Christmas 2009 & The Dogs of Tijuana

Dec 25th, 2009 by admin |

I saw them tonight. The dogs of Tijuana. They are feral dogs living on the edge of society, scavengers, who come out at night to own the streets and alleys and dumps of this city of four million. I’ve read about them and remember a documentary on them some time ago but this is the first time I’ve seen them. There are, of course, no shortage of household dogs in this part of Mexico. Nor is there a shortage of crime, as evidenced by heavy steel gates across driveways and doorways. On Monday night as I walked to the grocery store a few blocks from the Dali Suites, where Char and I are renting a two-room efficiency apartment, I passed a heavily gated driveway and as I did so an equally heavily muscled Rotweiller charged at me from inside those locked gates. He meant business and his business was protecting his owner’s property.

But the ‘respectable’ dogs of Tijuana are only a part of the dog population. There is another–and larger population–that roams outside Tijuana’s security gates. Like the criminal element who haunt the shadows of society to exploit the weak, so, too, the canine counterpart skulks the streets at night seeking opportunities to exploit.

I was returning home when I saw the scavenger dogs. It was fully dark and there are no street lights on the side street where our place is located, just ambient light from a few business signs overhead. There were two dogs foraging together, amigos, it appeared. It was the large yellow dog in the lead that caught my attention. He proudly carried in his mouth a sizeable piece of cardboard torn from a box. He held it high, almost prancing, as he and his buddy gave me wide birth, moving to the opposite side of the street heading in the opposite direction. I have no idea what use or value that cardboard scrap represented to that yellow dog but clearly it was a treasure.

Later that night, tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep as I worried over Charlotte’s health, over the future of our business, over my cell phone that isn’t working, over getting money to me in Mexico, over my own back pain making me wince, I found myself remembering that yellow dog and his treasured piece of nothing. I saw myself holding aloft my own life-baggage that really amounts to treasured pieces of nothing.

Funny how life or death reality clarifies what is substance and what is ‘cardboard.’ As I anticipate Christmas this year in a foreign country with Charlotte gravely ill with cancer I recognize a great deal of ‘cardboard’ in my life, pieces of treasured nothing I’ve prized and pranced over just like that yellow dog.

I’ll never know what end the yellow dog’s scrap of cardboard served in his world of shadows. He will never know he was a quiet gift to me on that dark night in Tijuana. You see, Christmas is radically trimmed of ‘cardboard’ for me this year because of that yellow dog. Treasured pieces of nothing suddenly mean nothing.

I need a Christmas miracle that makes whole again the only treasured piece of ’something’ that ever really mattered in my life.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine

Posted in Celebration of dogs, Life-lessons |

6 Responses to “Christmas 2009 & The Dogs of Tijuana”

on 25 Dec 2009 at 5:36 am1Lisa in Cape May County, NJ

Like a frame on a picture, illness–and, in our day and age, particularly cancer–helps concentrate the mind by providing context and contrast for the mundane. I’ve lived with this point of reference since the day my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was thirteen years old. My determination to make every day count was reinforced by my own breast cancer diagnosis five years ago. Just as the “noble rot” botrytis produces the sweet, complex flavors of late harvest wine, so a brush with mortality produces moments of great clarity and–if one is lucky–acute sweetness. You’ve had your clarity. May the Zinfandel you and Charlotte share this Christmas provide you with the memorable sweetness that is one of life’s finest gifts.
on 25 Dec 2009 at 7:25 am2SW

God bless you both.
We continue to send up our prayers and thoughts. Remember, tho you’re tired and weary, you must give it your all, as you are certainly doing.
We are behind you all the way.
SW
on 25 Dec 2009 at 1:14 pm3Carole Owen

Your Christmas message is the most beautiful I’ve ever read, Joseph. It’s as classic as anything Dickens ever wrote. Thanks for the gift in the time of trial for you and Charlotte.

Prayers for you both.

Carole O.
on 25 Dec 2009 at 8:21 pm4Jane Lyons

Merry Christmas dear friends, we are holding you close.
on 25 Dec 2009 at 9:18 pm5Cheri Biggs

This is almost too much for me, Joseph. The pain you are both going thru tears my heart out. My own ovarian cancer, silenced 8+ years ago, seems like a day at the beach compared to what you and Charlotte have been going through. I have no words of wisdom. I have no understanding of the why you both have to go through this. But I am praying for a Miracle. I cannot conceive of a world without both of you so I must believe a Miracle will occur. Stay strong, and we continue to hold our arms across the miles to hold you both up.

Love and prayers,
Cheri & Rick
on 26 Dec 2009 at 1:58 pm6Laurie Haight Keenan

I read this post yesterday amid the Christmas bustle at our place, and I must tell you it sustained me. As I scrambled from one task to another, trying to make two meals “appear” effortlessly on the table, I would stop at the beginning of each new task to ask myself, “Is this part cardboard?” I jettisoned several things I’d planned on making in the name of feeling less flustered and more hooked into my guests, thanks to your timely transmission of the message from the dogs of Tijuana.