Coco Loco

I spent a good portion of this past summer in Hermosillo, Mexico for business reasons. It was quite an adventure. I had my own house and car down there, and so lived a semi-normal life, doing grocery shopping and laundry, driving to work and gassing up the car. This afforded me a more thorough education of Mexican culture than my business contacts received, coming in for the weekend and spending the whole time in their compound-like hotels sipping margaritas by the pool. I got to experience the real Mexico. The driving-derby sprints to work through traffic filled with old smoking trucks and children selling newspapers. Purchasing unmarked food in open air markets with a less-than-adequate grasp of the local language, much less customs. And of course, the dogs.

Dogs are everywhere in Mexico. All shapes and sizes. Huge, bear-like white dogs, with humps on their backs. Little raspy mean things with an eye missing but a mountain of attitude to make up for it. Chihuahuas. Pit Bulls. And everything in between. Not a one of them has a collar or a permanent home. Most look healthy, some dangerous. They all look capable of anything, it may be that the ones who weren't didn't last long. But they are everywhere. I counted 54 on the way to work one day.

So it was no surprise when a co-worker came in to the office one morning and announced she had found three abandoned puppies at the side of the road nearby. It interested me enough to go see for myself. You see, we had lost Willie earlier that year and had decided to eventually get another dog. So I went to see if that other dog was lying on the hot road.

Two of the puppies were healthy, and had obviously abandoned their little runt littermate, who did not look good. The mother was dead on the road a few yards away. I decided I had to take this puppy in and try to save it. It was obviously hours away from death, crawling with bugs and limp in the hot sun.

After bringing her (my investigations revealed that it was a she) to my house and feeding and bathing her, she looked a little better, but was still pretty bad. I called Heather and said something like:

"Hi honey. Have I told you how nice you look today? Remember when I said I might bring Zach a souvenir from Mexico? You do? Well, what would you think if it was a puppy?!?!?"

Long silence.

Heather agreed, eventually and reluctantly. I think she was a little concerned that I might be bringing a wild dingo home. And with the new baby, it wasn't the best time for a new puppy. But what to do? There are no dog shelters in Hermosillo that I know of, so it was certain death for the cute little Coco. Yes, I had done the one thing that pretty much guaranteed that we would take her in: I had named her. In the end, we decided to bring Coco back.

After several trips to the vet in Hermosillo, and much research on the legalities of importing dogs to the USA, she was back with us. It hasn't been easy. She has chewed a bookshelf. Peed everywhere. Ravaged curtains. Eaten a razor. But we love our little Coco Loco.