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Friday, December 31, 2010

Refuge

Refuge

Here in the US, animal refuges perform a service for society as a whole. In our modern era it is thought cruel to abandon a dog or cat, and why not? Both dogs and cats have lived for thousands of years as partners with human beings, and they have developed a symbiotic relationship with us. From the time long ago when the first wolves dared to come a little closer to humans in their garbage dumps and were thus rewarded with some discarded scraps of food, dogs--and to a lesser extent cats--have been giving up their independence bit by bit to earn a living as our companions.

And what did we get from this growing relationship? Well, watchdogs for one thing, hunting helpers for another, and just plain enjoyable companionship. Yes, our domestic animals--our home companions--have been gaining a living in return for giving up their original antagonism to us and standoffishness from us. After a few thousand years of this developing relationship, our dog and cat friends can no longer fend for themselves in the wild. Indeed, anyone who dumps a cat in the country thinking he will be able to live on the birds and field mice he can catch is fooling himself and betraying the cat.

So it makes sense we would come to recognize our duty to our symbiotic animal friends and establish shelters, refuges, and pounds to avoid their starving to death when they become homeless for any reason. Even though many such unfortunate animals are killed (hopefully by humane methods), such an end is better than condemning them to sickness and starvation without a home. Thus nearly every community has some provision for homeless dogs and cats. It's a societal obligation and rightly so.

In Cuba, privation is ubiquitous, and there is little resource to be devoted to cats and dogs. The government tries to sweep strays from the streets in an attempt to control rabies and present a prettier environment for tourists. But such dog and cat orphans caught in those sweeps are only held for a short time and then killed, often by poisoning. It's a national shame.

I have often said the Cuban people love animals, and one way they have shown that love is that a few have stepped in to try to offer homeless animals a place to live. Rosa runs a refuge for dogs, Rebecca one for cats, and Jose for both. Across the country are good souls who take in and care for animals. They strain their own comfort and well-being to provide some for their canine and feline charges. In doing so, they provide a valuable service for society at large.

The refuge operators are motivated by their love for animals, not by any monetary rewards. Some, who know they must limit the numbers they can help, live stable, enjoyable lives. Others who don't set reasonable limits progress into what we call animal collectors. These, unfortunately, do no favors for themselves or the animals--they only spread misery and often hunger and sickness among their collections.

Still, well controlled or not, Cuba's private animal refuges try to discharge their communities' duties to our animal partners, even if their efforts seem makeshift by modern sheltering standards. Aniplant tries to help these refuges with advice, medical help, and some food rations.

Les Inglis

Friday, December 24, 2010

Cuban Zoos

Cuban Zoos

Most animal protectionists have a low opinion of zoos. While arguably they offer some education, they subject their animals to unnatural lives of confinement and stress. Surely animals have the right to be free of such treatment. In these respects, Cuban zoos are no different from zoos anywhere else.

The first Cuban zoo I visited was the Havana City Zoo. Built before World War II, it was quite modern for its day. Most animals there were shown in relatively spacious simulated natural areas appropriate to the animals in them. Instead of bars, the animals were contained by moats and steep walls to prevent them from mingling with the general public. This was the state of the art when it was built. I can remember visiting a similar zoo in Cincinnati when I was a young boy. It was the pride of Cincinnati at that time well before we began to think about the rights of animals.

Only there is a difference between the Havana and the Cincinnati zoos. Cincinnati's is kept clean and well-maintained, while Havana's needs lots of attention. In Havana the walkways and the animals' display areas were littered with scrap paper, food wrappers and debris. Each display area has a water pond, but in Havana, most of those have no water in them. I recall thinking; I wonder of those poor bears have to wait for it to rain to get a drink of water? All in all, the Havana City Zoo was a disappointment and a reminder that many civic services are showing signs of neglect.

The other zoo in the Havana area is the National Zoo. This one, in the care of the state, is in much better condition, and occupies hundreds of acres in the far outskirts of Havana. Just as open grottos were state of the art before World War II, now the state of the art is like Lion Country Safari--having large open areas simulating various landscapes from around the world with free running animals. The observers go through the park protected in vehicles. As we did so, we saw lions, antelope and water buffalo. Certainly this provides more freedom and realism. But in an absolute sense, it is still confinement.

The director of the National Zoo is a tall, personable man very dedicated to his work. Our tour was accompanied by a discussion of each free-ranging area, and we could get very close to the animals here. And the place is well-maintained without litter or mess.

As we concluded our tour, we were shown an older part of the zoo. There iron bars defined a large collection of cubicles with too many primates. At least they were well fed and cared for. It was a reminder that nothing is perfect. Today, the government recognizes that zoos need to be improved. Very recently a commission was established by the Ministry of Agriculture to function within Aniplant to review zoos and recommend improvements. It includes vets, techs, a sociologist, and Nora Garcia, Aniplant's President. It will work with the environmental authorities in Cuba to recommend the creation of needed improvements for the benefit of animals.

Thus the 23 other municipal zoos in Cuba will be moved toward and humane practice.

Les Inglis

Friday, December 17, 2010

Cuba the Dog, Chapter Two

Cuba the Dog, Chapter Two

As I wrote the previous chapter on Cuba the Dog, he was scheduled to fly on 12/5. Of course, nothing happens in Cuba as scheduled. It turned out Cuba had not been fed in three days before Nora picked him up. It took, therefore, three days for him to fill up and start giving fecal samples needed for worm tests. So, 12/5 was too soon, and we rescheduled his flight for Sunday, 12/12. Fill up, he did, the vet got his samples, and tests proved the deworming treatment had done its work. Cuba was certified as healthy and parasite free.

Now we needed a travel cage for a small pup. As I've said before, everything is available in Cuba if you're willing to pay the price. There wasn't time for Ashley to buy a cage and get it to Cuba, so Nora bought one for $60.00 that could be had in the US for $15 or $20. She told me she got a good price (by Cuban standards). One more hurdle jumped.

Ashley had found a charity in Canada that arranges flights to Canada from the Caribbean for dogs that tourists want to adopt. The actual flight for Cuba the dog would be from Varadero to Toronto, and it wasn't going to cost Ashley anything. But to qualify for this benefit, the flight had to be on Air Transat which flies out of Varadero, not Havana. And the way things work is you have to present the dog's paperwork one day ahead of the flight to Air Transat's cargo representative, Javier. That meant Nora had to make the 100 mile trip twice from Havana to Varadero in a car rented form a friend. So Nora met her friend, Javier on Saturday in Varadero, made the arrangements, and drove back home to Havana. Then she got up early to drive back to the Varadero airport by 8am on Sunday to check him in for his 10am flight to Toronto.

Throughout this extra week of arrangements, Ashley, as a good mother would, sent emails worrying about every detail, we translated and forwarded the email traffic both ways, and it was clear Nora had thought of everything. Nothing was going to go wrong.

And nothing did. Cuba had a comfortable 3 or 4 hours in the baggage hold of the plane (which is heated and pressurized just like the cabin), and Ashley and her partner were waiting at the Air Transat baggage facility in Toronto as Cuba debarked (strange word for a dog story) from the plane.

And, true to her word, Ashley sent us a bunch of photos of the happy pup in his new home. A couple are shown here, and my favorite is Cuba, the little pup from the tropics, having his first encounter with snow. May he always be as happy as he was that day.

Les Inglis

Friday, December 10, 2010

María Alvarez Ríos

María Alvarez Ríos 1919-2010

I met María in 2005 on my first trip to Cuba. She was the adoptive mother of my friend, Nora García Pérez, the President of Aniplant. Nora and María lived together with their 13 dogs in a 10th floor apartment in Vedado with a view halfway back to Florida. On that first encounter we all sat in her living room, petting the dogs, and Nora introduced us to her famous mother. María impressed us from the beginning with her perfect English, and we found out she spoke five languages fluently. It didn't take long to get her to sit at the piano and play and sing several songs for us.

María was a nationally known entertainer in Cuba, much as Rosemary Clooney was in the US. She was the beneficiary of a formal musical education which only polished her prodigy, evident since she was five years old. In her long career she was singer, songwriter, and author. She translated several European operas into Spanish from their original languages, and to some, she was their music teacher. To children in Cuba, she was a bright, happy writer and performer of children's songs. She composed songs for José Martí's poems and for those of other famous poets. When I met her, she was in her late eighties, but her classic beauty was still quite evident.

María and her husband adopted Nora after Nora lost her parents when she was in her teens. These two women shared an intense love for animals, and the well-traveled María took Nora with her to the US and Europe. They attended animal protection conferences and built up the knowledge of the field. Finally with their participation, Aniplant, Cuba's only officially recognized animal protection organization, was formed in the 1970's. A few years later, Nora became Aniplant's President.

I found a few videos of María on the Internet (a link can be found on our website: http://theaniplantproject.org). In those videos, her lovable dogs play an entertaining part.

Cubans are grateful for her musical talent, and those of us who work for animals are so happy she always spoke out for the animals.

María, we loved you for your music and your ethic towards animals. We'll miss you, but we're glad we had you for as long as we did.

Les Inglis

Friday, December 3, 2010

Cuba the Dog

Cuba the Dog

Cuba the Dog was born not long ago in a little menagerie in the far eastern province of Cuba, His owner was a lady who operates a makeshift zoo right next to one of Cuba's large beach hotels near the city of Holguin. The little zoo was a few steps away from the 500 room hotel, and sooner or later, most of the hotel's guests passed by her crudely hand-lettered sign offering the zoo as a tourist attraction. There were flamingos, turtles, the dogs, and a few other animals, and the owner had trained some of them to do tricks. It was all pretty dilapidated, and the animals didn't look well fed. The cages seemed too small, but the zoo's condition was about par for citizen owned businesses in Cuba.

Ashley and her partner were Canadians spending a week on Cuba's gorgeous beaches, and they strolled into the zoo, quickly spotting the tired old mother dog and her pups. It was clear the pups could be had, and Ashley fell in love with the brown and black one that she decided to call Cuba. The woman said she didn't sell dogs, but she was willing to part with Cuba the pup. Ashley pressed $30 into her hands feeling that the woman should get something to help with feeding the animals.

