Lindsay and Steve Followed Their Dogs' Story Back to Mexico
In 2020, when the world went quiet and we were all suddenly working from our kitchen tables, our family lost Rawley to an aggressive cancer called hemangiosarcoma. He was fourteen, and the house felt wrong without him. After a few months we decided it was time to add a new pup — and quickly learned that dogs were in the same high demand as toilet paper. Every rescue we checked had dogs adopted almost as fast as they were posted.
Then we stumbled across The MexiMutt Project, which had just listed a group of little dogs flying up from Mexico. We applied for one and weren't chosen. We applied for another, a dog named Trevor, and Angela Adams — MexiMutt's founder and director — called to talk it over, on what happened to be my birthday. A few weeks later our family of three was a family of four.
We renamed Trevor "Tito," which suits him. Angela told us he had lived on a roof with bigger dogs who wouldn't let him eat or drink much, with no shade from the sun. The MexiMutt Project took him in after he fell off that roof and hurt his leg, got him the care he needed, and decided he was a good match for a home in Oregon. He came to us at seven pounds. He takes his time deciding to trust you, but once he does, it's the best thing going. He's now a healthy thirteen and a half.
We'd gotten Tito partly as a companion for Oliver, our older dog — but Oliver was sixteen by then, too old to appreciate a young dog's energy. Meanwhile I'd been following the organization’s social media, where there was a litter of wildly energetic puppies found with their mama in a cardboard box in El Salto, Mexico. They were the "S" litter, five girls and one boy, and I had my eye on the little blonde boy, Stewie. He always seemed to be in the middle of things, and he looked a bit like Tito. I brought it up to Steve. Repeatedly. When I finally asked Angela whether he was still available — lo and behold, he was.
He flew into Oregon a few weeks later while I was traveling for work, so Steve picked him up alone and decided, in his hemming-and-hawing way, to take him home on a trial basis. The puppy fell asleep inside Steve's sweatshirt on the drive. It was love at first nap. We renamed him Ziggy, because he's the Thin White Duke, and he made our family complete. Three dogs means we're outnumbered, but it works.
So here we are, 2022. Steve and I hadn't taken a vacation in a long time, and we decided on Mexico — with a stop at Lake Chapala. Two of our family members are from that area and we had no idea what it was like. We stayed in Ajijic, on the north side of the lake, which is where The MexiMutt Project does its work.
Their mission is to help the small rural communities around Lake Chapala, and their dogs. They drive through the towns and get to know the locals, many of whom can't afford to feed their dogs or pay for medical care. They treat fleas, ticks, mange and parasites on the spot. They find the dogs who haven't been spayed or neutered and provide that service one at a time, working to stop the cycle of unwanted puppies. They treat the sick and injured, and offer humane euthanasia to the ones too far gone to help.
On a Sunday — a day they don't usually go out — Angela and her volunteer Mayra took Steve and me along to the small town of Mezcala. We stopped in several spots, and it was clear the locals knew help had arrived. So did the dogs. They came running.
“People came out with buckets and bags to fill so they could feed their own dogs later.”
Angela and Mayra spotted the ones who needed skin and parasite treatment and dosed them right there. They fed dogs on the spot, and people came out with buckets and bags to fill so they could feed their own dogs later.
They checked on animals they'd treated on earlier visits. They were proud to tell us how many of the dogs in the area had already been spayed and neutered over the past couple of years — and they'd built enough trust with the locals to get the remaining ones onto the waitlist. Nobody was asked for anything in return.
Over four or five hours we fed sixty or more dogs. Angela and Mayra treated a dozen for skin and parasite issues. They identified one dog with TVT, an aggressive and contagious transmissible venereal tumor, that they'd come back for in a few days when they didn't have other dogs in the vehicle. We picked up four dogs to be spayed and one emaciated, sick dog who needed treatment.
We also came across three litters of puppies — four, eleven, and four. There were no fosters available anywhere in The MexiMutt Project’s network, so none of them could be taken in. Mayra got visibly emotional. She has worked so hard to spay and neuter as many dogs as she can, and these had fallen through the cracks. The litter of eleven had been weaned but their mother was gone, which made them terribly vulnerable to disease. Without shelter and medical care, their chances were slim. It's awful, but many of them won't make it. That's the reality.
We got lucky with that litter. The hosts of the Airbnb we were staying in actively help other rescues in the area, and when I mentioned the eleven puppies, they said they had the space and would take them. Without that, those pups would have had almost no chance.
I was brought to tears more than once that day. The MexiMutt Project is a wonderful organization doing profound and selfless work — fifteen dogs in their main facility, many more in foster homes, all of it run by volunteers on small donations from individuals. I'm so grateful I got to see it firsthand, and so, so grateful that Tito and Ziggy were among the lucky ones who found their way home to us.
But I keep thinking about the eight puppies we left behind in Mezcala. I wish I could help them all.