Avena y Mateo. Chapter 1: Dog-ville

We always adopted dogs. Most of the time. Not because we planned it, they just came along.
The first one was ‘La Negra’. She lived in the ground where my parents started to build the house at ‘Green-ville’. She kept good company to the workers and was a great night-watcher.
Building works were done. Workers left. We arrived to our new home. La Negra* stayed.
La Negra
She was a mix-breed of a Labrador and somethingelse.
Tall. Huge paws. And black, of course.
She liked to chill in the garage, just in front of the kitchen. In this way she would absorb a bit of sunlight and could always see what we were up to.
I can’t remember exactly how long she was with us. I do remember she came to my life when I was five or six years old and one day we had to say goodbye to her.
She was covered in tumours and there was not much left to be done.
When she finally found some peace, the hole left in the family was pretty obvious.
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I spent that Easter in the outskirts of Mexico City with a friend’s family.
When I came back home and opened the door, there he was: the loveliest black bunch of fur, wrapped in a red bow.
I had never felt that much love.
It was a puppy. He was no more than three months old. And my dad had already given him a name.
Just so we don’t forget (more or less) the year he was born…
Clinton
Clinton was a bully. He was lovely, and absolutely handsome. Yet a bully.
My parents bought him in a pet store. Nobody told us about this dog’s ‘character’.
He was an alfa dog. Proper alfa.
Back then there was not much culture or handy information on dogs as we have today. So we never knew how to be his leader. And this made him lose all of his control.
He messed with the electric parts of all the cars he could see. Gave my mum a black eye. And made sure he could chew on all the available cables. Anywhere.
Yet, he still was this bunch of black fur full of love.

While we tried to manage with this adolescent alfa, along came another doggy.
-You must know that the area we used to live in was very close to a town packed with stray dogs. They would all do a short travel from this town to find some food. If anyone gave one dog some leftovers, then more would come. We all kind of fed them, obviously. So people started calling the place ‘Dog-ville’-
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Every once in a while one of these doggies used to come by our house and scratch the front door.
At first we thought she wanted food. Then we realised she actually just wanted to play with Clinton.
‘Once in a while’ became ‘almost daily’ and she was sleeping outside the front door she used to scratch.
-Impossible not to adopt her-
Monica
Monica was a free soul. She didn’t like to be inside the house for a long time, so she would be all day in the street. Coming and going as she pleased.
One day she came back with her teats almost touching the ground and decided to start a sort-of-warren in the back yard.
She gave birth to six puppies. And as free as her soul was, all six puppies were from three different ‘fathers’.
When the pups were around five weeks old, my dad and I took them out from the warren to take proper care of them at home.
Two of them were very similar to a stray dog that used to visit our street sometimes.
The other two were a bunch of black fur.
-It was pretty obvious now that Monica and Clinton were friends with benefits-
And the last two where furry, white and large. Very similar to the Giant of the Pyrenees that used to live just around the corner. They would never let him out of their garden, so it is still a mystery how the whole thing happened…
Wakko
What a faff it was to take the last furry puppy out of that warren!
He would ‘bark’ and ‘growl’ and throw his tiny paws at me. Not sure if he was playing or making a statement.
He was so smart. Crooked ear. And would fall every single time he tried to climb a step.
We all fell in love with him. Straight away.
Being religious fans of Spilberg’s ‘Animanics’, we called him ‘Wakko’.
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And so, in less than a year, we became a pack of seven: four humans and three dogs.
It was so much fun.
We would go to the woods and the park. Basically everywhere they were aloud to run and play. We all played so much.
Monica taught Clinton and Wakko to live in the streets. They would come and go as they pleased during the day. Then slept at home.
Some neighbours were not very happy about that. And I do understand their reasons.
What I could never understand was this one lady that gave herself the task of getting back from ‘Dog-ville’ to ‘’Green-ville’ by calling the dog pound people.
And the dog warden’s van arrived. And started to take the dogs with them. Every single one.
We had to go to the dog pound several times to claim our dogs. Because they took them, even if they all had collars and plaques.
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One day I got home after school. Monica and Wakko were chilling just by the front door, but Clinton wasn’t with them.
He didn’t come back to sleep that night. Nor the next one.
He wasn’t at the dog pound, or the neighbour street. He was not in the nearby town or wandering close to the local school.
Nobody had seen him. He had just ‘vanished’.
We posted signs everywhere, yet he never came back.
I think that was the first time I literally felt my heart being broken.
Months later we went to Córdoba, to a family event.
When we came back a neighbour told us that ‘anti-dogs lady’ had called the van again.
Wakko escaped, but Monica did not.
When we went to the dog pound to take her with us, it was too late. She was no longer in the kennels.
Our pack was then reduced to four humans and one dog. And even when the vet told us that because of Wakko’s epilepsy, he would only live a couple of years, he made us smile for 14 years.
Fourteen years of stealing leftovers from any bin he could find. Of scratching his back against the neighbour’s bushes. Fourteen years of having seizures in the middle of family gatherings or house parties, serenading all the nearby dog-ladies and asking everybody to rub his belly.