Knowing there are procedures to take an animal back home from Cuba, they took Cuba to a vet, who explained what was needed. There were vaccinations and worm treatments and fleas and ticks to kill. One of the tests needed a few days for getting back results. According to the vet, they didn't have time to go through all the steps before they were scheduled to fly home.

Disappointed, they returned the pup to the zoo lady and said they'd send for him as soon as they could. They flew home leaving a part of their hearts in the rickety old zoo. With some Internet sleuthing, Ashley found The Aniplant Project, our little charity that helps Aniplant, Cuba's only animal protection organization. Nora Garcia, Aniplant's President, was eager to help, knowing the puppy would have a much better life in Canada.

Ashley, through a friend, got Air Transat to agree to fly the dog directly from Varadero to Toronto. Varadero is another tourist spot in Cuba about 8 hours driving from Holguin and 2 hours east of Havana. Nora made the drive to Holguin in a rented car. With the help of a friend, Armando, she located the zoo and negotiated the release of the puppy to her. Armando is a member of Aniplant and another good example of Nora's huge, widely distributed network of volunteers. The zoo lady denied she sold the dog (possibly illegal without a license) and maintained the $30 was a donation. Sale, donation, whatever--the deal was done, and Cuba the pup rode back to Havana with Nora.

Now Nora's vet friends got into the act, and Cuba was rescued from nearly every kind of parasite a dog can have. He'll be certified as healthy any day now. All this activity was accompanied by a flurry of emails from Toronto to Florida to Havana and back. The stop in Florida was for translation as Ashley doesn't speak Spanish and Nora doesn't speak English. A glitch occurred when Air Transat told us they serve Varadero but not Havana, but Nora took that news in stride. She even knows Air Transat's manager for such animal flights, a man named Javier. Nora knew him two ways--first from previous shipments out of Varadero, and, as it turns out, Aniplant's VP, Gladys, the head of their Varadero branch is Javier's good friend. There are 11 million people in Cuba, but Nora makes it seem like they all know each other.

Well, all's well that ends well, and this story will reach its conclusion on Sunday 12/5 as Cuba, in his new travel cage, lifts off from Varadero only to land next in Toronto and be welcomed into the rest of his life by the loving Ashley, his new best friend.

Les Inglis

Friday, November 26, 2010

To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not

Cuba has two currencies. The original is called "moneda nacional (MN)" and is what the common citizen carries around and what shows up in his paycheck. It takes about 25 pesos of moneda nacional to equal one dollar US. In the early 1990's, after the fall of the Soviet Union, times were tough in Cuba as their support payments from the USSR dried up, never to return. The Cuban government's reaction was to allow dollars to circulate--that's right, good old American Greenbacks. That gave people a hard currency to use in trade, but I imagine Fidel and his friends soon tired of having George, Abe, Alexander, and Andrew's pictures in their wallets.

They didn't try to replace the MN peso with a hard currency because they didn't have enough assets to back a true, universally used hard currency, so someone invented the CUC, which means convertible currency. CUC's are worth about $1.08 each, and it is the currency you use as a tourist while in Cuba.

Now don't expect to get a supply of CUC's at your local bank for your trip to Cuba--it won't happen. The only place you can exchange dollars and CUC's is at the Cuban airports on arriving or leaving and at various Cuban currency exchanges, perhaps in your hotel. But before you load up on dollars to exchange for CUC's in Cuba, you should know that the Cuban government assesses a 20% penalty for exchanging dollars and CUC's. Frankly it's better to buy Euros at home and then exchange CUC's with Euros once you're there.

Oh, and don't forget to spend as many of your CUC's as you can before heading to the airport to leave. When you try the EURO/CUC exchange on leaving, they'll see you are flying to the US and insist on giving you dollars for your CUC's, even if you want Euros. And of course they get the 20% penalty too. So CUC's are a hard currency, sort of, and with them you can buy nearly anything you want in Cuba. Yes, if you have the CUC's, which ordinary citizens don't, you can get nearly anything you want. Let's see how it works.

A shiny new Peugeot or Hyundai taxi charges you CUC's while the citizen flags down 1950's era jitneys which give off smoke and noise. He pays in MN Pesos. Even the cute little Coco Taxis accept CUC's, but the citizen pays MN for an old man powered Pedi cab ride. A foreign national with permission to live and work in Cuba gets paid from his company in hard currency and can even buy a new car--paying in CUC's of course. The man in the street is on foot in the street because he'll never have enough CUC's to buy a car, and he couldn't anyway because he can't get official permission to buy it.

This two world existence has created a privileged class in Cuba. They aren't wealthy Cubans; they are the hotel maids, waiters and taxi drivers. They get their tips in CUC's and have access to many consumer items that only ex-pats and foreign business people can buy.

And if you're a dog owner with CUC's what is the local vet's office like? Well, you can find some who cater to the moneyed people. I priced a 20 pound bag of kibbled dog food in the vet's vestibule. It was $57 CUC--not exactly cheap. You don't need a prescription for your pet meds, but they are on sale at the vet's. The prices are in CUC's, which limits the clientele considerably.

On Calle Obispo, Havana's main tourist shopping street, there's a pet store. There I priced a decent looking dog collar at 14 CUC. Too steep for my budget, I thought. So no wonder you don't see the Cuban workers in those stores--their salaries range from the equivalent of 15 to 25 dollars a month. Yes even specialist medical doctors can't afford to shop in those places.

Here in the US we complain that taxes are too high and the dollar doesn't buy enough, but at least we don't have to contend with two currencies, one of which is worthless and the other reserved for visitors.

Les Inglis

Friday, November 19, 2010

Going Behind What's Left of the Iron Curtain

Going Behind What's Left of the Iron Curtain

If you are a US citizen visiting Cuba, it's initially hard to be sure you are welcome or not. As you land at Havana's Jose Martí airport, your plane taxis past a modern airport building bristling with jetways and populated with planes from all over the world, British Airways, Lufthansa, Quantas, and many others. But you keep on taxiing until you come to a low building that looks like something out of the 1950's. No jetways, no Varig from Brazil. If there is another plane around it is another little charter flight from the US like Sky King Airlines.

I remember an afternoon kid's radio program called Sky King in the 1940's. It wasn't very good, and the charter airline with the same name is nothing to write home about, either. Well, back to the airport--it's a ghost of the past, and if you ask a regular traveler, he'll tell you only the US flights use it. The airport terminal seems to be a vestige of the pissing contest the two countries have carried on for 50 years. By now you don't expect a jetway, and you think you'll be lucky if they roll up a set of stairs to help get out of the plane.

Once inside you're in a big room with a line of kiosks across the back side of it. Attendants there keep you standing behind a red line on the floor until you are motioned to one of the agents-in-a-box. This box is different from those at home in that the agent's desk is above your line of sight. You can't see what he's doing as he inspects your passport and customs card. You may get some questions here, especially if you are traveling with some medicines, as I always am. There's no smile, no "welcome to Cuba," just a chilly stare, and finally a bunch of rubber stamping noises, and your papers are handed back. You've been standing in a narrow passage between two kiosks, and you guess that you must leave it through the door you didn't use to enter. You think at least he spoke English.

You emerge into a large baggage room and place your handbags on the conveyor of an x-ray machine. You might ask, "Why do they x-ray arriving passenger's things?" Well, it's their country, and if that's what they want, you have to comply. If you're carrying a bag full of vet meds and supplies, the kiosk guy has probably fingered you for another interview with a Customs agent. It's happened to me 3 out of 5 times. They invite you over to a small circular stand up table and begin a fresh set of questions. This agent is probably female, pleasant, and has a nice smile. The questions are the same as those on your customs form, and after a while, she decides you're not a terrorist, and you can go look for your checked luggage. Of course it isn't up yet because every Cuban national on your flight has spent a fortune on purchases in the US and then checked them as luggage. There are flat screen TV's in huge cardboard cartons, microwaves, computer towers, and almost everything else easy to get in the US and hard to get in Cuba. Most of the stuff comes in a cocoon of blue plastic film, and it takes the baggage crew the better part of an hour to disgorge the plane's checked luggage.

I'm lucky to have made friends with the Havantur agent lady. She recognizes me every time I show up. She assures me and my two traveling companions that our stuff will show up on the carousel eventually. And it does. Another line has formed as an agent checks every traveler's bag tag with his luggage receipt. My Havantur friend walks us around that line, and we emerge from the old building into the rest of Cuba. This is the first opportunity we've had to see the crowds waiting to meet the travelers, and there in the middle of the crowd is Nora and our driver. We leave Cuba's version of the TSA, and our adventure begins.

Les Inglis

Friday, November 12, 2010

Waste Not, Want Not

Waste Not, Want Not

Both Cuba and the US have laws preventing the use of drugs beyond their expiration dates. While some suspect the biggest reason behind these laws is to insure the profits of the drug companies, these laws are studiously respected, and thus we can all rest assured the medicines we receive are fresh. Expiration dates are common for many medical supplies also like latex gloves, injection syringes, sutures and staples, and bandages--even gauze pads. Vets as well as medical doctors respect the expiration dates, so animals as well as humans need not fear drugs which have lost their efficacy.

Here in the US, older drugs are segregated, and, if the nurse in charge is extremely careful, drugs within a couple of weeks of their expiration dates can be returned for credit to the drug manufacturer. More often than not, this tight time frame for returning expired meds is missed, and they end up being destroyed. US vets are as religious as medical doctors in following the law.

In Cuba, however, things are different. While medical doctors and hospitals use fresh drugs only, vets who treat dogs and cats there have to make do with whatever they can find to treat household pets. The state owns the farm animals and the vets apply their best practice and fresh drugs on them. But household pets are of no interest to the state, and it is difficult to find fresh drugs in the doses that apply to smaller animals.

Many Cuba vets work with donated outdated drugs given to them by hospitals. Jose, our vet friend who works in Old Havana (see Making Ends Meet in this blog for June 11) has a box of old injectable drugs given to him by a hospital. He has become an expert in how long past the expiration date various kinds of medicines are still effective. He has found some anesthetic drugs work several years after expiration. He also has found some drugs can be substituted for others and work almost as well. In Cuba--with veterinary medicines--necessity is the mother of invention.

