Dogs in Cuba also have their day

By Aurelio Pedroso

Every time I broach the topic of dogs, I am reminded of a statement heard in the 1950s in the town of Zulueta, former province of Las Villas (today, Villa Clara) that said that dogs in the nearby towns of Placetas, Remedios and Buenavista didn’t bark but mumbled, while leaning against the wall, because they were so hungry.

I haven’t the slightest idea of how those dogs are doing today, because it’s been a long time since I set foot on that area. But I can tell you that dogs in the capital are not doing well at all.

All their lives, Cuban dogs have eaten the family’s leftovers. The recent trend of eating industrially produced canned food applies only to “diplomatic” dogs, or dogs owned by foreigners who live here permanently and have enough purchasing power to buy, let’s say, a kilo of beef empanadas.

And there are some affluent folks who buy food in specialized stores to feed either a canary, a Dalmatian, a cat or a falcon from Canada who unfortunately couldn’t make the migratory return trip and now lives in a cage near the house, forever looking northwestward.

We should recall that there was a time, back in the 1970s, when, if you had a dog-ration card, you could get a waxed-cardboard box with cow entrails whose odor was as strong as roasted coffee or guava marmalade as it wafted through the house, the building and the neighborhood.

Many, many people have evicted their dogs, and if to that misfortune we add the fact that Havana has only one dog pound — well, what more can I say. It is strange that a country so open to donations (such as the trash bins received from the Principality of Asturias, Valencia and Madrid) has not received a second-hand dog pound from one of those German cities with unpronounceable and unspellable names or Italy or France.

As a result, packs of homeless, mangy dogs coexist in quiet impunity, always looking for something to eat, burdened by all the fleas, ticks and worms their skinny structures can bear.

Stories have been written but the solution is nowhere in sight. The Animal Control officials can “put to sleep” a reporter or a representative from an animal-protection society with their explanations, but until our streets are free from those unfortunate abandoned creatures, the problem will not be solved.

The Office of the City Historian, headed by Eusebio Leal, has added to its multiple tasks and concerns a plan to deworm pets and any street mutt that is brought before a competent staff of veterinarians.

The plan (as everything else on the island and in the world) has its supporters and its detractors. The latter claim that deworming the dogs would dump more excrement on the streets, to the dismay of the thousands of national and international tourists who visit Havana’s historic sector and fail to look where they step.

Another of Leal’s proposals is the creation of an asylum or shelter for that enormous nomadic community, ill-fed and sickly, but that idea goes against the opinion of those who’d like a clinic, not what the City Historian has in mind.

Meanwhile, the poor mutts are on their own.

José Rolando Molina, a graduate from the Higher Institute of Art and San Alejandro College, and Yolanda Navarrete Quiñones, a university junior with a major in sociocultural sciences, have just presented in Havana a singular photographic exhibition of these wandering creatures.

To do this, they have had the support of Nora García, president of the Cuban Society for the Protection of Animals and Plants, and an enthusiastic group of her followers.

No pure-bred dog showed up at the place; they were welcome even though they couldn’t compete. Almost all contestants, with few exceptions, were creatures saved from the street turmoil.

Even someone who isn’t the slightest interested in dogs will be impressed by the almost human gestures and looks of the subjects of the photographs. More than 15 dogs competed in such atypical classifications as Longest Tail, Biggest Ears, Cutest, Oldest and even Most Similar to its Owner.

Kasaco, in the photo, won the Largest Mutt award. First a vagabond, then a street vendor’s assistant, he now helps sell berets at the flea market outside Havana’s Cathedral.

I almost forgot the Cuban dog who “spoke.” Back in the 1980s, he was featured in a television program of the Believe-it-or-not type. The dog was called Niño and came from the eastern city of Guantánamo. Niño’s trick was saying “¡Ay, papá!” in a plaintive voice created when his master squeezed its neck to modulate its growl.

Some local people said the master simultaneously squeezed the animal’s testicles with his other hand, but there’s no proof of that. The trick did not amuse the authorities who, unfortunately for the dog and its master, were watching the TV program at the time. I later heard that the order went out that the TV program should be devoted to more scientific, more instructive topics.

Let’s hope Kasaco is luckier and is not challenged at the flea market by some inspector who asks him for his street-vendor’s license.

Because the topic was street dogs, José Molina thought that the photo captions should look like the sandwich boards carried by sandwich men on the streets, decades ago. One such caption was very impressive, and the truth is that you always learn something. Over the head of a tick-infested dog, the photo caption said, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The greatness of a nation can be gauged by the way its animals are treated.”

In sum, to paraphrase the old song, the street dogs had their day.

Aurelio Pedroso, a Cuban journalist who lives in Cuba, is a member of the Progreso Semanal/Weekly team.