When the dog embraces you..

 

  
The Dog 

Pete is one of the rescue dogs at Hope for Animals Inc in Lusignan and he comes and jumps up on me and I do this kind of fake embrace to say nice to meet you but don't come too close because I am not one of those people who love love love dogs and cats and animals.   

But many dogs and some cats don't really seem to care and in my self-righteous way I think okay since they say that animals know nice people and so, 

then I must be a nice person then and this picture could be used to get votes and so on when I run for President.  

Two visitors from France who love animals, both vegetarian for animal rights, said yes to going up to Lusignan. 

Big smiles and watery eyes when they met some of the animals which Genevieve "Judy" Beepat single-handedly cares for - over 50 dogs and over 50 cats. Judy knows their names, histories, personalities

I am a bit nervous as I wonder if any of them would attack me given some of their difficult history but there must be something about how Judy cares for them, and the environment that the dogs stop barking and come forward and be friendly. 

Imagine if human beings had this kind of space to heal? 

Another friend with rescue dogs and cats tells us that one of them is locked away because he could be aggressive.. but he comes out and proves her wrong and all up in everybody's face (including mine) (I assume though that things could change) 

 

Embrace

 "Haven't you tried to get close and pet the cat?" the cat loving man asks me. 

I tell him .. hey hey.. don't get close because when you are gone, I am not looking after any cat".  

In the last year or so, cats about in the yard.. occupying spaces to sleep, fight, do whatever. 

Some walk away when I pass, some walk past me. We co-exist, nicely. I have no desire to embrace because well the embrace will lead to co-dependence and next thing I know I have to rush home and worry about who feeding cats when I gone and so.

I marvel at my friends whose lives are organised  around their pets. There are whole worlds and arrangements for cat sitting and dog sitting when owners have to go away.

I learned in the UK a long time ago about the campaigns to 'not buy animals' and see how in oil rich Guyana, people want nice looking dogs and cats as accessories to show their wealth, rather than to provide homes for rescue animals who might not look so pretty.

People keep asking about spay and neuter and it seems capitalism has caught up with the spay and neuter issue, and that the gatekeepers do not want free spay and neuter around Guyana because it will mess up their own access to wealth. 

So a lot of strays around, some of them probably traumatised like the dog who bit me once on the seawall.  

Pete though, is not that dog.