Is it a bad thing these drugs are used after expiry? Well, I'm not so sure. How many dogs and cats have survived surgeries, infections, and other threats due to the good offices of Cuba's fine, hard pressed veterinarians? A huge number, I believe.

Here at The Aniplant Project, we have been collecting drugs too old for return from several vets. With a little trouble these can be inventoried, packed, and shipped to Cuba. If Nora Garcia, the President of Aniplant, can't use them, she can trade them to the may vets she knows for their help in her weekly spay-neuter clinics

If you have a vet, ask him if he has outdated meds and supplies. Tell him we can use them to help Cuban dogs and cats. Good vets care about animals everywhere, and many vets are happy to donate when asked. Another source of these medicines are drugs left over after a pet dies. People often give them back to their vets. Regardless, call me if you get any such meds or supplies (941-928-8343 anytime). I'll take them off your hands, and you can become a participant in helping lots of needy animals really close to us--just across the Florida Straits/

Les Inglis

Friday, November 5, 2010

Means of Communication

Means of Communication

The only three ways we really have to interact with Aniplant in Cuba are mail, email, and actual visits. And these often seem to be less reliable than I would have them. Mail between the US and Cuba is a somewhat iffy proposition.

Several months back I found a postal regulation covering mailing items to Cuba. Prior to that I had failed to get a letter or a package through to Nora. Starting at the beginning of this year, with a package of vet supplies and that postal regulation in hand, I marched into the local Post Office and accosted a woman behind one of the counters. She looked at the address on the package, saw the destination was Cuba, and began to tell me they couldn't accept the package. She pulled up several screens on the display at her desk and then repeated it couldn't go.

I asked for the Postmistress come over and to read the regulation I had found, and she looked briefly at it and then started pulling pages up on her little screen. "Nope, there's no way to send it," she said, and I was beginning to look bothered. I know hundreds of thousands of Floridians have relatives in Cuba, and they mail them packages all the time.

"Wait a minute," said Alice from the end counter; "I have something on Cuba here." (Alice is the only attendant in the Post Office I can trust to know what can and cannot be done.) She had pulled up a page on her screen, and the Postmistress walked down to her desk. Now the first attendant joined them to make a trio reading Alice's screen, and finally I was told it could be shipped after all. Since then I have sent a half dozen boxes this way, but the staff at the Post Office still look like they wish I would use another Post Office for my Cuba business.

Email is another story. There is no human behind a desk to argue with you, but when your server doesn't deliver everything you send, you wish there were a real person around. I've used Microsoft Outlook for years to send email without a problem, but it has failed completely recently, and it became so unreliable I had to stop using it altogether. Then I started to use Comcast's Smart Zone, but it only thought it was smart. Still, some of my sent items never arrived. I set up Hotmail and Gmail accounts, and now I'm using Windows Live Mail on a new computer.

Well I'd like to tell you that email problems are a thing of the past, but no such luck. All I can say is most stuff arrives here OK, so don't stop writing. Most of my outgoing works too, but every so often, my outgoing emails go into a black hole.

The final and best means of communication is to visit Cuba. I've been there 5 times, and I have another trip planned for late February. Cuba is such an interesting place that it's worth figuring out all the licenses, affiliations, approved agents and charter flights. Of course one little misstep, and they don't let you fly, and then you're no better of than you were with mail or email.

Les Inglis

Friday, October 29, 2010

A Morning Reverie

A Morning Reverie

There’s a little park three blocks from my hotel in Havana. It takes up a full city block and is surrounded by homes and apartment houses on three sides. On the fourth side is the Sala Rodán Theater, a performing arts hall built in the 50’s in the classic style. Panels in the walls are decorated with tributes to classical musicians like Webber, Mozart, and Brahms.

The park has large reflecting pool empty for the last five years, statuary, monuments, Japanese trellises, large grassy areas, some shade trees, benches, and paved walkways. When I’m in Cuba, I visit the park each morning to pass the time between breakfast and my first planned activity. It’s a good time to make cryptic notes in my little pocket notebook which is always with me in Cuba.

The park is dedicated to a mayor of years gone by named Germán López. Don’t try to find him on Google as this name is about as common as Pete Smith is in English. I find a bench near López’s monument and sit to enjoy a slice of Cuban city life.

Over in a corner of the park about 30 women have lined up in rank and file and are doing exercises to the call of their leader facing them. They look like a group you might see at the beach or the local Y. They don’t seem any more fit than the average Cuban, but they’re trying to be. My favorite aspect of the park is man’s best friend, several of which lead their human companions around the park.

First a Boston Bulldog sniffs at the legs of my bench and then comes up to check me out. Satisfied, he takes his human off in another direction. Next a little brown short-haired spaniel approaches me, his human standing behind him a respectful distance. Now a dark haired terrier—uh oh, no owner. Well this guy knew exactly where he wanted to go, and didn’t even give me a tumble. Was he stray? Definitely not. You could tell by his well fed look. He moved off diagonally across the park and reached his home, an apartment house nearly a block away. I watched until he disappeared.

A bus stops and unloads its entire capacity of young men and women. They’re all students at the ballet school in the Rodán Theater.

As I write, a lone musician plays scales on a trumpet. After a while he is joined by another horn player, and their perfect tones sound in harmony. I glance at my watch, stand, and slowly move off toward my hotel for another day of exploration.

Les Inglis

Friday, October 15, 2010

Dog Show in the Pearl of the Antilles

Dog Show in the Pearl of the Antilles

Animal protectionists seldom take much interest in dog shows. First of all, the owners of show dogs generally keep them in pretty good shape, and secondly there are always demands on protectionists to help less fortunate dogs—often to help with dogs in dire straits. Still, I admit to watching the Westminster Show in New York once a year. I frankly didn’t imagine they had dog shows in Cuba, but they certainly do. Nora and I and Xenia and Bob, my fellow travelers, had been invited to such a show by Nora’s overseer in the ministry of Agriculture, so one Friday morning we found ourselves driving west of Havana toward the suburb of Playa and a dog show being held there.

To get to Playa you drive along 5th Avenue through the fancy suburb of Miramar. In Miramar the houses are palatial, and most of the embassies and the homes of foreign businessmen are located here. I remember particularly the little kiosks with armed guards which stand at the corners of the fenced yards of the various embassies. People who live in these mansions can well afford show dogs if they wish. The dog show was in a futbol (soccer) field, and we were shown to comfortable seats in a tent n the middle of the field. The field was parceled off into little show rings, each for one of the many breeds. Next to us on one side were the Huskies, and on the other side the Cocker Spaniels were strutting their stuff. I figured it was a good time to take some pictures and wandered off among the rings.

This isn’t the real Cuba you see in most places. It looks more like a weekend activity in any affluent suburb in the US. One difference I note is that the participants showing their dogs are nearly all quite well dressed. After much wandering and picture taking I realized the show had an international flavor. Many dogs had come there from other countries in Latin America, and a few were there from Europe. This is another reminder that it’s only here in the US that we think of Cuba as a mysterious forbidden island. Practically all the other countries of the world think of Cuba as a great place to visit.

After a pleasant morning watching the show dogs, we prepare for our ride back to town to an invited luncheon at the Ornithological Society. A mix-up with drivers made us an hour late, but in Cuba everyone is on Tropical Standard Time (which means, “whenever”). That day we had a great lunch in a land where you cannot always be sure of getting a good meal.

I think dog shows are good if they stimulate an interest in having a dog in your family and loving it. If those shows are a means of showing off your property and if the dogs are not kept in a loving home situation, their treatment is a source of irritation to protectionists and to the dogs themselves.

Les Inglis

Friday, October 8, 2010

Lifesaving in Cuba

Lifesaving in Cuba

Bella was a homeless dog who had taken to hanging around the Plaza de Las Armas in Havana. This is a tourist destination where booksellers’ stalls surround a small, one block square park. Her staying around there wasn’t so dumb, as the tourists in Cuba are much more likely to have a little extra food than are the residents. Still it wasn’t much of a living, and she looked thin and weak, her appearance was no doubt made worse by a developing case of pneumonia. The little brown and black dog was a mix of breeds, and more to pity than love until you got to know her.

Angela is an international airline flight attendant based in Gatwick who was on a layover in Havana. She was passing time in the Plaza looking at books, maps, and art for sale to the happy tourists.

Nora is an accomplished animal protectionist who runs Aniplant, Cuba’s only officially sanctioned animal protection organization. She still has not met Angela, but as I tell this story, she is very familiar with Bella.

What happened was that Angela spotted Bella begging for attention from the tourists, a few of whom took pity on her and gave her bits of food. Angela and her companion went over to the dog and immediately felt a compassionate drive to help her. While still on her layover, she came back to the Plaza several times to feed Bella a little, for she could not eat very much at one time.

She even gave the dog the name, Bella, reasoning she shouldn’t go though life without a name, and she thought about taking Bella back to England, but she and her companion both work and couldn’t justify having a dog at home. So she finally had to get on the plane without the dog, but Bella was still with her in her mind.

In fact, she wouldn’t leave Angela’s mind. Angela could think of nothing else.

She searched the Internet and found Caribbean Medical Transport, run by the genial Rick Schwag, and via email she asked him if he could help Bella. Well, Rick passed the ball to me, telling Angela I was the one who did CMT’s work in animal protection.

Reading Angel’s forwarded email on Bella and her plight, I knew what we had to do as I had seen such stories several times before. I told her of Aniplant and Nora and the good work she does in helping Cuban animals, and I offered to translate any communication between Angela and Nora. That was on a Friday, and soon the answer came back to me from Nora. She had been to the Plaza and there were only four dogs there. They were all males and all healthy. I passed the unhelpful news on to Angela knowing Nora would not let this go with only one visit to the Plaza.

