History

Simòn was the first street dog to make friends with me in Cancun, February 2009.  Our bond was like no other I’ve experienced with a dog.  He slept on the street or the beach for 14 years… living most of his life at a marina that took people across to an island called Isla Mujeres. When I met Simòn, he was already 10 years old.  Thats OLD for a street dog in Mexico.  The average lifespan of a street dog is only 3 to 5 years.  I would go and see him every day, and anytime the sun was down, that sweet boy would always walk me all the way home to my front door.  I’d feed him and offer him to come inside.  He would always bow down as if to say “no thank you”, and return to his place at the marina.  Simon was the one who introduced me to the community.  Everyone got to know me as “Mama de Simon”.  That was the beginning to something bigger than I had ever expected.

I tried to make friends with many of the other dogs, but they were not used to someone approaching them so nicely and didn’t warm up so easily.  When I would ask neighbours, “whose dog is this?”, they would all answer “it’s a street dog”.  It seemed strange to me that every dog I came across in the small fishing community was a “street dog”. A lot of them were really skinny, had mange or ringworm.  It was so sad and so overwhelming.  I did not know what to do or where to turn.

In December of 2009, while out and about the neighbourhood I picked up a little puppy who I later named Maya. Maya was about 4 months old and was suffering horribly from demodex mange.  I had to do something.  The neighbors that saw me pick her up said horrible things like “you should shoot her”.  It broke my heart they could think that way about a living, breathing animal!  I rebuttled with “can I shoot you when you catch a cold?  All she needs is some medicine and love!”  I hid Maya away on my patio until she made a full recovery.  With proper treatment supplied to me by a great friend who was rescuing animals in Cancun at the time, she blossomed into the MOST beautiful Catahoula puppy I had ever seen! 

After her recovery, I took Maya out for a walk and the same people who wanted me to shoot her just months before hand, ALL wanted Maya.  I told them no!  This is the dog you wanted me to shoot!  They were amazed at her transformation.  Little did I know, this was the start to my outreach work.  All of a sudden, people started coming to my door with these dogs I knew as “street dogs”.  They WERE owned after all!  The owners started bringing me their sick, mangey dogs hoping I could help them the same way I helped Maya.  

My same friend who helped me with the meds for Maya, also brought dewormer and we went about the neighbourhood deworming all the dogs on the street we could find.  We met a few families whose dogs were really sick, one in particular was a dog named Panda.  Panda had a litter of puppies and was terribly sick with a tick borne disease called Ehrlichia.  Ehrlichia causes all kinds of problems with the dogs, the symptoms are easy to spot for people who know the disease, but the poor fishing village didn’t have affordable access to vet care, so they never seeked treatment.  The dog would have died had she not received the medicine she needed.  My amazing friend, gave me the doxycycline to treat the disease.  Since they only lived a few minutes walk from my house, I would walk down every night and give half pill to Panda that night, and the other half to the owner for the following morning. It not only included them in her treatment and recovery, but we made great friends and they turned into some of my biggest advocates and helped inform the neighbours, that help is here, go get it!   My friend committed to finding homes for the puppies and returned in a few weeks when they were old enough and all of them were spayed and neutered and adopted. Panda was saved, the pups all found amazing homes thanks to my friend, and I made friends with a great family who loved their dog very much. 

Every Time I would get in a donation of dewormer, or frontline for ticks and fleas… I would walk around the neighborhood treating as many dogs as I could.  My friend, was getting food donations from a company that could no longer sell the foodor human consumption, but was perfectly fine for the dogs.  I would walk around with a big black garbage bag filled with everything from pork chops, to individual pizzas, hot dogs…  you name it!  I was walking around throwing the food for the dogs.  It would take me about an hour before all the food was gone.  When I finished and circled back around to my place, I always had an entourage of 40 or so dogs following me haha!  The people knew to go to me for help, and the dogs knew to see if I was bringing food.  Eventually I got the idea of buying community bottles for these things we all needed to treat the animals and keep the community healthy.  I purchased the first bottles of common items needed, like the ivermectin to treat mange, shampoo, frontline spray for the ticks and fleas.  I even bought a product called Bovitraz which can be used as a dip OR to spray the properties to control the tick and flea population.  I drink a lot of Coca cola.  Mexican pop is the best, as it has REAL sugar but also, I saved my bottles and made up a mix of bovitraz and water to hand out (at cost) for the neighbours to also spray their properties for ticks and fleas.  The amount of infected animals went down drastically, as well as the numbers of dogs getting sick from the tick borne diseases.  The bottles were cheap for me to make up.  In the end, the cost was 6 pesos per bottle for me or the community.  Its so cheap!  A drastic change from 120 pesos a full bottle.  All of us in the community used what we needed, paid for our bit and the community bottles kept refilling as we needed more! 

The relationship I built with the community, the changes that took place for the animals AND the people… it was outstanding.  There were no more “street dogs”.  If you saw a dog… it was just let out for the morning or afternoon.  They all looked healthy, they were well taken care of because the owners had the access and help and leadership to show them how.  When I would go for walks in the area with my friends from out of country.. the owners would come out of their houses with their MIXED breed “street dogs” in their arms and love and happiness in their eyes.  They were so proud to show off their happy, HEALTHY animal.

This is what started the idea of All Pets Deserve Vets and what All Pets Deserve Vets will not only continue, but grow on and be able to service the communities so much more!  I encourage you to read on and see the projects were are currently working, building and growing.  I hope you will see the change we make and want to help us to make the change we want all want to see for both humans and animals!