It’s been a long while since the last post, but reasons abound. Despite the more leisurely pace of life here, seems like we’re always pretty busy (several imminent food and travel-related posts will attest to this shortly, so stay tuned). The days fly by as Josh and the girls plod along with school and homework, and I’ve been busy with teaching, trips with students, and virtual connections with work back home. Small program-related crises or homework crunches now and then, but all in all nothing very dramatic. It’s no surprise, then, that one of the most riveting reference points for our days has long been “the puppies.” Only a day or so after we moved into our apartment, we noticed three small black puppies living in the grassy empty lot across the street. And I have to admit, they were cute. Having left our much-loved Lena at home, the girls were elated at the prospect of having dogs so close to home, and pleaded daily for permission to go down and “pet the puppies.” While we were able to indulge their desire to watch, their desire to pet the dogs and treat them like domesticated pets would remain a frustration. After all, these very cute dogs were clearly part of a family of street dogs and were in no need of human affection. Still, our fascination with the dogs continued to grow, as did the drama attached to them.
First, it was our growing understanding of the complex dog social world of which these dogs formed a part. Not only were they nightly attended to by “mama”, but mama was usually accompanied by other dogs that we came to identify as Auntie, Dad, and Uncle. While Mama was in charge of bringing them food, the other dogs also joined in the caretaking and playing. And on one especially sleepless night, I was amazed to look out my window and see on the sidewalk kitty-corner to the vacant lot all four adult dogs keeping vigil over the sleeping puppies. To reinforce this fact, Dad would get up and bark at any car that went by. This wasn’t a rabid pack of street dogs, mind you, but a well-organized and social family unit.
But wait. Before you check out with an exasperated sigh saying, “Boy has this blog gone to the dogs. She’s even doing canine ethnography now!” the story gets better. During these last months, the dogs have had their diets supplemented by several Good Samaritan neighbors (including our daughters) who would slip containers of food over to them. As the puppies have grown in size and chutzpah, we’d see them wandering outside of the fenced lot and wondered how soon they might move on to roam the streets on their own. Frankly, we just figured nature would eventually take its course. But that’s when the drama began.
One day we came home to see a back-hoe excavating the lot, followed by a steady flow of close to a hundred new cars into the space. We were horrified at the thought of the puppies being chased out, not to mention the prospect of looking across the street at a car dealership instead of a green space. So, we kept a firm eye on the process and waited to see signs of things to come. Luckily the next day, the cars slowly began to leave. Now, what that quick fill-up and then emptying of hundreds of new cars was about is beyond me; either someone temporarily moved their car dealership to accommodate some repaving or somebody needed to launder a lot of money. But I digress. We quickly noticed that the parade of exiting cars was being closely monitored not only by us, but also by a handful of anxious neighbors who were apparently similarly concerned about the puppies. When the lot was empty and Josh went over to give the newly-returned dogs some food, one watching neighbor came up and said, “Oh wonderful. You know, they’ve had a really tough day.” And that’s when we became a part of the underground vigilante puppy-rescue network. Now, that may sound a bit dramatic given that all we were apparently doing was offering the stray dogs food, but the situation quickly escalated. Following the re-emptying of the lot, a pair of men began to show up daily to reinforce the chain link fence around the lot. Given the fence’s rickety condition, at first it just looked like they were doing some minor repairs to keep the fence standing. None of this seemed to have much impact on the puppies—and the whole dog family—who easily reentered the lot every evening to loll and lope, snuggling together at the end of the evening to sleep in a bed of hay someone had made them long ago. But then the reinforcement efforts redoubled, and a clear test of wills (and primitive metalwork skills) were at play, as the two attendants would come each morning to patch the new holes opened during the night. To their clear frustration, a new entryway would miraculously open up each night, thanks in part to this subversive neighborhood committee of puppy-lovers. (And we can say that Josh never had anything to do with it, thanks to my camera's night flash limitations.)
Well, I’d like to say that the story has a happy ending, and the lot owner ceded his economic interests in the place to the puppies’ needs, but this isn’t a Disney movie. As a final effort, the two attendants reinforced the chain link fence with a layer of metal sheeting, essentially shutting down access to the lot forever and creating something aesthetically reminiscent of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. 
Clearly the dog days of free roaming in the empty lot were gone. One neighbor got especially aggressive about intervention at this point and slipped some tranquilizer in the dogs’ food in order to subdue them and deliver them to adoptive homes, but the puppies wouldn’t be had. They ate up the tampered food and kept right on moving, refusing to let the well-meaning neighbor get ahold of them and proving once again that these weren’t no domesticated dogs, thank you very much. Nonetheless, we give a special wink and nod to this neighbor as we pass down the street each day, acknowledging our complicity in this thwarted plan.
Good news is that in the wake of the closure of the cradle of their youth, the puppies seem big enough to fend for themselves these days. We see evidence of this everyday when we catch the puppies sleeping in the tree beds that line the sidewalk just below our window,
or in the scattered remnants of trash bags that they have scavenged, or in the early morning bark fests that they engage with their kin. Life goes on and so do the puppies. Now we just wait to see what kind of shady business is set to unfold in the newly-reinforced lot next door and, in the meantime, we hope our girls don’t catch sight of a litter of kittens….