Sure enough, the next day (Saturday), Nora wrote me with the news she had found Bella. There was no question it was she, even though Nora didn’t have any of Angela’s photos. The color, the thin, weak, maybe sick description, etc. were enough to be sure. The vendors at the Plaza (many of whom Nora knows personally) told Nora that Bella had been staying around the Plaza for a couple of weeks. Nora’s first email to me after finding Bella told us certainly it was Bella. Bella had been found, taken to the vet, who confirmed the pneumonia, gave her antibiotics and inoculations, and told us she would easily survive with good care. Bella was isolated at Aniplant’s Headquarters in Central Havana. Yes, isolated until she could get used to the other eight dogs who live there and there was no chance of contagion between the dogs.

In the meantime, Angela, who had been franticly emailing me with questions every couple of hours was now on another trip with her airline. So it went for another day and a half. Nora and I knew Bella was safe, but Angela, who had started this quest and who was nearly frantic for Bella’s safety, still didn’t know. Finally she had a moment to catch up with her email, and she was overjoyed to read my translation of Nora’s report and that Bella was safe.

I felt as if I had done something very active to help a canine life, even though I had hardly moved from my keyboard. All three of us were very relieved that Bella had a home, and Aló Presidente (remember him from an earlier blog) had a new playmate.

I often write why it is important to support Aniplant. If Bella could write, she could do that job for me.

Les Inglis

PS Don’t forget our website: http://theaniplantproject.org, It is constantly adding new material about Aniplant.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Aniplant Headquarters

ANIPLANT HEADQUARTERS

Aniplant maintains its headquarters at 128 Principe Street in Central Havana. It used to be on the eighth floor of a building with a non-working elevator. I first saw it on my second trip here, and we were all winded by the time we got to the top. During that trip, Nora told us that in Cuba you can’t buy or sell your home. You can only arrange trades between properties. But those trades have to be documented by legal paperwork. In the Cuban “paradise” legal work is free, but it is also in very short supply. Nora had indeed found someone who would trade his home in a central area on the first floor for her HQ on the eighth floor. But she had been waiting four years for her legal project to come to the top of the lawyer’s pile. We found out that a little monetary encouragement would move the matter to the top, and the transaction completed in a couple of days.

Months later I asked her how the new HQ was progressing, and she told me a tale of woe that was hard to understand. It seems the old resident of the Principe property had stripped everything when he left. Even the electrical switches were removed from the walls. She didn’t have the resources to bring it up to a useful space. It was just overwhelming, so we decided to help. On the next trip, we gave her money to fix the place up, and the work began. Still, even a year after that, she was nowhere close to finished. By this time (late 2008), she had enough money resources to get the work done, but the project was clearly on tropical standard time, which suggests it might never be completed. We set a goal to have it done for the November 2009 trip, but when I saw it, I had no idea how well Nora and her group had finished the project.

Every part of the place was painted freshly, and all missing electrical and water piping had been replaced. The front room, a large meeting room had beautiful framed color photos of street dogs of Havana, and two new chandeliers lit the room. The outside passageway to the kitchen area in the rear was also painted, and decorated with hanging tropical plants. The second room, behind the meeting room is to be a veterinarian’s office, and it was painted and furnished. It looked like the vet was ready to set up shop. Two rooms behind the vet’s office were not finished because they contain building materials, and Nora told me of her plans to build a second story over them and beneath the 16 foot ceilings. Every door had a gate of grating on it, so the HQ dogs (eight of them) could be confined wherever they wanted them.

As I was walking around amazed at how much they had accomplished, the dogs were let loose, and we were overcome with a pack of the happiest, barking animals you can imagine. I could immediately spot Aló Presidente, the black dog we had rescued from the streets in 2007. He was the happiest of all of these lovable canines. Well, he should have been, seeing as how he was the only male in the group of eight. Well, such matters are not what you might think, as of course all the HQ dogs are neutered. Aló is not really the boss of the group, however, because there is a large female who seems to call all the shots in the group. Needless to say, the tremendous progress at the headquarters made me feel that everything we and Nora and her volunteers had done was really working, and that Aniplant has a bright future.

Les Inglis

(See lots more about Cuba and its animals on our new website: http://theaniplantproject.org )

Friday, September 24, 2010

Machismo

Machismo

I’m a firm believer in spaying and neutering all your dogs, but I wasn’t always so sure. I can recall the years right after we bought our farm in Indiana. The ink was hardly dry on the paperwork when a stream of abandoned dogs came by the place, and we began to collect our menagerie. The first was a young female Beagle who stole our hearts. Before I knew it she was our house dog when I never before had plans to have another dog. Of course it made sense to me to have her spayed and of course we did.

The second dog was more problematic for me. Boy was a down on his luck German Shepherd who had mange, not enough to eat, no owner, and had taken up living in one of our barns. Charlene immediately wanted him neutered, but I had a few doubts. She knew the drill far better than I did, and she recited the better disposition and better health we’d notice after neutering him. But I was thinking he won’t be as good a guard dog, and anyway it almost hurt even to think about ending his manhood—or doghood, if you will.

Well. Charlene settled it by explaining that if we didn’t do it, I wasn’t going to have any use for my own manhood. Boy was neutered with dispatch, and immediately we could see the improvements in his life. He was then about 2 years old and lived twelve more years in robust health. That’s a good long run for a 72 pound Shepherd. He was a super guard dog who always protected the farm. I learned a lot about my ignorant prejudices and became a big proponent of neutering all dogs and cats, male or female.

In Latin America the word for the way I used to be is machismo, related to our “macho.” We don’t have an exact equivalent except what we borrowed from the French, “chauvinism.” Well, whatever you call it, it abounds in most parts of the world. It contributes to a general male reluctance to sterilize male animals. They even go further south of the border with men in a group tending to talk louder and longer than the women. Men somehow seem to try to play a more powerful role in everyday life.

This attitude is one factor to combat in getting the maximum number of animals neutered, but even so, I’m impressed with how many men show up with their dogs and cats in their arms for the free or low cost sterilization clinics Aniplant operates every weekend in Havana and other cities. Nora Garcia has found the key to building a demand for the sterilization service—and that key is education. In one television show and two radio shows every week, she exhorts the Cuban public to sterilize their animals, and she’s effective and convincing in this important public program. Just note that last year the number of cats and dogs Aniplant did was 4 times the number of dogs and cats they did just three years before. Progress like that doesn’t happen by accident; it comes from good planning and hard work.

Oh, and it comes from our donors too. Most of the anesthesia medicines used in the Aniplant clinics are paid for, purchased and shipped out of funds donated to The Aniplant Project, Inc (our new corporate nane).

So, thanks for your support and keep striking a blow against chauvinism. We’re all better off when you do.

Les Inglis

Friday, September 10, 2010

A House in Central Havana

A House in Central Havana

Let me describe for you a typical small home in Central Havana. The street in front is narrow, but two cars can pass each other with no problem. Narrow sidewalks help make this possible. It doesn’t happen often because there is little auto traffic on this street. The lot width is about 25 feet, and the house is built right on the lot lines so the houses on either side touch the next door neighbor. The only way to the small patio at the rear is through the house.

The living room is the largest room in the house, about twenty feet square, and it sits just behind the front wall. The front door and a large shuttered window open to the street. If the family is sitting in their living room and a neighbor walks by, they can carry on a conversation through the window without leaving their chairs. Like many places in Latin America, the window and door are fitted with iron bar grates—the one on the door is hinged and used much as we would use a screen door. But there are no screens and no air conditioning. Except in storms, the door and window shutters are swung inside to provide air circulation.

The living room has a tile floor and a beamed 16’ ceiling stained a dark wood color. Behind the living room along one side wall is a wide, open air hallway giving passage to the rear of the house where it ends at a small bathroom. As you go down the open passage, you pass two small bedrooms on the right. Doors between all the rooms allow you to move through the house without using the open air passage in the case of rain.

The largest room in the rear is the kitchen which has a small refrigerator, but its single most noticeable feature is a built in wood grille about six feet wide covered by a hood and chimney. Yes, cooking is over a wood or charcoal fire, but this family also has an electric hot plate next to the grille.

The back door opens onto a 20 by 25 foot open patio with vines on the walls and a large tropical fruit tree from which melon sized bright green fruits hang. The patio is completely enclosed by the walls of adjacent houses.

This home could be up to 200 years old, so the water, electricity and bathroom are all later additions. You can see all the wires and pipes which run from the roof down the inside walls to the faucets, switches, or receptacles at useable levels. A large plastic tank of very recent vintage on the roof is fed by the municipal water system.

This family loves animals and has a couple of dogs. If they’ve taken the precaution of neutering them, (which service can be had for free from Aniplant), they can be let out in front to relieve themselves. If not, their female dog soon would end up pregnant, and they’d soon have to find homes for or abandon the puppies. In this case, neutering has been done, and the worst that is likely to happen to their pets is to get into a fight or be hit by a car. But these dogs are wise to the dangers and come back to be let in after a while.

One other hazard is they can be mistaken for strays and rounded up by anti rabies teams. Too bad nearly no one uses collars and tags for their dogs. I suppose it is possible to tell strays from family dogs, but it isn’t easy. Family dogs, as a rule, look nourished and healthy and keep their fur looking good. But mistakes happen and they are sometimes are swept up and taken away by the municipal authorities. To read what a pet-loving family must do then, see my blog of June 4.

I’ve written this to help understand a little of the way our Cuban neighbors live. It’s quite different from our lifestyle here at home. The common element, a love for animals, is shared by many on both sides of the Florida Straits.

Les Inglis

Friday, September 3, 2010

Similarities and Differences

Similarities and Differences

As the first country in the Western Hemisphere to proclaim, fight for, and win independence from European colonial powers, the United States became an example to emulate for the countries of Latin America. During the 1800’s, the US example prodded most of Latin America to break the bonds of Spanish and Portuguese rule. Many countries had to fight for their independence, but for some, particularly in Central America, merely proclaiming independence won it.

