The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach (6 page)

I wondered who could possibly want to kill me simply for taking care of innocent strays. But as we talked further, I thought of the sketchy-looking people I'd seen hanging out in the shadows of the boathouse. The interactions were pretty quick—cars drove up, people passed objects I couldn't make out through the windows, and they sped away minutes later. I'd even seen police cars roll up and meet with the shady characters in the darkness of the dilapidated structure. I assumed the figures were drug dealers because I couldn't fathom any other reason people would come to this derelict dead-end part of the world. But I minded my own business like I hadn't seen anything. If they passed close by, I'd give a friendly wave. But my instincts, which had sharpened again since moving to Puerto Rico, were telling me to be more careful.

“Listen,
mi hijo
,” Carlos said. “You're not in the States anymore. You had better watch your back. You could go missing here and no one would ever find you. It happens all the time.” He sounded like he was pissed off at me, but I knew he was actually being emphatic out of concern.

I thanked them both and assured them I would heed their warning and try to be careful.

But first I had to find the puppies of the mother that the old couple had just seen me bury. I went back to where I had found her lying at the edge of the parking lot near the tall grass. I was pretty sure she'd made her den there. I'd found her with a half-eaten hot dog in her mouth; she'd clearly been poisoned. By then I'd heard that people on the island fed unwanted animals something called “two step,” which caused a fast but violent death moments after ingesting it. I needed to see if the pups had made it or if they too were gone.

I rummaged through the grass, listening for sounds of life. And then I heard it: the telltale squeaks and grunts of baby dogs. The grass was so thick I couldn't see them, so I had to be careful where I stepped. I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling around until I finally found three little ones. I estimated them to be a couple of weeks old at most. Their eyes weren't even open yet. I gently gathered them up and put them inside my shirt to keep warm and hear my heartbeat. They yelped, squeaked, and grunted for their mother. They would die if I didn't do something.

A few days earlier, I'd discovered another nursing mother, who had made a den in the safety of the jungle just off the main road. A couple of her pups had died. She had whimpered and whined when, not wanting her remaining puppies to get sick, I took the dead ones out from under her. I hoped I could introduce these new pups to her and she would take them as her own. I had seen this done when I was kid, and I had a feeling it would work now if I handled the introductions properly.

As I approached, the mother dog immediately noticed the puppy noises coming from inside my shirt. She nudged at the squirming bundle, and sniffed their little bodies stem to stern. After a few minutes, she settled down with her own puppies and gave me a look that seemed to say, “I'll take them. Those are my puppies now.” I placed the orphans by her side, and in no time they were nursing happily. The mom licked, cleaned, and prodded at them as they suckled. I stayed with her and the puppies for the rest of the day, my heart swelling with elation as I watched the puppies heal the mother and the mother save these orphans.

But a dark thought clouded my happiness: Was I really doing these puppies any good, or was I just postponing the inevitable?

I
had become a creature of habit, going through my daily routine without fail. I arrived at the entrance to the beach every morning after dropping Pam off at work. I combed the long road, looking for newly dumped dogs. I put out the dishes for food and water, working to gain the trust of the new arrivals. The new ones were usually scared, hungry, thirsty, and badly abused, so I was very careful about introducing the new dogs to the pack before they were ready.

I figured their abusers were most likely men, so I knew I had my work cut out for me to gain their trust. The existing pack already respected me as their alpha, and I needed to make sure there was harmony among the members at all times. It was important that the new ones found their proper place in this ragtag family without too much trouble. If they fought after I left each evening, the injuries would mean almost certain death due to infection, so I did everything I could to ensure that didn't happen. I'd often stay for hours into the evening after an already long day spent working with the dogs, correcting problems before they escalated, like when a new dog's skittishness stirred up the pack. But there was power in the pack; if there was cohesion among the dogs, they would protect one another when I wasn't there to help them. Like people, dogs don't do as well alone; they survive better as a pack.

