Paint Ball (s)

October 17, 2011

It's been a tough week....

Okay, so we just wrapped up the third “in-heat” season with our adopted dog Daisy, which happens about twice a year. Because she’s been “fixed” (with only a tubal ligation), she still has what it takes to attract all the town boys during her temporada de amor.  Had we known then what we know now about sterilization procedures and options here in Ecuador, we would have known to request a full spaying, for less money by qualified visiting volunteer vets to have this procedure done. (Proteccion Animal Ecuador).

That’s not to say the local vet we used isn’t experienced, but to the best of our understanding, it is not uncommon for local vets to traditionally leave in a few aromatic/erotic parts so that a former beach stray who’s been adopted (such as Daisy was) can still “bond” with the pack, despite being more or less domesticated at this point.

And “bond” she does……really, it is not pretty. It’s noisy and messy and embarrassing (though less so since her first “heat”). The other night, Todd and I were trying to carry on a professional conversation with some folks, standing in a circle outside on the street in front our house.  Naturally, Daisy and her current favorite beaux decided then to squeeze right in the middle of the circle to give us show…That would have been appalling enough, but of course another novio showed up to make it a ménage a trios.

Sorta like this....

For the record, this is a rather disconcerting distraction during business transactions.

The next day or so, we woke to an early 5:00AM morning barking commotion outside in our front yard. Daisy and another one of her favorite boyfriends were STUCK together en flagrante (sorry for my bad French; I don’t know a bit of it) and couldn’t get dis-engaged. I’ve heard of this happening, but never have witnessed this charming tableau in person. Let’s just say they were in butt to butt position. I stomped out in my jammies to spray them with the hose (which I understand is supposed to work)…I was trying to keep the water aimed at the fella…Which eventually worked. But he raced forward like a bat out of hell, quickly pulling a stuck Daisy backwards (facing me). I still have this picture in my mind of Daisy’s look at me for putting a damper on her fun as she was being yanked rear-ward.

For sure, Todd is more disgusted with her behavior during these times than I am, and he keeps a sling-shot nearby to chase off the boys (using small pebbles so as not to really hurt them, but make an impression when he does score a shot) because they swarm the neighborhood during Daisy’s season, pissing and pooping everywhere. Doesn’t go over well with some of neighbors as well, though they now know it’s only for a week or two.

Todd and I got to laughing the other day…. we think we should tell next friends coming down to bring paint ball guns/ammo, hand one out to each neighbor, assign a color and keep a scoreboard of “hits”…I’m not sure, but don’t think paintballs too cruel to these dogs (and maybe we can find a few roosters to stalk as well).  I mean, if a bunch of willing adults do this as a hobby on weekends in the U.S….how bad can a paint ball sting be?  Never had the opportunity to participate in one of these paint-ball contests, but they sound like fun…

It would be kind of funny to have all the horny town dogs running around with various paint splotch skin decorations that MAY, OR MAY NOT, endear us with the locals.

PLEASE, I’m mostly joking here, and hope I don’t get slammed by animal lovers for these comments….

Instead of running with the bulls in Pamplona, you can race to paint the dogs in Olon.