There's a veterinarian who works in Xalapa but who lives in San Marcos, about a mile from our house. He has taken it upon himself to offer free sterilizations of pets. He is a saint! He has a shed in back of his house outfitted like a tiny field hospital. My neighbor and friend T is even more of a softy about animals than I am, so she has accumulated a fair number of dogs and cats: people have left them with her, and they have reproduced. Her family has helped keep the numbers down somewhat, but there are too many, and so it was as if, a month or so ago, St. Francis himself looked down and saw that she needed to do something fast. When I asked my vet in Coatepec if he knew when there was going to be another sterilization campaign (they have them, but they are few and far between), he said, even better, his friend was doing them regularly and right near where we lived.
So now T and I have successfully seen four cats and two dogs sterilized. We took another two over this morning. T is waiting at the vet's house, and I am typing this, both of us hoping all will once again go well. We looked anxious and the vet asked the problem was. "We are afraid one or the other might die," we said. He nodded and smiled in a melancholy way. "It could happen. It could happen," he said.
T will be much more able to find homes for these very lovable animals once they are sterilized. I HOPE we have seen the last of the dog pregnancies. And has taken a firm stand on NOT accepting any new ones.
Unfortunately, her brother as well as our neighbor have resisted all entreaties and factual presentations of evidence of their perros' Don Juan natures and won't allow the machos to be neutered. This is not an exclusively Mexican (or local colonia) stance. My husband still grumbles about my insistence that our dog Giaco be neutered.