This could become your full-time job, you know. :) Or hobby, since there's money going out instead of coming in.
I wasn't in the residential area of Playa del Carmen the one time I went, so I didn't see any dogs. But if it's anything like the suburbs of Mexico City—that's a lot of dogs.
On the street where my wife's family lives, the dogs hangout on the roofs and bark at you from above.
The guy who brought the puppy home might have thought you'd take care of it if he saw you helping the others.
Yep a hobby for sure!! I'm thinking of one day opening a shelter here for all the cats and dogs who are homeless. That is so funny about the dogs on the roofs! When I'm out for my walks, I'm often startled from above:) It's so weird to look up to see a dog there. The other day, I was on our rooftop, and turned in the direction of dogs barking, only to see six very large dogs on a roof, going crazy about a dog walking on the street:) I had to laugh!
You may be correct about the puppy-guy, because there is another dog in that 'complex' who I feed all the time, but I didn't have a picture to include in my post! Funny, I'd never thought about that.
Where does your wife's family live?
Yeah, it definitely takes some getting used to. And it doesn't help that there mainly large dogs, either, which must be feral, and potential rabies carries.
Spade and neutering definitely needs to be done, but now there's so many, unless there's some kind of publicly funded clinic, I doubt there's any interest to just spend money on it.
I don't know why they call them street dogs. It really should be roof dogs.
My wife has family living in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl. It's a suburb of Mexico City. I can never pronounce the full name correctly, so I always use the shortened version, Neza. Kind of sounds like necio, which sort of describes some of the goings on there.
Last time we were there, one of her uncles took us on a roadtrip outside of the state of Mexico. Getting out of town meant we went through an area where there must have been a raw sewage collection point. All we saw were walls, but the stench was overwhelming for about a minute. No mistaking what it was. He apologized to us for it. He was pretty embarrassed about it.
Now, even though there's wall to wall people there, everyone knows everyone else in the neighborhood, something I'm sure is duplicated hundreds if not thousands of times everywhere else, so it's pretty safe to walk around in at night. No gangs, or at least there weren't any the last time I was down there.
haha yes, roof dogs!
There are 3 Dog Rescue groups here, run completely by volunteers and donations. They are always full to capacity and as you know, there are still plenty on the streets.
Mexico City is huge...well population that is. That's a crazy story about her uncle and the drive, but I feel bad that he was embarrassed about it; although I can understand why. There is no other smell like it, that I know!
That's how I feel in our neighborhood; everyone knows us now and we say hi and have short conversations in our best "spanglish", but I think we are liked here. The kids who work at the corner store, where there's no alcohol sales, gave us a beer and chit-chatted for a few minutes with us. He was almost done work and had them in the cooler ;) And the owner of the local 'beer store' a few blocks away gave us a couple of beers as we were walking by. We didn't have change, only a 500 peso bill, so he said no problem, pay next time. I was so pleased, seriously! Not for the free beer, but that we are beginning to be viewed as local. It was a very nice feeling!