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Category Archives: Travel Doggalogues

Cotacachi Butch

avatarPosted on February 2 by MajorMay 3, 2017  

The Story of Butch

“Are there many humans here in Quito?” I asked Pack Leader as soon as we were stuffed into a normal car-car by the kind-smelling older human who came to meet us. (If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging fast.)

“Almost three million.” Pack Leader grinned at my surprise. “And you thought Vancouver was big? By the way, it would take a puppy pile of more than three thousand wolves, standing on one another’s shoulders, to get to this altitude. What’s the matter, Major? Feeling a little woozy at ten thousand feet?”

“The air is less jangly here,” I informed her. Humans have no clue about magnetic fields and few of them so much as a decent sense of direction. I think that’s why they built computers—to make up for what their gods held back from them. I wasn’t going to get into that discussion again, however. “It seems very quiet for such a big tribe of humans. Do you suppose there are many dogs?”

“Wait till morning,” Pack Leader said. “You can look out the window and count canines all the way to Cotacachi.”

Morning atop the Old Town of Quito proved misty and mysterious. I caught a few glimpses of non-human activity as we careened down the precipitous streets in yet another car-car but the dogs of Quito were even more ghostly than I. As the sun strengthened and we drew further away from Quito and closer to the little leather-making town where we were to stay, Ecuadorean life became more substantial and I began to see dogs. Dogs without leashes. Dogs without humans. Dogs on their own!

A leather town seemed like a chewy idea. Where there’s leather, there must be meat, no? I whipped my head from one side to another as we drove into Cotacachi, eager to meet my first Latin American canine friends but a little worried over whether we would speak the same language. Pack Leader, I noticed, was making entirely different sounds with her mouth and apparently our driver could understand them. Whenever she was talking to her friend Dawn, another aging female human who had, amazingly, found us at the hotel the previous night, she sounded normal but then she would switch to the new sounds as soon as the driver said something. Full of surprises, my Pack Leader. “Hablas espanol?” She caught my eye and grinned wickedly but I was too excited about the dogs of Cotacachi to take her bait.

In Ecuador the humans have built their dens all in a tight row down the street, with no room between them. No front yards, no boulevards, no patches of grass or bush—a dog’s got to find a comfy spot on the brick sidewalk, or, if lucky, in a shallow doorway, and curl up for a snooze until a social event starts happening. The sidewalks are interrupted every few dog-lengths by poles, wires, trees or various things that stick out from the buildings, which makes for an interesting peemail trail. If another dog comes by and suggests a jaunt somewhere, you just get up and go—your human is probably absorbed in his computer upstairs somewhere and will never even notice  you’re gone.

Heavenly freedom! I thought—until I learned the truth about a dog’s life in Cotacachi.

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Escape to Doguador

avatarPosted on January 31 by MajorMarch 26, 2013  

When Pack Leader stumped up to my grave on the back end of our land to invite me to come with her to Ecuador, I was delighted. Not that our yard is not a nice little forest to be buried in, but being dead gets old fast. I’m lucky if the current young fool of a wolf dog, Lord Tyee, comes up to lift a leg every few days. Even Bruno, my old bear friend, didn’t come by once last summer, which is not like him—maybe he’s been repatriated in one of those bear-trap things on wheels.

I was wagging all over when I got the invitation—until I remembered Car-car in the Sky. I’ve never been on one of those infernal machines but I’ve heard from other canines about the terrible cold, the unendurable noise, and the sense of doom that settles down on you as you huddle in a horrible cage with not enough room to turn around in. “Where is this place? I asked Pack Leader suspiciously. “Do we have to take Car-car in the Sky?”

“Unless you’d prefer to swim down the west coast to the equator.” Pack Leader looked at me quizzically. Then her face lit up. “Oh, you’re worried about the baggage hold? Stop worrying! You can come on board with me. You’re my CSD!”

I am? I thought. What the heavenly milkbones is that?

“Companion Service Dog. With that degree, you’re entitled to sit upstairs with me. Of course, you’re pretty big for those little seats—we all are! But fortunately no one can see you, anyway. Just pad alongside me and everything will be fine.”

I don’t remember getting that degree. It sounded good but I still felt cautious. “No cage?”

“No cage,” Pack Leader said.

“Are there lots of wolfdogs in Doguador?”

“In Ecuador? I have no idea. That’s why you’re coming—to investigate the canine corners where a Two-Paws like me cannot go.”

“Okay!” I hopped into the back seat of the car, only to find Lord Tyee taking up nine tenths of it. “Hey! You’re coming too?”

Tyee glowered at me. “Pack Leader says you’re the elder statesdog. I’m going to my other Pack.” He settled, leaving me scarcely a cat’s length to squat on. “With my girlfriend,” he added smugly. “Didjever have a girlfriend?”

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