LGM Giving Tuesday: Oaxacan Dog Rescue

As I’ve said, I am in Mexico for a couple of months. My wife and I are both on sabbatical and she has a Fulbright, being the smart one in the family and all. I am only taking the fall for sabbatical while she has the whole year, but I do get to spend some time here.

Well, one thing about Latin America is that the treatment of dogs is really not great. Like, it can be pretty bad out there. And there are lots of dogs around. Please don’t get me wrong–there are tons of Mexicans who love animals, there are pet stores all over the place in the city, and of course a lot of the people involved in dog rescue here are Mexican. It’s a cause worth supporting. These are people who do really good work with some dogs who are in very bad shape, getting them healthy, fostering them, finding them homes if possible. But first and foremost, spaying or neutering them, which is the biggest problem, especially in the small towns and the countryside.

Let me introduce you to some of them. There is one you might actually have seen before. That’s Tamal. That’s because Tamal made People Magazine’s Cutest Rescue Dog Contest This Year! See!

He didn’t win, totally screwed, it was dogs with big Instagram accounts that win these things. Which I guess is a thing, I have neighbors who have a reasonably popular Instagram account for their cat, who is a nice fellow.

Anyway, as you can see Tamal is a very good boy who likes to play ball, the best he can anyway. Alas, Tamal has a permanently broken jaw and only two teeth, so it’s a little hard for him to eat and his tongue hangs out all the time. No one knows how that happened, but they were recusing another dog (just a second on that one) and he was just hanging out and so they took him too (which evidently required all the work of opening the car door and he just hopped on in).

Now, when they were rescuing Tamal, they were trying to get an older dog with two broken legs who had dug itself a hole next to a highway and was always around dragging itself to trash piles to find meat. That is Nutmeg. She’s an older dog who is very sweet. Just last week, a vet had to remove a mass from her, which costs money and which is part of the reason why we are doing this.

Here’s one more dog. This is Luna. I don’t know too much about her but she is cute too and my understanding was owned by someone who left her tied to a short stake 24-7, until someone came and just asked if they could take her.

Anyway, this can be our official LGM donation target this year. Your money goes a long ways here, especially now, with the peso worth less than anytime in at least the two decades I’ve been coming down here. This is grassroots dog rescue at its most grassroots. A lot of these people are fostering up to 15 dogs. Sadly, there’s no shortage of work that needs to be done here. My wife and I support an organization called Oaxacan Dog Adoption which our friend Holly runs.

Your donation goes towards current medical needs such as teeth cleanings, ear infections, and spay and neuter campaigns in Oaxaca. To make a donation towards Oaxacan street dogs, go to Holly’s Gofundme Page. You will see a picture of Tamal on the page. Even a small donation of $10 would buy some treats and toys for the dogs.

You can also explore the adoption process through Oaxaca Dog Adoption’s partner Caravana Canina. Holly’s foster dogs and others are available with all vaccinations and travel paperwork (and potential transportation to U.S. or Canada all put in place for you) for adoption through Caravana Canina,