Dogs

The thing is, I'm a cat person. I'm so much a cat person I probably have that cat parasite disease that some suspect is the cause of people really, really liking cats.

Costa Rica, however, is for dog people. People who like small, constantly barking, entirely undisciplined dogs. Most of the dogs I see have no collars and apart from having a tendency to sleep in the same patch of the middle of road don't necessarily seem to belong somewhere. I've been told that my street is somewhat of an anomaly but I've seen plenty of dogs wandering the other streets of CC too. There are also many strays(?), wanderers(?), out for a stroll(?) dogs up at school. They mostly like to hang out on the cafeteria patio, for obvious reasons but there's one in particular (we're told his name is Jorge) who also enjoys attempting to come to class. I think Victor Valle's is my favorite professor response so far. He looks at Jorge, gestures to the door and says, "It is not time yet for dogs to go to school."

Why, why, why are there so many dogs and why does no one seem to care how much or how loudly or how long they bark? My theory is that they are meant to be cheap burglar alarms and that their owners, if they have them, are willing to put up with a lot of crying wolf! (or person! or car! or thing in the street!) on the off chance that one day they'll cry burglar! But I still don't understand how they stand it, especially when it's that small dog, yippy kind of barking. Many times as I've sat trying to study or lain in bed trying to sleep I've had extremely unQuakerly thoughts of smacking some dog on the snout.

And someone must be doing something like that because I've noticed if some well intentioned (usually American- and yes I mean Canadian too) person sees a dog on campus, picks up and throws a stick for him, instead of falling over itself with rapture and running after the stick the dog will instead run away with its tail between its legs and a submissive look over its shoulder that says, "I'm going, I'm going, you don't have to throw that stick at me."

There are cats here too, and on campus. I just don't see them as often or as many of them, probably because of all the stupid yappy dogs.