on a sad note...

today, whilst descending the san cristobal hill, i heard a dreadful crying that sounded like a child. i went over to the side of the road and saw the smallest little black puppy. it seemed as though it had just opened its eyes - it couldn't have been more than a couple weeks old at most. my heart pretty much broke. i started petting it, and it kind of stopped crying, but then i picked it up, and it started up again. the little one had dirt caking his right eye closed, so i tried to wipe it off.

a man was passing, and i asked him what i could do. he suggested i just leave it because probably the mother went off to look for food and would come back looking for her pup. there had been a smallish black dog that joined us part-way up the hill, and she looked as though she could be a mom. maybe she told him to stay put?

so i put him back, and he stopped howling. but it was one of the hardest things to just leave him there. i'm trying to tell myself that his mom came back for him, or at the very least, that someone else might have picked him up and taken him home.

this dog issue is a real problem here in chile. i think they should spend less time watering the grass and put more money into programs like taking care of all the stray dogs and cleaning up the river. the dogs are domesticated wild animals, if that makes sense. they chill with people during the day, conduct traffic (literally, they don't let people cross the street until it changes from the red to the green man) and protect their territory. however, at night, they turn into the pack animals they are, and literally run around santiago, 5+ at a time. i'm not quite sure what they do, but they do it really hard. that is why they lie around looking dead during the day.

regardless, most of the time, the dogs are great, they seem happy, random people feed them, homeless people try to sell them, but the puppies --- the puppies break my heart.