Cuba had a tougher time throwing off the Spanish yoke than any other Latin country—not surprisingly as it was thought of in Spain as the richest prize delivered by the Conquistadors. Not for nothing did they call it “The Pearl of the Antilles.” Cuba fought three wars of independence with Spain, losing the first two in the 1860’s and winning the last one (with American participation on Cuba’s side) in 1898. The result of what we Americans call the Spanish American War ended once and for all Spain’s dreams of having an empire in the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba established a democracy with a political system much like ours. Ties between the US and Cuba were many and strong, and the two nations became major trading partners. When it was time to build a new Capitol building in Havana, it developed into an amazing look-alike for our own Capitol

The Capitolio, built between 1926 and 1931, housed Cuba’s House of Representatives and its Senate. Its tall dome looks a little skinnier than ours, but none the less elegant. If anything, the semi-circular halls of Congress at either end are more tasteful appendages than our enormous rectangular wings. Today the Capitolio is a museum. Inside you are met with the Statue of the Republic, a bronze, gold leaf coated reminder of our Statue of Liberty, 50 feet tall, and the third tallest indoor statue in the world. She even has her right arm raised like Liberty’s. A replica of a huge diamond is set into the floor at the center of the domed hall. The real one was stolen years ago, and recovered, but never reinstalled in the floor.

It’s amazing to compare the past fraternity of Latin and North American nations with the mutual suspicion that seems to reign today. Amazing, yes, but not surprising when we realize that every nation must find its own way in the world. I’m as much a patriot as the next guy, but I don’t believe that just because something is American (meaning of the US) that it is therefore better.

Still, in the animal protection realm, for all the puppy mills, factory farms, industrial fishing, and hunting abuses we have in this country, animals here are much better off than they are there. Aniplant and The Aniplant Project are working to make the Cuban animals’ world better. But stray and even sick animals can be found in disturbing numbers in Cuba. Efforts to improve the animals’ lives there are growing, but they are still in the early stages of development. And while the average Cuban is at heart an animal lover, household pets don’t yet receive the respect and attention they need and deserve. Part of the problem is economic, of course, but there is a need for much more humane education and a general elevation of the regard in which the family holds its animals.

The optimist in me thinks we’re making progress for animals in Cuba. You can learn more about our efforts at a new website, http://theaniplantproject.org . Please visit it and make up your own mind about the value of the work we are doing for the animals of Cuba.

Les Inglis

Friday, August 27, 2010

Cristo de La Habana

Cristo de La Habana

From many parts of Old Havana you can see Havana’s harbor, and as you look across the water to the cliffs on the other side, two landmarks stand out—El Morro Castle, once a prison, and a large statue of Christ. The castle is an ancient Spanish fort, placed there to protect the harbor, and it is pictured in many tourist brochures. The huge statue of Christ is not so well known as the fort, but it too has an interesting story.

The monument was a gift to the people of Havana from Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s last dictator before the Castro Revolution. A plaque at the base of the monument used to name the donor, but in recent years it has been removed. The date of dedication, Christmas Day of 1958, is interesting. That date was exactly one week before Batista’s downfall and retreat into exile and Castro’s triumph on January 1, 1959.

Latin America has its share of huge statues of Christ. Arguably the most famous and one of the largest (130 feet tall) is Christo Redentor which stands, arms outstretched to his flock, looking over Rio de Janeiro. And Christ of the Andes is also well-known—standing on the Argentina-Bolivia border on the summit of a mountain range. The tallest and newest is Cristo de la Concordia in Cochabamba, Bolivia. This one is not so well-known. But I’ll argue Cristo de La Habana (at 65 feet tall) is one of the most beautiful of all. It is a white marble realistic rendition of Christ wearing a flowing robe. Arms are not outstretched, but held up in front of the body in a teaching pose.

Christo de la Redentor which stands on a mountain-top overlooking Rio is taller, better known, and has a setting unmatchable in Cuba, but as a product of the 1920’s and 1930’s it has an unfortunate (and I think inappropriate) art-deco feel to it, which Havana’s Christ avoids to the credit of its sculptor. And Rio’s statue of reinforced concrete will never match Havana’s white marble.

If you tunnel under the water and drive to the crest of the hill, you’ll find the monument stands in a well kept park with a wonderful view of the city. Sometimes local kids set up a ticket booth and try to sell tickets to the park, but it really is a free park. Other kids offer to explain the history of the park and the harbor. We tried that one and found he didn’t know much about history or where in the bay the USS Maine had been sunk.

On my most recent visit to the park, I discovered how the park stays looking so good. A man with a herd of goats was urging them around the grassy areas. These Cuban lawnmowers make no noise, pose no danger to the herdsman, and don’t require gasoline. It seems to be a win-win solution for man and animal.

Les Inglis

(See lots more about Cuba and its animals on our new website: http://theaniplantproject.org )

Friday, August 20, 2010

Aló Presidente

Aló Presidente

I’ve told this story before in our newsletters, but many readers have yet to see it. It’s the story of Aló Presidente, a beautiful little Cuban dog who looks something like a black Cocker Spaniel with long, curly hair. Lilian and Diana and Nora and I were walking back to our hotel from an Italian restaurant near Nora’s house. We’d had a good meal and were carrying a box with some left-over pizza. We came upon this little dog, not yet fully grown, and decided from his slight build that he might be hungry. Lilian tried to break up a slice of pizza into bite sized pieces and offered it to him.

This little guy either wasn’t hungry or didn’t like Italian food, but Diana got him to lap up some water we poured out for him out of her bottle.

He was so cute, we couldn’t help ourselves, and as we resumed our walk, he followed us. After a couple of blocks, we were talking of keeping him and finding him a home. When we came near to our hotel, the Presidente, he was still with us, and we were buzzing about what we had to do to foster him. We crossed to the wide parkway in the Avenida de los Presidentes, and he stayed right with us. The ladies decided we needed to have him checked out by a vet before we put him into a home with other dogs. The little dog and I stayed there in the wide, grassy parkway, and he curled up in a little depression in the lawn. They were gone at least 15 minutes, and I passed the time gently petting the sleeping dog. I noticed my hand was very dirty from petting him—he really needed a bath.

The ladies came back with no clues on finding a vet. It was 5:00pm on a Saturday, so we decided to back track in the parkway, and Nora spotted a man playing with his dog in the grass. She went over to him, and he offered to give us a place in his garage for the night. Well, we got some clothesline and found a flattened cardboard box to use as a bed. While we were milling around, he walked out of the garage and kept going. I followed him trying not to seem as if I were chasing him. In about a block, he jumped up into a flowerpot and curled up in a grassy depression. I gently carried him back to the garage, petting him as I walked. The girls had fashioned a harness and long tether for him, and we left him for the night tied to the front bumper of a dusty 1954 Chevy Bel Aire. He had a plate of pizza and a bowl of water.

We made plans to meet early the next morning; Nora went home to work the telephone, while the rest of us went back to the hotel.

I had decided to name him Aló Presidente. The Presidente part was that we were in the shadow of our hotel when we decided to keep him. The Aló part was for the warm, tail-wagging way he greeted us. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez broadcasts his talks each weekend to those who will listen, and he calls his talks, Aló Presidente, so now our dog was named for a series of political talks.

In the morning Aniplant volunteers sought out Aló in his garage, and we were disheartened to learn he had slipped his bonds and was gone. I started on foot back toward the flowerpot, and sure enough, there he was in his grassy depression and, for the second time, I carried him back to the garage.

Nora had convinced Lourdes, an active Aniplant volunteer, to take Aló at least until we could get him to a vet. Nora’s Aniplant Treasurer, Eva Rivero, picked us up at the hotel in her miniscule Fiat. We barely fit into the Fiat with Nora and Aló in the rear seat and Eva and I in front. We set off for Lourdes” house dodging potholes in the residential neighborhoods—some that seemed as big as the car itself.

Nora had water and flea spray with her as she always does, and Aló got the first flea treatment of his life in the back seat of the car. When we got to Lourdes’ house, we saw that Lourdes had rigged a little run for Aló on her balcony segregated from her other dogs. We soon had to go, and I snapped a picture of Aló on the balcony as we left.

We were about to leave Cuba, but Nora kept us up to date on our new friend. He cleaned up beautifully, was neutered, and joined Lourdes’ family of three other dogs. Later, Nora took Aló back from Lourdes when she was sick, and he became a permanent resident of Aniplant’s new headquarters where he joined seven other dogs, all females—all spayed of course.

I’ve felt as if Aló was my dog ever since we picked him up, and I’ve often thought of bringing him home to Florida with me. But he belongs to all of us, and, as I verified in two later visits, he is so happy to be a headquarters resident. The food there is good, the care is superb, and there are always nice, animal-loving people around. No, as much as I love him, he has already found his forever home, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.

I’ll have to love him from afar.

Les Inglis

AND A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

A Big Step Forward

A couple of months ago, we decided, after a solid push from Charlene, that we had to act like a real charity. Thus she set out on a course to incorporate The Aniplant Project, Inc. (TAP) as a not-for-profit corporation, to obtain a 501 (c)(3) rating from the IRS so that donations are tax deductible, to register as a charity with the State of Florida, and finally to apply for an OFAC license to send people to Cuba for charity business. She did it all herself, and did a great job of it. All but the OFAC license are done deals, and it is pending. About two weeks ago, as work on all this slowed down, she began work on a new website for TAP.

Today that website is up and running, thanks entirely to Charlene’s hard work. It’s beautiful, and I hope you’ll look over every page we have posted. You’ll learn lots of interesting stuff and see lots of new photos if you do. We’re really proud of it, and I’m proud of Charlene for all her dedication and hard work. Go to:

http://theaniplantproject.org

You’ll be glad you did.

Les Inglis

Friday, August 13, 2010

Lunch TIme

Lunch Time

We all have asked for a doggie bag when we can’t finish a good restaurant meal. Sometimes I wonder if the waiter thinks, “That’s for him, not the dogs.” Well, he is justified in thinking so, as many little bags and boxes of leftovers have waited in my refrigerator for my appetite to return. In our house, the dogs eat well, usually without leftovers, and some of them need special food anyway.

