The Hidden Life of Chuchos

So, as anyone who has traveled in the so called third world knows… dogs have it pretty tough in most of the world. To be honest with ourselves, it’s not like all of the dogs in developed countries fair that well, many are still mis-treated, mal-nourished, ect… Still, it is in countries like El Salvador where you really get to see an important step in the social evolution of dogs.

Chuchos (also known as dogs) provide an important insight in the pre-pet phase of dog development. Here is a picture of Katie with our chucho (whether we want him or not) being treated as if he were actually a pet. It is a strange concept for both him and the rest of our community. Here dogs “associate” with a family, the bond is there, but it is not that strong. The dogs have some loyalty, and are protective of territory, the people appreciate that just enough to occasionally throw the dog a bone… literally.

Overall, dogs are tolerated, but not companions. Sure, they get kicked, have rocks thrown at them, and are generally targets for anger or fun, but really, no one would go way out of their way to persecute a dog, they aren’t worth the effort. It never ceases to surprise me how in the middle of the night, if dogs start making a racket (fights, barking, howling, or sex) not a single person will get up to yell at “their” dog, or even throw a rock at it! It seems strange at first given other mean behaviors that happen to dogs, but over time I have realized that no one expects anything different, they are just dogs being dogs after all… and who knows, their barking may be helping to keep a bad person away.

This is kind of the fundamental point of this phase of development… dog behavior is driven by their own needs or desires, limited only by behaviors that contribute to their survival. That could probably be better stated, it’s not like I’m trying to write some kind of thesis… but the point is, none of a dog’s behaviors are actively altered by humans. Sure, it is a stretch of passive when feet and rocks are used, but the reality is that all of the “training” is passive, no one purposefully trains their dog. Sure, if you yell “vaya” and wave your hands away from you, most of the dogs here know to leave the area, but no one really taught them that, they have had to pick up on it, usually through pain. Though the dogs here do mostly have names, they are not trained to pay attention or come to them.

The end result is that dogs have their community and humans have theirs, with the overlap being very thin. The dogs are very opportunistic, if they think they can take an unattended piece of chicken they will. They also look well outside of “their” family for food. This is partly how we came to be owned by our chucho. We were living with his family, but we were cooking across the street in the schools kitchen. He smelled food and would hang around us… we acted the typical gringo and were nice to him, even petted him, which was a rare treat. Then one day we cooked chicken and needed to get rid of the bones, voila… he was ours, or we were his. [before we get people saying how chicken bones are bad for dogs, well, maybe the soft northern brother of the chucho can’t digest them safely, but our chuchos down here are raised on pretty much nothing but chicken bones and tortillas]

So, basically we have a dog… but it is only when he wants us, which is mainly when we will pet him, or when we have food. For this he hangs out around our place for a few hours every couple of days. Sometimes he shows up at night and hangs out on our porch for a bit. It is all on his terms though, and I’m not really sure how he decides how to divide his time. It does make us look foolish quite a bit when we wander down the road and he sees us and rushes over all excited and making silly noises, and then we have to pet him, and he follows us… all of which makes us quite a spectacle to the onlooking Salvadoreños.

So, I have pretty much run out of steam on this subject, but before I close it out I do want to say that there are exceptions to all of this, some of the folks here do take pretty good care of their dogs, even spoil them, though this is relative. Even now the kids in the family we live with are getting used to petting our chucho when he is over visiting us. Puppies have always been the exception to all of this… the way most people end up with their poor despised chucho is that it started out as a cute puppy.

The thing I will close with is just a couple of random pictures from the last week. These are of our families kids. One is on our porch (you can even see the chucho with his nose in our room), the other is some of the girls at our shared Pila. Enjoy!