Determined to do something to stop the human violence, I decided to pay a visit to the police station in Yabucoa to ask if they'd conduct more patrols of the beach area to deter whoever was killing the dogs. Their response: “Sorry, no English.” Even when I returned armed with the correct Spanish phrases, I still received blank stares.

Puerto Rico has no animal control officers or dog registry, and no government agency is assigned direct responsibility for the strays. While animal cruelty laws do exist, they're simply not enforced. To many people, especially those who live off the land, an animal is just an animal. And it's not just dogs, it's all animals—horses, cats, roosters, manatees.

A family might even adopt or buy a puppy or kitten only to find the expense and time involved in owning a pet too much to handle. Then they'll abandon their pet to the wild or even kill it. There are only a handful of privately run shelters in Puerto Rico, and, as I was coming to learn, Playa Lucia was far from the only place where dogs were abandoned. This island paradise, home to four million people and host to another three million tourists each year, had something on the order of a quarter of a million stray and abandoned dogs roaming the streets and jungle, looking for food and shelter. It seemed there was nobody in this community, or any other for that matter, willing to do anything about it.

It was becoming a nearly overwhelming effort to drag myself out of the house in the morning because of what I'd likely find when I got to the beach. I often wished I had the fortitude, or maybe the callousness, to walk away from the mess and go paragliding or kite surfing. The death toll kept climbing. Every drive to the beach was filled with the dread of wondering which dog would be missing that day.

And then, one morning, it was Blue Eye who didn't show up. The first dog I befriended on that godforsaken beach and, until that day, still the first to greet me when I arrived each morning. There had been a bad rain the night before, and, as was often the case after a storm, the dogs were acting a bit off. I'd learned by now that they often took shelter in the boathouse when the weather was bad. I decided to have a look to see if Blue Eye, who was still in pretty rough shape, was hiding out there.

At the door, I slid my sunglasses on top of my head and let my eyes adjust to the dim light inside. The concrete floor was covered with broken glass and puddles where the roof leaked. Across the room, I spotted a lifeless pile of bones and fur. I recognized him instantly. I was taken back to that first day at the beach, when I found what looked like a pile of seaweed or coconut husks in the sand that ended up becoming my new friend. The room grew blurry through the veil of tears in my eyes. I went to him and knelt by his side, caressing his face. I stayed like that for a long time, saying good-bye to this lovely dog who had worked his magic, found his way into my heart, and given me a new purpose.

By the time I stood up, my feet had fallen asleep and my knees ached. The entire pack, about forty dogs now, stood around me. They followed as I walked to the truck to grab my shovel and returned to the boathouse, where I found a rubber pool liner hidden behind some old shipping containers. I wrapped Blue Eye in the liner, carried him to the burial ground, and started to dig.

When the hole was large enough, I put my friend inside. As I threw the first shovelful of sand over his body, my courage and determination drained. I felt sick to my stomach and numb, like part of me had died and was being buried with him. I wondered how many more deaths I could bear. I thought of all the other dogs from the beach, of Tanya and Achates, of my father and grandfather.

When it was done, I wrestled with the urge to run as I had as a boy. But I didn't. Not this time. Instead, I just sat quietly with the pack and said good-bye to my friend. They needed me to be strong, and I was beginning to realize how much I needed them too. I was exhausted from emotion. I collapsed in the sand, leaning against a palm tree, drifting off to sleep, the pack hovering and watching over me.

I was awakened when the dogs jumped up suddenly and bolted a few yards away. As I rolled to the side to stand up, I was stopped short by a hollow thump and an excruciating bolt of pain in my back and shoulder that left me breathless.

“What the hell?” I turned to see who had struck me with such force. I expected to see one of the thugs I'd encountered earlier standing over me with a baseball bat. I only saw the dogs, concerned looks on their faces. Oddly, they hadn't run for the jungle. That's when I saw a fresh green coconut the size of a football lying in the sand next to where I'd been sitting.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons that day. The first was never to sit under a coconut tree laden with fruit. The second was that dogs are way more aware of their surroundings than humans. I was lucky to have only a big bruise on my back and ribs rather than a fractured skull or spine.