–
The day I had to say goodbye to him still remains fresh in my mind.
Cancer.
Again.
He was going to be put to sleep the next day.
You get to love your dogs so much. And is always so painful to say goodbye.
I was no longer living with my parents. And even years later, when I visited them, I would still whistle to him before opening the door, hoping he would come out, wagging his tail, and say ‘hi’.
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One Sunday we were having breakfast near Lincoln Park, in Mexico City.
Just before we asked for the bill, a big truck parked in front of us. Next thing, we saw these people unloading kennels full of dogs.
A truck. With kennels. Full of dogs. (And cats).
Martínez, let’s go see the dogs. Please, just to see them. And maybe pet one (or two, or all of them).
-I had been trying to convince him to have a dog. But all efforts had been a bit in vain-
We approached the people in charge to ask about the whole thing.
We could choose a dog and take it for a walk, as long as we left some ID with them.
We hadn’t even started to take a look around, when this oat-coloured dog with bat ears put her two little paws on us and gave us this look only souls like hers can have.
I immediately left my driving license with them.
We walked and played and fell in love. Filled-in all the paperwork and became inseparable ever since.
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Adoption request form:
Name of the dog/cat you wish to adopt_____________.
-What am I supposed to write down here?-
Avena. We call her Avena**.
Avena
The founder of the rescued dog association called ‘Por los que no tienen voz’*** told me that she had found Avena in the middle of a highway near Mexico City.
She was trying to drink water from a puddle in the middle of the road and they almost ran over her.
The vet told me that she had canine distemper when being a puppy. That is why the enamel on her teeth never grew fully. Hence she has tough/almost imposible time when chewing on hard things/food.
We guess that all the litter caught canine distemper and the ‘owners’ left them to die or threw them away.
Avena survived to come and change my life in a million ways.
She liked to eat all the avocados that dropped on our terrace from the neighbour’s tree. As well as the outdoors furniture we had.
She has a masters degree on stealing food and digging on tunnels that will take you nowhere.
She is an expert on shepherding any living thing that can walk.
Fan of sports and naps.
Territorial and guardian, she will always keep me safe of anyone and anything.
My true friend and partner in crime on some many adventures, which I will tell you about in the next chapters, if you kindly keep on reading this story.

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Mateo?
I’m still not sure about the exact moment in which Mateo arrived and decided to stay.
Sometimes I think he managed to get inside the house before I closed the door. Or maybe he jumped into the trunk of my car.
Cunning as he can be, he started to follow me. Silently. Stealthily. In such a way that it took me a while to notice he was basically living next to me.
But that story needs a ‘couple’ more blank pages to be filled in…
* ‘Negra’ means ‘black’ in Spanish.
** ‘Avena’ means ‘oatmeal’.
*** ‘Por los que no tienen voz’ means ‘For those who have no voice’.
‘Avena y Mateo’: sharing a personal story to create awareness and stop stigma on mental health.