The Life of Pigs and Dogs

It was made clear to me yesterday just how desensitized I am becoming as a result of being in Paraguay 6 months. Yesterday I was having a lovely, lazy Sunday in my casita (my little house) all day. Another volunteer, Bee (sarah but i call her bee because she is a beekeeper and there are so many sarahs in the peace corps) was visiting me for the weekend and we were having a great time making breakfast, playing guitar, drinking terere and doing other things that entertain us in Paraguay such as admire my bannnana trees and compost pile when two things happened that made me think how much I had adapted to life here.

First, my family´s dog walked by my yard and was limping pretty badly. When Bee asked why it was limping I said "i don´t know, i think they said it broke it´s leg but I think it´s just sprained" I said it so matter of factly, and though we did sit for a few moments in silence letting out heavy sighs of sympathy and frustration we both just accepted the situation. This family was not going to do anything about the break/sprain and the dog would just have to limp for the rest of it´s life and heal on his own. There are veternarians in town but no average Paraguayan family can really afford to treat their sick animals. Most Paraguayans are struggling to feed their children and themselves. Dogs here are seen as things that provide protection from tresspassers, not as family members. They eat scraps from the table and whatever they can find, they aren´t fed dog food. This is why 97% of the dogs I see are so skinny you can see their ribs and hip bones poking out. My family´s dog is skinny but well fed. Most dogs, even if they are eating a lot have parasites that are causing them to be malnurished.With parasites you will never be well fed because your worms are eating all your food.

Dogs are everywhere, wandering the streets and though i want to save them all, i would go insane if I tried or if i constantly thought about how sad their lives are here. They are not petted, not loved and played with and therefore their personalities are so much different than dogs in the states. They have no personalities, they are shadows of what a dog should be. They cower in your presence because they´ve been kicked so much, they can be very aggresive for no reason, they are just more.....wild. Think dogs in the pound......times 3. Don´t get me wrong, some Paraguayans do treat their dogs really well and similar to we do in the states, and even if they treat them the way i was just describing there is a bond between the dog and the families, it´s the only connection they´ve ever known. If i blamed Paraguayans for the way they treat animals I would go insane from this as well and would be incredibly unhappy living with these people. That´s story 1.

Story 2 begins a few hours later when the pig screaming started. I am so used to pig screaming now, because well, my family and many families around my neighborhood raise pigs. Though my eyes got big and I stopped mid-sentence and had a very squeemish look on my face I calmly asked her, "do you think they are killing it or selling it?" (When a pig is killed, 3 men usually hold it down while one stabs it in the throat/chest area. The screams are horrible but eventually they end, because well..... the pig dies. When they sell a pig, the pig is held down by 3 men and it´s legs are tied together and it thrown into the back of an ox-drawn cart and hauled off to a family that will most likely kill it that day or soon after for someone´s b-day dinner or other special occasion. The screaming when they sell it is almost worst because it never stops until the cart is far enough away you can´t hear it anymore. ) So....Bee being the stronger one says "do you want me to go look and tell you?" I said I did so she went outside and for a moment had a puzzled look on her face and i kept asking her "what, what?" She finally said "they are castrating it". There were 3 men holding it down and she couldn´t figure out why the man with the knife was at the other end of the pig. I know now what is worst than selling, or killing.....chopping the poor pig´s balls off with a kitchen knife!

The entire day the poor pig looked miserable and the blood running down it´s legs broke my heart but at the same time I totally accepted the situation. In order for the pig to be able to roam free and come and go to the house as he pleases for the next year he needs to not be tempted to go off looking for ladies. He needs to know this is his home and feel loyal to it instead of his hormones. I debated slipping the pig some pain relivers but decided against it. I can´t always be the crazy white girl doing weird things. I am already made fun of for trying to save puppies and for crying when they die. (i had two month old puppies that both died last week)

Nope, no crazy, out of the norm behavior for me. I will never like it, I will never agree with it and it will always be sad to me but it´s dawned on me that it´s not affecting me as much as it did 6 months ago. I am hardening up a little bit, more than i thought my vegetarian, animal-loving soul ever could to situations like this. I really am worried about what I will be like in 2 years, I mean, what will I be used to 21 months down the road?? I see it in other volunteers when i hear stories about volunteers actually being the one to kill the pigs or twist the necks of the chickens just to experience the culture and integrate more! Americans in my opinion shouldn´t try that, since most stories end with "yeah....i kept twisting it´s neck but i was doing it so slow, it wouldn´t break and finally my host mom and to grab it out of my hand and finish!" Or worse stories like my friend Chris who tried to kill a pig for the going away party of another pig and he kept stabbing it but wasn´t reaching the heart (since there is no easy way to reach a pib heart) and so the poor thing kept gurgling and gurgling till it´s slow death came to an end. The stories are great to tell I suppose but for Pete´s sake people, we don´t know how to kill pigs, most of us grew up in cities and we buy our meat pre packaged in the grocery store! That will never be me since I won´t even eat the damn things!!

I´m going to try to get another puppy, hopefully one a little older and I´ll try motherhood again. I will treat my dog like gold and being an example that it can be another way and a dog can learn tricks and be trained and fat and happy is the only thing i can do to cause change in a very small, unoticable way. And of course my diet has always been my peace of mind about the way animals are treated both here and at home. I may be becoming more and more savage and immune but I still have a concious......

Time to end this blog now and get home for lunch....i think we´re having pig balls....