one of the first things you notice when you go to a small town in mexico are the dogs
you see them on the streets you see them on the beaches sometimes playing with the waves
sometimes just looking for some place to stay cool from the hot sun and if you're like most of us
you might give them a quick pat on the back if you're eating you might give them a little
scrap from your table but that's as far as most people go today's story is about
someone who went quite a bit further not only did she care for one of these dogs she actually
dedicated her life to helping the dogs of a community in mexico
i started with one dog okay this is annette originally from germany she's been living
in mexico since 2005. that was the one dog's name kanji can't she she was um
my number one dog i got from tepozlan almost 16 years ago she died three months ago
and through that whole process she was with me and she was the driving force behind it all without
her i would have never stayed in mexico and i would have certainly never done anything like that
she's a responsible person behind it all i'm the one who carries out the work but
she was the one who literally pushed me into this position she was just a traveler
but while she was traveling she came across a stray dog in another town called te pozlan
and she adopted that dog because i wasn't i wasn't going to leave her in mexico
i rescued her i tried to find a good home couldn't really find a good home for her where
i was looking and i was like okay you're mine then i have to take responsibility we came here
she was traumatized after 12 hours on a bus ride um in a tiny little cage in with the luggage
and so when we arrived in puerto i was like okay this is i'm not gonna do this to you again like
she was traumatized thought she was dead it's 12 hours in a hot bus underneath with the luggage
i didn't know that that was going to happen you see if i knew that i would have not done that
but when we when we got to um puerto ni the guy opened the side of the bus and i saw her and then
i was like this is it we are not going to ever go on another bus ride like this ever in our
lives and we we're going to fly out of here or we're not going to leave wow and we never left
so it turned out to be okay and pretty soon that big heart of the nets turned one dog into two
into three into four she was taking care of the dogs she came across because mexico is number one
country in all of latin america for abandonment and abuse of animals so basically there are a lot
of dogs and cats and animals in in bad situations and very few people don't take care of them
there are people that are concerned but really not doing much the government has what we call
pereiras where you check your dog if you don't want it anymore and they kill it within 72 hours
if no one else adopts it shelters like we where we rescue the dogs sick dogs and bring them in and
save them and make them healthy and get them ready for adoption
not very many like i started here in 13 more than 13 years ago and i was the only one in oaxaca
okay not only puerto rican viewers only one in oaxaca oh my god yeah 13 and a half years
ago there was no association that rescued animals in oaxaca over time she had so many
dogs that she needed a place to take care of them she needed a property and i don't
know the exact story of where that property came from uh i think someone helped donate the land
but she basically built this world for dogs bit by bit expanding it as more animals came
today there's over 100 dogs being taken care of put water in the back
must go through a lot of dog food uh 26 kilos a day a day and then extra the puppy's extra yeah
so we have bags we get eight bags a week because we're eight bags a
week somebody delivers those yeah yeah yeah just the weight alone must be a challenging
yeah it's 26 kilos yeah yeah how much does that run in pesos do you know yeah 550 550
yeah is there any like discount for an operation like yours i think they give me a
better price than to the public but no like maybe 10 pesos 20 pesos max oh okay like nothing major
what time do you start your day one o'clock four o'clock in the morning what time do you finish
never at the moment i don't finish because i have an old dog that lets me all night he
wakes me up literally every half an hour so um i don't sleep i haven't slept in four nights
this is a 24 7 job i live here i mean i literally don't leave here the only way i get to go out is
when i go to the vet or i go to the vet that's basically i don't even go shopping anymore i
have my volunteers going shopping for me because i don't even get time for that anymore you know
so now i need someone to invent a purpose for dog food so i can become rich you see
i'm waiting i'm waiting for a smart person to wake up and say i have the solution
what to do maybe fuel maybe glue maybe building material who knows
i just want to become rich now yeah maybe the curator covet is right there we could try
so i i don't i mean correct to me means nothing because i've already lived in quarantine you know
for all the like the outside world really really has changed so much i would not feel comfortable
to go out anymore literally imagine imagine like people with cell phones glued to their friend
face when i heard about this first like six or seven years ago i i said to my friend you're
kidding me she goes no everyone walks around with their cell phone in front of their face i was like
like no she goes yeah so i had to go how many years ago now three years ago two years ago i
had to go to mexico city for one day the first time out of puerto rico in many many many years
and i see all these people walking around with their cell phone in front of their faces i'm like
this is a joke right this is like a movie this is like a sci-fi movie you know i'm
not out there anymore i'm like you know i i know things like they were 16 years ago and since then
whatever has changed in 16 years i'm not really familiar with like all this technology stuff
oh he's over there do you have a horse does the horse have a name tornado
tornado like tornado oh tornado but it's the mexican version not tornado but tornado
and how does one come across a rescue horse um by finding the horse tied up
outside the dog shelter the old one with four others and the owner not taking care of it
and i took care of all five horses for eight months and they're all skin and vine and
so yeah i started giving them water i started moving them from the sun into the shade and
back out to grace and after eight months the owner showed up in december and wanted to take them away
to take them for the tourist horse rides in sikatella and i said nah this one is mine he won't
get him back and so he said okay i'll sell him to you tornado sometimes he comes running tornado
wait wait just
how can people help are you always looking for more volunteers can they help financially can
they help by taking some dogs and finding homes like what do you need the most
everything equal yeah so like donation money support because we constantly help new dogs yeah
today i get a phone call at 8 30 in the morning got run over no one wants to make themselves
responsible supposedly it's a street job if i don't go or if i don't send someone to help the
dog the dog will stay there and possibly die okay so i sent a friend of mine a volunteer of mine
she went with her friend and they picked up the dog took her to the vet
luckily about two hours ago got a phone call and it was the owner of the dog he'd been looking
for his dog it escaped from another bed and he'd been looking for it all night and all morning so
this has had a good ending but last week we got another dog also run over and she's gonna
come here tomorrow maybe she's ready to leave the van so she was run over we took her again
we got her to get to the vet they did whatever they needed to do and today i got the all clear
she needs to go and i need to find her either a foster place or bring you here so i'm fostering i
need people responsible reliable long-term yeah volunteers all the time but committed people
people that actually enjoy being here that want to learn because i love teaching people i love
teaching people about dogs i've learned everything firsthand experience i didn't study anything about
it i didn't read any books about it i learned all this first hand over after one and a half years
shannon was saying that when it comes to people actually adopting dogs you don't just give it
to anyone who might say they want a dog it's it's a bit of a process like i'm probably the
strictest person on the planet when it comes to adoption there are two reasons for this number
one i give my life to save these animals my time my money all the energy all the love
all the space i have so when they leave here they need to go to a place that's much better than this
and it's not very easy to find because i spent 24 7 with them no not today five high five
not in the mood
i look at them and i don't feel sad because most people say i don't want to come and see
you have a completely different picture you come here it's completely different you actually don't
see yourself here at all seriously they're all happy you don't see them covering in the
corner you don't see them you don't see any stupid behavior because they're traumatized
they will get exercise they get food twice a day they get the best preventative medicine
they get medical attention when they need it the only thing that's missing is a swimming pool
i think then we would be upgraded to five stars so if anyone wants to donate a swimming pool
so we can put five star hotel for dogs here yeah
see you tomorrow
and despite all this work are you happy do you enjoy your life here good question i think on
a good day i do um i'm surrounded by nature i'm surrounded by dogs i'm surrounded by only
nice people only good people come here no one else will bother certainly not connected to anything to
money or i just living in nature with nature with animals has always been my dream so i think now
knowing what's happening on the outside world i consider myself the luckiest person on this planet
you