Chasing After Duque
My love for a Costa Rican strays led me to two women: one who ran a dog sanctuary on her farm, the other who initiated a spay/neuter movement.
Note: I wrote this in 2006, after returning to Costa Rica since my first visit there in 2000. I was struck by the many advances that had occurred since I had fallen in love with the strays there and becoming, unexpectedly, a dog person. Obviously, many more advances have occurred since then. On a more recent visit to Cuba, I was impressed by a one-stitch spay that was being used for stray dogs there. It reminded me of the spay/neuter work that was being done more than a decade ago in Costa Rica using a small incision — something that is, mysteriously, still unheard of in the United States. The text of my original essay follows.
In the year 2000, I lived in Costa Rica for three months and fell in love with the dogs. There were many visitors to the farm during my stay there, and everyone knew about me and my love for Duque, who, like most dogs in Central America, didn’t really belong to anyone.
Dogs don’t last long in Costa Rica, particularly in the countryside, where, even if they are owned, they are allowed to run free, down the unpaved winding rock roads and into the villages, where they hang out on corners waiting for food. In Ciudad Colón, at the one restaurant in town, they would wander in and sit in groups around…
