Puppy prison

Motivated by a recent experience with heart-melting adorable puppiness, Heidi and I decided to take a trip up to the local animal shelter.

Located off Route 1 in Yigo, the shelter has rows of outside kennels, where dogs are kept in concrete cages, until (hopefully) someone adopts them.

Guam, it should be noted, is full of boonie dogs and cats. The feral animal population has never been accurately tallied, but bedraggled animals can be seen in nearly every island parking lot after dark, rooting around for food and a cool spot to sleep. There are also frequent reports of packs of wild boonie dogs attacking school children in the weekly village news, which generally leads to bad things for animals and people alike.

Still, even knowing that the shelter is a necessary part of keeping animal suffering to a minimum, we steeled ourselves for the experience.

Upon arrival, and despite all the very nice volunteers and well-taken-care-of animals, it was clear — this was puppy prison.



The rows of dogs lay lethargically in the sun, not paying attention to us at first. When it became clear we were interested in them, the dogs would stand up and approach the barbed-wire fences with their most manipulatively adorable faces.

Anyone can come and visit the dogs, and even take them out of their kennels for walks and romps in the nearby dog park. So Heidi and I started down the rows, taking out one dog at a time. This seemed like a good idea when we headed up there, but as we picked the first two dogs for walks, the others started barking and howling, which was all so very heartbreaking.

At any rate, we tempered the pathos by indulging in a hefty dose of doggy cuteness.

We took several rounds of enthusiastic dogs out for runs in the grass. There was a really nice sheep-herder dog named Bailey, and another super enthusiastic puppy that Heidi and I dubbed White Fang for his vampire-esque eyes, and also he looked like the dog from the Disney movie.



Heidi immediately became attached to a very cute and timid boonie dog named Paz. She seemed to have recently given birth, perhaps multiple times, and Heidi lay in the grass for her for a while petting her. She also whined and cried a lot when put back in her cage, leading to a teary-eyed Heidi deciding that maybe we should adopt a dog after all.






There was also this hyperactive striped dog, appropriately named bubbles, who seemed to have be smooshed or smashed in her past life, with a slightly lopsided gait and some a twisted snout.















I thought we should name this one "Harvey Dent"-- because she had a two-face-like split right down the middle of her face, and also because Harvey is a really hard-core name for a girl dog.


Anyway, after about 45 minutes Heidi and I had pretty much thoroughly given in, and might have adopted pretty much of all the dogs had the shelter not been closing, and also we're broke.

There was a nice couple there, who had been seriously interviewing dogs under a shady bench during our frequent trips to the dog park. I was hoping they'd adopt Bailey, who seemed like a good, reliable house dog. Instead, they went home with a dog, a puppy and a kitten.

Yah! Happy ending, or something.