In Cuba, few people fail to take home the leftovers, and they often eat them themselves, like I do. We were at a large lunch gathering in a restaurant near Havana’s harbor when my friend, Nora Garcia, spoke up for all the leftovers. I knew these would go to the dogs as she has more than a dozen at home, and 8 more living at Aniplant’s headquarters. She always comes prepared with plastic bags. Food doesn’t go to waste in Cuba whether for dogs or people.

Nora and I had a plastic bag of beef chunks with us as we walked away from the restaurant, and we didn’t go half a block through the Plaza de las Armas, when we found a cute black dog wagging his tail and hoping for a treat.

It was as though he knew what was in Nora’s purse, and, of course, we stopped to feed him. He could have been a stray or he might have belonged to one of the booksellers in the Plaza. (Collars and tags are rare in Cuba.) Either way, his slender build suggested he could use some extra calories.

Well, you know the rest of the story—he got the leftover beef, and he will probably remember that meal for the rest of his life. Another time we were at the same restaurant at a table on the sidewalk, and I saw another dog out near the street hoping for a handout. I had some leftovers, so I took them out front and left them on the sidewalk for the dog, who happily attacked the food. The restaurant manager looked like he didn’t want the mess right in front of his place. I told him not to worry; it would all be cleaned up.

Sure enough, the dog “licked the platter clean,” meaning the sidewalk. The manager was satisfied, I felt really good at making that dog’s day, and nothing went to waste.

We usually visit Havana’s Bario Chino for a Chinese meal on each trip. I always order moros y cristianos, that is rice and beans, and the serving is unusually large, so I leave with leftovers. A couple of blocks away is a square block that has been torn down and made into a not-very-busy parking lot. It is fenced and the operator has three dogs. I ask permission to feed them, he gives it, and I parcel it out in three portions to the delight of the dogs. The man says he remembers me from year to year, but I’m not so sure.

Still, I know the dogs remember.

Les Inglis

Friday, August 6, 2010

The Embargo

The Embargo

In southwest Florida we are blessed with a few stations of National Public Radio. The Naples station, WGCU, which I can receive, has a show called “Sound off with Sasha” every Friday at noon. Sasha is the genial hostess of the show which presents interviews with public figures including telephone caller participation. Topics cover a wide range, but politics and public policy are the most common.

Sasha is very well informed on the topics she covers, and her accent tells us she is from Eastern Europe, but her English is as good as any American’s, and her shows are always interesting and educational. My wife, Charlene, told me in advance Sasha was going to have a former State Department employee talk about US policy toward Cuba and suggested I be one of the callers because of my interest in Cuba.

The appointed Friday arrived, and I called in. I waited through the questions and answers of a couple of callers ahead of me while listening to the show on the Internet. When my turn came I described my being in Cuba on the night Barack Obama won the Presidency. There had been a huge interest in our election among the Cubans, and many of them asked me if I was as happy with the result as they were. (I was.) As my brief time with the guest grew short, I asked this challenging question, “What benefits does US policy toward Cuba (the embargo and the travel restrictions) offer to US citizens?”

Perhaps there had once been reasons for those sanctions, but clearly none can be found today. The guest, somewhat surprised, basically just said my question was rhetorical and didn’t answer it. That’s a cheap cop-out, I thought, but I was already off the air. Everything else the guest had said that day was supportive of US policy toward Cuba, but after his having presented so much in that vein, I was surprised he had ducked my question.

But, on further thought, the reason is easy to understand—the embargo and the travel restrictions do nothing for US citizens and our citizenry is beginning to understand that. These policies, which help us not one bit, can’t possibly do the man on the street in Cuba any good either. Meanwhile, over the last fifty years Cuban leaders have seemed to thrive, so our policies only punish the average Cuban. Governments are often irrational. This one (ours) is keeping in place an embargo and travel restrictions that serve only as historic relics of the Cold War. All those who set this policy in place are long since dead, as is the Cold War, but the insanity goes on. In an age when we need exports, we turn our back on 11 million close neighbors who all would love to have access to American products.

These posts are usually about animals in Cuba, so let me ask, how do you suppose the animals fare when life is made more difficult for their human guardians who can’t get parts for their cars and many other necessities? Of course, the animals in a household rank even lower that the poor people who are oppressed by our policy. It’s not a good thing when a 50 year old flap for nearly forgotten reasons makes things tough for an entire country and its cats and dogs.

Les Inglis

Friday, July 30, 2010

Cuba's Humane HIstory

Cuba’s Humane History

Jeannette Ryder was an American doctor’s wife who moved to Cuba and founded El Bando de Piedad de la Isla de Cuba (The Cuban Group for Compassion) in 1905. Originally she worked for alleviating the problems of humans and animals, but eventually she focused on the protection of animals, notably militating against bullfights and rescuing strays from the streets. El Bando de Piedad worked tirelessly for animal welfare until Jeannette’s death in 1931. She is remembered today in Cuba as the mother of Cuba’s humane movement. A Cuban airmail stamp was issued in her honor in 1957.

Today, Ryder’s gravesite is a must-see point of interest in Havana’s huge Colón Cemetery, where it is known as La Tumba de la Lealdad (the tomb of loyalty). The grave is covered with a beautiful sculpture of Jeannette lying peacefully, while curled at her feet, lies Rinti, her faithful dog, who, at her passing, found her grave and lied there refusing food and water until he also died. Fernando Boarda did the sculpture in 1944, thus immortalizing Ryder’s lifetime of work for the animals.

Aniplant (Asociación Cubana para la Protección de Animales y Plantas) is the modern day successor to El Bando de Piedad , having organized in 1986 under the then new Cuban law #54. Aniplant is the only organization doing animal protection work permitted in Cuba. Originators of Aniplant included Alicia Alonso, world famous ballerina, and María Alvarez Ríos, nationally famous singer and author. (María is Nora García’s adoptive mother.)

Nora García began her work in Aniplant as Secretary of the organization, after having pursued her interest in animals since childhood. In 1992 she was named President of Aniplant, and there began a notable expansion of the organization’s work. Today, Aniplant, under Nora’s leadership, spays or neuters more than 2000 animals per year, disseminates humane education through two weekly radio shows and a television show., aids dog and cat refuges, and promotes adoption of dogs and cats. Nora is known throughout Havana, and she is constantly stopped on the street to answer questions about people’s pets.

Aniplant is embarking on an expansion program, and in the last few months has absorbed an informal local group in Varadero, Cuba’s beach playground to the east of Havana. Look for other such mergers as time goes on.

When I started researching the humane movement in Cuba, I was struck by the parallels between Jeannette Ryder and Nora García and between El Bando and Aniplant. Both leaders—indeed both organizations—were driven by a need to help the animals who suffered through ignorance, neglect, or fate. Today’s Aniplant is the modern image of El Bando de la Piedad, and Nora is surely the reincarnation of Jeannette Ryder.

The animals of Cuba owe much to these two remarkable women whose work inspires us.

Les Inglis

Friday, July 23, 2010

Advertising

Advertising

Advertising is so common here in the US that we filter out most of it from our consciousness, and so for us it’s difficult to sense the absence of something we filter out. Thus, my first couple of days in Cuba were accompanied by a faint feeling something was missing. Of course it was advertising, one of the essential tools of capitalism.

In Cuba billboards are non-existent except when the government wants to tell you something. Pull open the glass door of a tourist shop, and there are no Visa or MasterCard decals on it. If you listen to a Cuban radio station, it has no commercials. Life in Cuba, for all its serious problems, is free of voices, signs, billboards trying to get your attention, and it generates sort of a vague, empty feeling at first, until you realize what’s going on.

In the communist “utopia” central planning decides on one source for whatever is needed. Thus: no competition and no need for advertising. Stores don’t hang out signs touting their wares, and even the iconic Cuban cigar makers don’t spend money touting their products. Somehow everyone finds out where to get what he or she must have, but it isn’t through advertising. Signs promoting products somehow seem anti-communist and are clearly frowned upon. One source for each product, a communist ideal, kills Madison Avenue’s Tower of Babel.

Well, there is an exception, and that is the government. It can and does place billboards with political messages wherever it chooses. The scarcity of billboards makes the political messages all the more powerful. Driving south from my hotel, we climb a hill and wind through a park. “Venceremos,” (we shall win) shouts a billboard we pass by. A park in front of the US Interests Section (the equivalent of our embassy) sports several billboards with partisan slogans and even an unflattering caricature of George Bush. Allusions to nazism in America are common.

We aren’t above playing this same game; an electrically lit signboard with a moving message was installed high on the US Interests Section building, and it showed political messages from the US point of view. It caused lots of attention as it could be seen for many blocks along the Malecón, Havana’s seaside expressway. Not to be outdone in his own capital, Fidel planted a field of 50 flagpoles with large black flags which effectively hid the moving message board from drivers on the Malecón. El Comandante won this battle and the US signboard came off the building.

While grown men, leaders of their countries, played tit for tat or one-up-manship, Nora Garcia, President of Aniplant took advantage of the prohibition of advertising to promote the protection of animals. One of her volunteers is a top-flight photographer who blew up pictures of some of Cuba’s dogs and cats and put them on signboards that other volunteers could carry in public places. (A la the old “Eat at Joe’s” type signs you used to see men carrying to promote restaurants in the US,) The volunteers with their signboards provoke many questions, and they promote Aniplant spay-neuter clinics, solicit membership, and dispense general humane information.

Even Fidel doesn’t silence voices in support of animals.

Les Inglis

Friday, July 16, 2010

Getting Around Town

Getting Around Town

Less than 300 miles from where I sit is a city of 2,000,000 people with a poor excuse for a transportation system. Havana has no subway, no ell, no streetcars, an antiquated and inefficient bus system, and the average citizen can’t afford to use the taxis. Fortunately the city is tightly compacted so most people walk to where they want to go.

When I first visited there, the busses were camellos hardly more than semi trucks where the passengers rode in the trailers. I was amazed at the rush-hour crowds waiting at main intersections—often more than two hundred people. Amazed, that is, until I saw a camello pull up, more than 100 people get out of the double doors in the middle of the trailer. Then more than 100 got on the trailer, and the tired old tractor truck ground through its gears to get up a little speed between stops. Of course there was no air conditioning, and every window was wide open.

