Well, many of you suspected this would happen. We, or more accurately, I (Marla) have been considering getting a dog for a while now. With no future overseas travels plans, work obligations, and the house finished, it seemed like a good time to add to the family. And we've always loved how chill Mexi-mutts are and the idea of rescuing an unwanted canine from a rough life.
While in Todos Santos, our walk to and from the beach took us past a ramshackle property with chickens and puppies scratching around the yard. Immediately, I fell in love with a tiny tan floppy-eared pup with a black and white nose. Each time we walked past for 3 weeks, I looked for the little baby. After some serious thought and discussion, we decided to try to make contact with the family who lived there. Knowing so little Spanish, I just called from the road to get their attention, pointed at the puppies and said "Se vende?" (For sale?). The man gestured "just take"! But we weren't able to communicate well enough to get a good idea of the age of the pups, whether they were weaned or who the parents were. So we came back with some Spanish-speaking friends from our RV park to learn all we needed to know.
We played with the four pups from two different litters. Two with longer hair were clearly older, healthier and had open dispositions, and two short-haired ones were sadly very underweight, frightened and covered with fleas. While it broke our hearts to leave the pups so obviously needing help, we realized that with limited Spanish and easy access to veterinary care, it wouldn't be wise to take on more than we could tackle. The tan one with the black nose that I first fell in love with from the road came right up to us and was calm - not nipping or yapping - and absolutely chillaxed as we bundled her up and walked home.
We couldn't have made a better choice. This little tyke astonishes us. Within hours of being with us, she is behaving like a 6-month-old, professionally-trained dog. Not that we're taking any credit for it...she just seems to be super-smart and low maintenance. We took her to the vet for first shots - no problemo - and confirmed she was about 8 weeks old. She is an absolute Mexi-mutt, meaning we have very little idea about her breeding, but by looking at her parents, we it's clear there is a mix of terrier breeds and maybe some beagle, pug, shepherd and lab. We guess she will end up on the small-medium size.
That first night, she immediately curled up to sleep on the little bed of towels we made for her under the table. We wondered what kind of night we'd be in for having no idea about her toilet habits. We put some newspaper around the floor and went to sleep. Twice during the night she alerted us to distress by whining, we let her out, and she immediately went to the bathroom outside, came back in and went back to sleep! We had a housetrained puppy!
Word spread quickly though the RV park and we had a constant flow of visitors congratulating us on our addition and marvelling at her demeanour. We contemplated several names until Andrew (of course, he is the best namer of things) uttered "Coco", as she was born under coconut palms and her furry little face looks like a coconut.
Today is Day 3 with Coco and she has truly captured our hearts with her easy-going disposition and ability to learn. She already walks along with us without running off, warms up easily to other people, comes at a whistle, seems to understand "no", and is quickly overcoming her fear of the ocean - we'll have her swimming before leaving Baja. We've traveled from Todos Santos to Los Barriles and Cabo Frailes and she has been a champ riding along in the truck, just going with the flow of whatever her new parents are doing. She never barks or growls, just softly whimpers when she needs to potty or is afraid of other big dogs nearby. She totally lets us do whatever grooming needs to be done without struggle - brushing, picking burrs out of her feet, putting on a collar, cleaning her eyes, cleaning out her ears, etc. And best of all, she instinctually knows to toilet away from home.
Of course this is all easier when living the way we are - out in the wild basically. I can't imagine how stressing it would be to try to bring a puppy into a household with work schedules, civic bylaws, and other children.
We know this will impact travel and lifestyle plans in a big way, but it's a change we can happily accept to be able to hang out with this beautiful little creature! She has already adapted to RV travel well. Can't wait for you all to meet Coco!
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