainy and cold; temperatures dropped to the lowest I`ve experienced thus far. To top it all off, as I had chosen to stay home, I had no choice but to listen to the fourth puppy.
All day he wimpered and whined. I thought he was probably hungry, in need of his mother. After a couple of hours of semi-successful reading, I ventured over to the makeshift cage to see what his fuss was all about. It was disturbing. The puppy was huddled in the corner with an open wound, where the neck meets the skull. Flies were crawling all over him and these wasp-like insects were literally inside him. I had no idea how to help the poor creature and nobody else seemed willing to do anything. Eventually my host mother and I washed him off a bit and moved him under the table of the kitchen area, where he would eventually give out. From when we moved to when we went to bed, he almost never stopped crying. All day yesterday, I listened to the death throes of a puppy.
There`s a very good Spanish word to describe his cries, a word I learned in a book I just read: desgarrador. What I assume is the root of the word, garras, means claws, and suggests tearing, ripping. It means heartrending, and that`s exactly what it was. This innocent little puppy, not even old enough to open his eyes or stand up, died in my presence. I was helpless to stop it because a) I`m not a vet and have no skills in treating animal wounds and b) the closest vet, an hour drive to Santiago, was probably closed or had shortened hours because it was Sunday. If he had lasted the night, today would have been just as hopeless because of the holiday. It broke my heart.
It probably seems silly, but I`d like to dedicate this post to those four little puppies. If this whole rambling post seems ridiculous or stereotypically American for how much I seem to become attached to pets, it only serves to contrast the Panamanian alternative, which around here seems to be the complete opposite: utter apathy.
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