After that day, I made it a point to visit the boathouse as part of my daily routine. One morning I found five dogs lying dead next to the massive rusting shipping containers, against the fence of the west exterior wall of the building, one of the containers leaning precariously on an old tractor tire. Two of the dogs had been dismembered with machetes. The others had apparently been stoned to death, their skulls and chests crushed. I started back toward the truck for the shovel that I had become far too familiar with, when I spied a police cruiser parked along the side road parallel to the sandy beach. The cops may have dismissed me when I went to the station house, but it would be a lot harder to ignore me now. I could show them firsthand what I was talking about.

I walked up to the vehicle, but it was hard to see inside past the palm trees reflected in the closed windows. I leaned in and shielded my eyes with my hands. The officer's eyes were closed. I tapped on the window to wake him.

The cop shot up in his seat like a rocket. So did a very young girl in a Catholic school uniform who was bent over his lap.

In seconds, the cop had thrown open the cruiser door and was screaming at me while he fastened his pants. Once his zipper was secure, his right hand came to rest on the service piece on his hip.

I took a step back, my hands in front of me in a supplicant's posture. I didn't understand a word he was screaming at me, but I wanted to defuse the situation as fast as I could. The girl in the passenger seat was crying, trying to straighten her skirt and blouse.

After a few minutes the cop had yelled himself out and got back in the car. That was when I noticed that the dogs had been at my side the whole time, quietly growling, hackles raised. Between the girl and my pack, no wonder the cop backed off. As he sped away, spewing gravel and sand in his wake, I was sure I hadn't seen the last of him.

I
think someone else is feeding the dogs,” I told Pam one night over dinner.

I had recently started finding little piles of dog food in different areas of the beach. If it had been a onetime thing, I might have disregarded it as a fluke, some beachgoer taking rare pity on the dogs. But it was becoming a regular occurrence. The more I expanded my explorations of the area, the more I kept discovering the small mounds, hidden from plain view.

One morning after doing my rounds with the pack, I followed the trail of kibble down the beach until I found the source. A short distance ahead, I spotted a young Puerto Rican woman holding a bag of dog food in her arms with several of my smaller dogs at her feet.

I extended my hand to shake and said, “Hey, how's it going. I'm Stephen.”

She smiled and shook my hand warmly. “I know. Everybody knows who
you
are,” she said.

Fortunately for me, Sandra, a local schoolteacher, spoke very good English, so I started to pepper her with questions. Her work with the dogs became even more impressive to me when she explained that she and her husband, Angel, struggled to afford their own food, let alone food for so many dogs.

“Do you know why so many dogs get dumped here?” I asked.

“It's not just here. In the jungle too and other beaches and by the road. All over the island really.”

“Why?”

“One day the puppy is so cute, but then it grows up, it's not so cute anymore. And it is too much trouble. . . .” She shrugged rather than finish her thought out loud. “I don't ask too many questions. I don't want no trouble. I just want to help the dogs.”

It was enough. I understood.

Finally I felt like I had an ally here.

Late one afternoon, not long after I'd met Sandra for the first time, I bumped into another dog guardian at the beach. Like Sandra, Sonia was a schoolteacher by day, but in the evenings and on weekends, she volunteered at a privately run dog shelter in Humacao called El Faro dog rescue, which was run by a Catholic nun called Sister Nancy. Sonia had a huge heart, and the dogs really seemed to love her. It made me happy to know that someone else was watching over them too. Having her around as well as Sandra gave me hope.

Three days before Christmas, I was doing my rounds when Peggy, a young mother dog, came running to me barking frantically. I could see fear and panic in her eyes. Until now, Peggy had kept her distance and made it clear that she didn't trust humans. I could tell from her engorged teats that she had nursing pups hidden somewhere on the beach, but I had never been able to find her den.