Going to the dogs

Last night Pat took me to La Fonda, a famous restaurant just off the parque central here for a birthday supper. We´d eaten glorious cake earlier in the afternoon, so just shared a big appetizer, a plate of sausage and chicken bites, beans and guacamole and salsa. Grand! But there was more than we could eat. Pat decided to take the remaining sausage with her, just to be sure it wasn´t wasted: four sausage bites in a little plastic sack. When we got to the parque central, we passed two dogs and Pat dribbled out the sausage, which they inhaled.

Then we walked on, and a block later noticed that we had aquired two canine companions. They weren´t begging or whining or doing anything but following very politely but rather closely on our heels in the clear hopes that more sausage would fall out of Pat´s hands. For eight blocks we howled with laughter, imagining Doña Thelma´s house beseiged by our two friends, and for seven blocks they walked just a shadow behind us. Finally, to our relief, they must have decided that further sausage was unlikely, and they peeled off in the last block before Thelma´s house.

These two dogs are typical of the many dogs that live on the streets or in the campo here. They´re always respectful of people, and usually not very interested. They live their canine lives scrounging where they can. And when sausage falls from the heavens, they´re inclined to follow the source.