The camello name (means camel) came from the twin humps of the trailer as the mid section with the doors was built closer to the street to make entrance and exit a step rather than a climb. Fidel and company replaced the last camellos only very recently with new busses from China, but there still aren’t enough of them.

Taxis prowl the city—usually clean new Peugeots or Hyundais. But they cost too much, and they only accept CUC’s, the Cuban convertible currency which average people don’t use. Thus taxis are only for tourists.

Using the old 50’s style US cars that local mechanics have kept running for 50 years or more is a possibility for a Cuban with a long way to go. They all know a hand signal code to ask for rides from the jitney driver. Nora Garcia showed us how that works as she stepped into the street to flag down a 53 Buick for a ride out to the suburbs. Nora quickly negotiated a price for our ride out to and back from the National Zoo in the suburbs.

Some people think of these iconic relics as collector cars, but most are beyond restoration and in bad condition that would not interest collectors. This one growled with a broken muffler and had two wires sticking out of a hole in the dashboard where the radio used to be. To start the engine the driver touched the two wires together and the engine started. I saw a floor shift and asked the driver about it as Buick got rid of those more than a dozen years before this one was new. The driver told me the car had a Toyota truck chasis, engine, and transmission. The only part of the old Buick left was the shell of the car. Some of these old cars have been rebuilt with Toyota engines repeatedly.

There is a train in Cuba, and it can take you from Old Havana east to Cardenas and Matanzas. A few use the trains to commute, but two legs and shoe leather are the most common transportation.

Everywhere you go you see dogs in the streets. All are loose, and many are pets with homes, but a good number are strays with a bleak future. Old, sick, and dying dogs out in public are bad for the tourist business, and the government rounds them up using teams of prisoners and trucks. The strays are kept for a few days and then dispatched with strychnine—a very unpleasant way to die.

But, more about Cuba’s treatment of man’s best friend in a later chapter.

Les Inglis

Friday, July 9, 2010

Evolution

Evolution

In 2007 we began to plan a system of support for Aniplant’s regular weekend spay-neuter clinics. One of the first assumptions I needed to make was the average size of the animals to be neutered. I figured a good sized US cat might weigh over 10 pounds, and dogs at home surely average between 20 and 30 pounds. But I had already noticed that the average Cuban dog is nowhere near 20 pounds. More like 15 pounds, I thought, and we used that weight to estimate the amount of Ketamine we would need per animal for anesthesia.

In succeeding years it has become clear the average dog is even less than 15 pounds as each order of Ketamine seems to go farther than we planned. Why are Cuba’s dogs so much smaller than those in the US?

Well, my engineering training has given me a healthy respect for science, yet I’m ill-disposed to engage in the war of words between religion and science about how everything came to be. Still, I must say Cuba’s small dogs are the result of an evolutionary process. Now before any of you write to take issue with that idea, please hear me out.

Cuba was part of the abundant western world until January 1959, when Castro’s revolution took over. In 1959 with 71% of Cuban businesses owned by the US, Cuba then mirrored our own 20th century success. But very shortly after the
Castro takeover, a schism developed between the US and Cuban governments. These differences rapidly led to the nationalization of US-owned businesses in Cuba and soon also to Cuba’s gravitating into the communist sphere (the only other option).

From the beginning, Cuban people fell onto hard times. Getting enough to eat was a daily problem, not always suitably solved. Pet dogs and cats, used to eating scraps from the family table, began to know the pangs of hunger on a regular basis. You might say, well OK, but 50 years is a short time to see an evolutionary change. And I’d agree with you if we were talking about people, but among dogs and cats, 50 years can easily be 50 generations. For a human comparison, 50 generations is about 1000 years, and surely we’ve seen many evolutionary changes in people in the last 1000 years. For example, the average person’s height and weight have increased as food became more abundant. The lifespan has increased due to modern sanitation and, to a lesser extent, due to modern medicine.

So 50 generations of too little food to eat shows up first in dogs and cats as it has done in Cuba. No doubt John Scopes and Charles Darwin would embrace my evolutionary canine weight theory while William Jennings Bryan would castigate me roundly.

Another side to this discussion is the tameness and near-symbiotic relationship between humans and dogs. That too came from evolutionary selection, as the wolves who had less fear of humans came to live nearer them, ate their leftovers, and gradually took up joint endeavors like sheep herding, protecting homes, etc.

And when Peachy, my beautiful rescued Golden Doodle barks at strangers, I can sense traces of ancient wolves standing guard in my home, and I can thank the process of natural selection.

Les Inglis

Friday, July 2, 2010

Papa in Cuba

Papa in Cuba

For all the animosity that flows back and forth across the Florida Straits between the Cuban and US governments, the two nations celebrate one literary hero in common. That man was Ernest Hemingway. Papa Hemingway made his name in the US literary world, but, after a stint in Key West, he decided to make his home in Cuba, and landed there to stay in 1939 with Martha Gellhorn, his third wife. Martha, wanting roots in the area, soon began a search for a home to replace the hotel rooms they were using.

Finca Vegia is the home she found and talked Ernest into buying. It is situated on a high hill south of Havana, and from its front porch one can see the entire city of Havana and the sea beyond. Every tall building is identifiable in the hazy distance. Papa and Martha bought it, fixed it up, and lived there for the rest of his life. Ernest loved cats and dogs (some say cats more than dogs) and even established a little pet cemetery on the grounds. A half hour away is the village of Cojimar, where he kept his fishing yacht, Pilar.

Life at Finca Vegia was idyllic for them. They traveled; he fished; they received famous visitors; and they played in the Havana of the 40’s and 50’s, scene of tropical revelries and the city at their feet. Papa built a four story tower for an even better view of the city, and he fashioned a writing studio on the top floor. The first floor became a cattery for his many feline companions.

Today Finca Vegia (roughly “farm with a view”) is a Cuban national treasure and a first class museum. You can’t walk in the house, but you can walk all around it and peer into every window, all open for your photographic convenience. Fresh off a full restoration, the place is perfect and kept spotless with Ernest’s personal effects, like reading glasses and pens precisely placed on desks and tables, just as he left them. 9000 books strain shelves built in nearly every room. Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales is the museum director, and, with her friendly staff are prepared to answer nearly every question about the Hemingway years at the Finca. The museum offices are in the old garage where Papa’s 1947 Lincoln Continental convertible and his 1956 Chrysler New Yorker convertible used to sleep. (Ada Rosa told me last November that the museum had found and acquired the Chrysler, and had plans to restore it.) Today’s descendents of Papa’s animals range through the area.

On my first visit to the finca, Nora Garcia and I were walking up its long driveway. I had just given her a donation, and she said, “That’s great, now Aniplant can become guardian of the animals who live at the museum.” In later years she has kept that promise, and I’ve seen her bring flea treatments and inoculations to the dogs and cats on our return visits. Aniplant has even conducted a spay-neuter clinic in the nearby town of San Francisco de Paula.

Thinking about those little dogs and cats, I can’t help feeling a connection with Papa, his characters, and his life.

Les Inglis

Friday, June 25, 2010

One Man's Meat...

One Man’s Meat…

If there are two elements of Cuban society that work well, they are education and health systems. These systems intersect in the University where doctors for people and veterinarians for animals are trained. These professional workers deserve and receive the respect of the man in the street, but they are paid little better than any other workers. So the vets often operate a sideline offering medical care to pet dogs and cats.

A cow or a pig is a unit of production, and therefore it is considered the property of the state. In their regular jobs vets often care for farm animals, but your family’s dog or cat is of no interest to the state, only to his owners. Many of the medicines and supplies used by veterinarians for dogs and cats are scarce or nonexistent in Cuba—especially if they are packaged in the smaller doses made for dogs and cats. Products like flea and tick remedies, dog shampoos, and heartworm medicines are needed in Cuba, although they are abundant here.

In the US many of these meds have expiration dates, and it is illegal to use them after their expiration date. They often sit on a veterinarian’s shelf for months after their expiration dates and are then thrown away. In Cuba drugs have expiration dates too, and those dates are observed for humans, but not for dogs and cats. Sometimes a hospital will even donate outdated drugs to veterinarians.

We have been asking US vets to donate outdated pet meds to us for use in Cuba. We have collected significant quantities for Aniplant in Havana. Cuba allows each visitor to bring in 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of “health products,” and most travelers between Miami and Havana use this allowance to bring in soaps, shampoo, or toothpaste for relatives there. But on our trips we have each been carrying 10 kg of donated outdated vet meds and supplies.

Also notable among Cuban vets is a lack of pill-type medicines. When they have medicines, they are usually in injectable form. The outdated pills we bring in from the US are very welcome as they last longer, are easier to apply, and don’t require the use of sterile syringes.

Nora Garcia, the president of Aniplant, dispenses some vet services from her headquarters on Principe Street in Central Havana. But she knows countless other vets who work in her free weekend spay-neuter clinics. Nothing goes to waste in Cuba, and the extra outdated vet items she doesn’t use herself are traded to local vets for help in the clinics.

Cuban vets have become experts in which medicines last the longest after their expiration. One vet from Old Havana told me he had some old anesthesia drugs from the Cuban campaigns in Angola (in the 1990’s) that still worked.

Waste not, want not.

Les Inglis

Friday, June 18, 2010

Radio Days

Radio Days

A trip to Cuba is like traveling backwards in a time machine. We’ve all seen the old cars still plying the streets of Old Havana and Vedado. But less known, perhaps, is the prominence of radio in the country’s communications. It’s far more patronized and important than television.

Yes, your hotel room in Havana has a TV set, but it is hooked up to satellite receivers unavailable legally to the man in the street. In your hotel room you can even get CNN, but a Havana man depends upon Radio Progreso for most of his news and some of his entertainment. Radio Progreso, owned and operated by the Cuban government presents news, music, talk shows, soap operas, and educational programming. You can listen to it on 630 kilo Hertz in many parts of Florida.

One daily educational show is about farming, and twice a week Nora Garcia presents a program on caring for your dogs and cats. Her shows are popular and heeded by a population that loves their pets but can’t afford veterinarians or prepared dog food.

