When I started living in Water's Edge, I received together with the house a dog: Paws. Brent and Neilda had had Paws for some time and had taken care of him through all the process of chemotherapy since Paws had cancer.
They told me that Paws liked to be around other places but he had been in the house lately.
The first days I was here, Paws stayed with me but when he found out that I was a vegetarian and he would rarely get some meat... so he moved out. He decided to go and stay most of the time at Grand Turk Diving where Chris gives him all kind of treats and a lot of attention too.
He comes to see me every evening and Sundays though . He is a lovely dog.
Around one month after I moved, my friend Jo-Ann left her dog with me for a few days, and then other dogs started to come to my place and hang out with him and Paws. Tipsy (Donna's dog), Princess (German Lisa's)dog and Steve (everybody's dog) came almost every evening around supper time Bto see if they could get some leftovers or just to play with the new guest.
But the new dog in the neighbourhood went back home and the rest of them, stayed around, being some kind of personal security service for me. They are around the house, on the beach, on the deck at different times of the day but mainly they stay here at night, except Tipsy that sleeps at Donna's. Every time someone is close to the house, or the pier, they start barking like crazy. It's really good to have them around since they act like some kind of alarm system although sometimes they overreact... They also bark to almost every person on a bicycle, making them almost fall sometimes or at least to get really scared, specially if they do not know the dogs. They also like to walk with me or any other person who walks. They escort people, sometimes for almost one hour...
Dogs on the island are very different from the dogs I had ever been with.I had many dogs before but none of them was like these ones. These dogs have a very independent life. They have owners but they do not belong to anyone. They decide where they are going to eat, sleep, hang out.
Sometimes they go to spend a couple of days in a different house and then they come back. They choose what to do and where. So I had to get used to that too. Not to get so attached to them even when they are so cute and loving. All of them have a very distinctive personality and an special way of asking what they want.
Sometimes I find a dog or a cat, that was hit by a car or something like that (last weekend in a single day I found two, dead on the same road) and I wonder what is going on here about respect/love (or lack of it...) to animals. Not only with dogs and cats. I have seen very cruel things done to horses, cows, donkeys... It's like many people here consider that animals are just objects to play with... I can't understand that. But I guess that has to do with education. At home and at the school, right?
If you do not teach your kids to respect life in any form, if you do not act with respect and love, if there is no education at school about this, how can we change that? And a kid that does not respect animals will become an adult who doesn't and this adult will have kids who will look at him as an example... so something should change now. I have hope. I think that changes are possible. It's a matter of starting with a little step.
See you tomorrow.
