Dog Eat Dog

There are quite a few dogs hanging about in this part of Costa Rica.  The dogs on the beach all appear to be loosely attached to an owner.  These are unlike the town dogs who look after themselves.

The town dogs are mongrels, the most refined of the canines.  They are the Heinz 57 breed.  Mix all these inbred master race dogs together and what comes out of the genetic stew is a smart, short furred, athletic, twenty-ish pound creature that looks Dog.  Time for a lie down?  Dig out a depression in the shade and catch some z's.  Hungry?  Check out the back doors of the restaurants.  Feeling like a little action?  Whoa!  I can smell Lola somewhere!  That's a town dogs' life.

As I now veer off from my extremely interesting discussion of pure bred dogs versus mongrels I foresee problems.  Perhaps you can see where my sensibilities lie and where this might be going.  Pure bred dog owners (one of which I've become) are a misguided lot.  Do you want a dog or some pathetic manifestation of your struggling ego?  I have discussed this issue with Jake.  He is secure in his dogliness and has informed me that he feels more Dog than Labrador Retriever.  He has let me know that if he still had all of his parts he would happily breed with mongrels or pure breds.  He draws no distinctions.  With the exception of course of the Jack Russell Terrier of which he cannot abide.

The town dog is noble, being free.  The beach dog, unfortunately is enslaved.  As Cesar Millan, of Dog Whisperer fame has noted, "my job is to rehabilitate dogs and train owners".  Obviously, the training of owners is the only difficult part of Cesar's equation.  Unfortunately, we have discovered from the numerous schools of psychoanalysis, the hundreds of religions and thousands of self-help books that the training of humans is impossible.  No more evidence is required than one of our neighbours here.  We know them as "The Italian Family".

Now if I had a serious ego problem and was pretty much a total mess, what sort of dog would I bring to a tropical country.  Any guesses?  If I thought that anyone was actually reading this blog, the savvy thing to do would be to put in a "voting widget" and have my audience wait until tomorrow's blog for the answer.  No sense indulging that fantasy.  The Italian Family has elected the Siberian Wolf as their beach dog of choice.  No Siberian Husky or any sort of cross breed for these folks.  They followed logic, such as they know it, and shipped down a breeding pair of Siberian wolves.

Donna has warned us of the wolves and shared some of their bloody history of encounters with other dogs.  Needless to say, as we approach the beach we take a quick peek for the wolves.  If there are wolves on the beach, we walk a little farther down the road before heading shoreward.  This morning the wolves were having a swim.  The male wolf is always on his lead so when he spotted Jake his owner was required to put her considerable weight behind her efforts of restraint. (Me, passive-agressive?)

Under what fantasy-land scenario are these wolves and these Italians happy with their situation?  I put this question to Jake but he was pissed off from having to shower down after coming back from the beach and wasn't speaking.  As usual, to show his disdain for my ideas of cleanliness he went and had a good rub down in the grass and dirt.