Nora deals on the radio with timely issues to help pet owners and their animals. For instance, last November we visited Radio Progreso, just around the corner from Havana’s beautiful Hotel Nacional. It was the height of the H1N1 swine flu scare, and a rumor had started that you could catch the deadly flu from your dog or cat. Nora put that rumor to rest in no uncertain terms in her Saturday morning talk. There is no way to measure how many animals were saved from being banished from their homes in a hysterical, rumor-driven wave of fear, but Nora’s voice for the animals is known and respected, and reason prevailed in Cuba as swine flu season passed.

Radio Progreso has a big neon sign (probably straight out of the 1940’s) on its old building, and I had seen it several times before we arranged to watch Nora’s show. On arrival, we had to be admitted by the station manager, who turned out to be a genial host. But, as we entered, we had one more reminder of the old-timey Cuban environment. He apologized, telling us we’d have to use the stairs to the 4th floor studio as the elevator was on the fritz.

It was worth the climb to see another aspect of the tough fight Nora and Aniplant wage to protect animals in Cuba. a fight I’m proud to be a small part of.

Les Inglis

Friday, June 11, 2010

Making Ends Meet

Making Ends Meet

Cuba fought three wars for independence from Spain, a colonial power. Finally, with the help of the US, it gained independence in 1902. There followed a succession of Presidents, good and bad, with some really being dictators. Fulgencio Batista, who preceded Fidel Castro in power, was a former President who came back to power as a dictator. In the 1950’s he ran a country that had sold out to the American Mafia, and Cuba became a land of casinos, revelry, and mob influence. Many Cubans made a good living in those days, but those days have been gone for a long time in today’s Cuba.

Fidel Castro came to power on January 1, 1959, and he was welcomed by many, but not by the mobsters who ran the casinos. They were soon sent packing and the casinos closed down. Fidel got off to a rocky start that soon left him estranged with Americans (who owned 71% of Cuban businesses). After a series of nationalizations of US owned businesses, Cuba found itself an outcast in the western world. The only supporter Fidel could find was the Soviet Union.

Economically things went from bad to worse as the sugar industry (Cuba’s largest) steeply declined and a US embargo took hold. In a short time, “el comunismo” reigned in the “Pearl of the Antilles,” formerly the greatest colonial prize of Spain’s empire. Bad times prevailed, everyone pretended to work for the government, and the government pretended to pay them with shrinking pesos. Flash forward 50 years of struggle and you find the Cuba of today—where the average wage owner gets perhaps $20.00 a month and small rations of food staples. Nearly everyone cultivates a sideline to earn a little extra. The only exceptions are high political offices and those who run branches of foreign businesses in Cuba.

For Cuban companion animals this tight money problem is worse than it is for the people. Pets get leftovers to eat, or, if they’re lucky, slaughterhouse waste products (even chicken heads) cooked down with rice as a filler. Only the few rich can afford veterinary care unless they are connected with a moonlighting vet who might work evenings in his basement or garage. Yes, even professionals like veterinarians work a sideline for a little extra money. The average vet earns perhaps $250 a year in his government job. Surgery, when needed for dogs and cats is very rare, and the animals are expected to survive as best they can.

Jose, a veterinarian approaching retirement age, practices in Old Havana. To find his office, look in an empty lot walled off from the street with a rusted sheet metal fence. There’s a hole in the sheet metal, and if you duck down you can enter the yard. On one side, a concrete block lean-to like structure with a corrugated iron roof is Jose’s office. Inside are a few chairs, an old stainless steel table, a sterilizer, and a few shelves fixed to the walls. A few bottles of pills are on the shelves, and Jose shows me a cardboard box with vials of injectable meds he has scrounged from hospitals. They’re all out of date, but he rushes to tell me most still work. He even found medicines made for the Cuban campaign in Angola (in the ‘90’s) which still work as anesthesia.

Jose is a skilled vet with a good education (education still works well in Cuba), but with little support for supplies. But local people in his neighborhood love their pets and bring them to the shed to try to help them when they are sick. Jose is a regular at Aniplant’s weekend spay-neuter clinics as well. Cuban animals don’t have much going for them, but at least they have Jose.

Les Inglis

Friday, June 4, 2010

Family Walks miles for Their Pet

In Cuba, the government uses prisoners to range through the ciities in trucks to pick up stray dogs. Those poor souls are caged in a facility 15 miles west of Central Havana for 10 days without food but with water. On the 10th day they get a meal laced with strychnine. Adults and puppies, males and females, they lie on the cement cage floors for up to a few hours enduring an indescribable agony. Finally their bodies are relegated to a dump.

This ridding the streets of strays is done in the name of tourism, as the spectacle of straving animals wandering, fighting, or even languishing is bad for tourism, Cuba’s biggest source of hard currency. It doesn’t matter that the zoonosis center where they are killed is staffed with technicians trained to give IV injections—there is no budget for humane injectable drugs. It doesn’t matter the staff hates their work and would love to use IV injections—there’s no budget for anything but strychnine.

And how do the prisoner crews tell owned dogs from strays? Not very well apparently, as Cuban city dwellers usually have no yards, and their dogs are let out into the street to relieve themselves. Collars and tags are rare, and many family pets have been taken away in these stray sweeps. To atone for this, the families are permitted to go to the center and find their pet and take him home during the 10 day impoundment.

On my first trip to Arroyo, the zoonosis center, I remarked on how far it was from the town center as we rode in a cab. I thought it would be hard for a Cuban family to go to Arroyo to look for their pet, since most people don’t have cars. While we talked with the staff, a man, a woman, and a little boy appeared at the entrance at the top of the hill. After a brief conversation at the gate, they were allowed to walk through the long rows of cages until the boy screamed the name of his dog. Yes, against the odds, their long walk had paid off, and they found their dog. A while later, after filling out forms, they started the trek back home, this time leading the dog on a leash.

Nora Garcia, as President of Aniplant, is negotiating with the government to replace the strychnine with injections. If it happens, the change to humane euthanasia will use humane euthanasia medicines furnished by Aniplant, but it will be worthwhile to the 2000 dogs a year being sacrificed to tourism.

Les Inglis

Friday, May 28, 2010

Crossing the Street

When you see a dog out with his owner in the US, the dog is usually on a leash. I’ve always admired dog guardians who have such good control over their animals that they don’t need a leash, but I haven’t been that good at training mine. In Cuba leashes are rare, and yet dogs are numerous. I watched a family of three crossing a busy street near my hotel with their dog following them and, of course, no leash. I held my breath for the dog’s safety as they crossed the street, but he stayed right with his family, and he avoided any problems with cars.

Well, that’s OK for a family’s companion animal, but what about strays, you might ask. It turns out that strays still learn to get around on the streets without having families to follow. Three years ago when we rescued Aló Presidente on the streets of Vedado, he got our attention by following us. We were walking down the main artery of Vedado, a street with a wide parkway named Avenue of the Presidents. As we moved along, we crossed the side streets that that didn’t seem too dangerous. Aló followed us without hesitation. As we neared our hotel, we waited at the curb to cross to the wide parkway in the middle of the street. Aló stood near us and waited as if he had been our dog forever.

Finally the traffic stopped, and we stepped off to cross the crowded lanes. Aló didn’t look at the cars, he looked at us! He was still not quite fully grown, but he had already assimilated a critical survival rule for life in the city: If the humans feel it is safe to cross and start off, then it’s safe for a dog.

In Havana there are many more dogs on the streets than here in the US. Most dogs, owned or strays, quickly learn to trust people on crossing streets. I had an airline pilot friend who used to say, “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. The same saying can be applied to city dogs, and the dogs running loose on Havana’s streets are living proof.

No other species exists in the world today that is so connected to human beings. It’s far more than a mutual admiration society—there are countless examples of how humankind and dogs serve and depend upon each other.

Les Inglis

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The Havana Airport

On my first trip to Cuba, we arrived on time at the old terminal of Havana’s Jose Martí airport. That’s the one reserved for flights to and from the US. Havana has a modern airport terminal with jet ways and all the trimmings, but the old terminal for US flights is just one more little battle in the 50 year-old war of ideas between the Cuban and American governments. Christina and I were to be met by Thelma and taken to our hotel.

Well, we waited over an hour in a public area outside the terminal, and we never seemed to find Thelma. I made a pest of myself asking each woman if she was Thelma. Most of the time we just sat and watched the taxis come and go. I saw a skinny little dog walking in the street by the curb, and he looked pretty bad. He tried to scale the curb, and I could see he was pretty weak. Starvation, I thought, and I looked for something he could eat.

But all I saw was a candy stand, and it was surrounded by a bunch of people waiting for the lone clerk to help them. I waited in line for a while, and the little dog moved away until I couldn’t see him any more. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, I thought, and I rejoined Christina looking for Thelma. Eventually we got a taxi and linked up with Thelma later. Also, eventually I learned the likely reason the little dog was there.

Every year 200,000 Cubans win a lottery run by the US Interests Section (a sort of embassy in Havana), and they get permission to emigrate to the US. They have to leave their possessions in the hands of the Cuban government, give up claims to their property, and show up at the airport with no more than they can carry or wear. It’s a tough price to pay to move to the US, but thousands have done it. It’s an even tougher price to pay for their pet animals, who can’t go with their families.

If the family can’t find a new home for their dog or cat, they may take it out to the airport to keep it to the last minute. Then the dog or cat is set free at the airport to face a very uncertain future. It’s cruel, it’s thoughtless, and it’s a big betrayal, but the number of strays that can be seen at the airport testify to two contrasting futures—that of the family, bright and hopeful about a new life in the US, and their pet’s facing loneliness, unfamiliar surroundings, strangers, and nothing to eat.

Nora Garcia, the President of Aniplant, Havana’s animal protection organization, militates against this thoughtlessness in her two weekly radio programs and one on television. People in Cuba often love their animals, and Nora’s public education about humane treatment has helped reduce the number of airport dogs, but it has not solved the problem. After all, she’s trying to instill a new ethic toward animals in an old and established culture.

Les Inglis