The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach (7 page)

She whimpered and barked at me, then ran toward the main road. I dropped everything and followed her.

On the edge of the road, a man was clearing the undergrowth with a backhoe. For the last few days, I'd seen a work crew widening the road to the beach. The jungle had closed in, scratching and damaging vehicles that dared to venture down it.

Peggy darted past the workers and started digging frantically at the overturned soil. It took a split second before I understood what was happening and yelled, “Stop!” I barreled past the backhoe and joined Peggy, desperately scrabbling at the dirt, trying to unearth her litter. When the workers realized what had happened, they too began digging with bare hands and shovels. The first pup uncovered had a crushed skull. The next three were gasping for air, but okay. One was yelping in pain from an obvious compound fracture of his leg. The last one had been buried too long. I turned to look at the men. They stood quietly, heads down, tears visible.

I needed help, so I fired off a call to Sandra, but it went to voice mail. A short while later, she arrived and helped me find a safe place for Peggy and her surviving puppies. After we moved her brood, Peggy looked exhausted and desperate, so we let her rest.

Unfortunately, it was Pam's birthday. I called her while she was at work to explain what had happened with Peggy. I asked her if she would come to the beach after work, but she said she couldn't. Even though Pam spent almost every weekend helping me with the dogs, birthdays were sacred for her. Plus, sometimes the events at the beach were too depressing for her to face.

I stayed at the beach until five o'clock, stealing every last moment to fuss over Peggy and her pups until I had to go home and shower before Pam arrived. My heart was heavy and I just wasn't into celebrating. When I reached the house, I drank an overpoured shot of scotch to take the edge off my shattered nerves before getting into the shower in hopes of washing away my day.

I took Pam out to dinner at a French restaurant in Palmas del Mar. I tried not to talk about Peggy, but that left me without words. I'm typically a man who has a lot to say, so it was obvious I was struggling. I felt sad that, once again, Pam and her needs were being pushed to the back burner. I hated myself for doing it.

After hearing about Peggy that afternoon, Pam had spontaneously booked a trip for the two of us to Saint Thomas, leaving Puerto Rico the day after Christmas. During the course of our marriage, it had often been like pulling teeth to get her to try my extreme sports, so she thought it would be a great surprise for me to get our open water certification in scuba diving. Normally I would have jumped at the opportunity, but after three months of living in Puerto Rico, I'd started to lose interest in things that used to be at the center of my life.

“C'mon, we'll get certified, spend some time together, just you and me.”

“Who's going to watch the dogs?”

“You can't be responsible for them every minute of every day, Steve. We need to get out of here, away from all this, recharge our batteries.”

She was right. I needed to learn how to compartmentalize the events at the beach. The dogs were clearly beginning to take over my life and affect Pam's.

I finally relented.

Early the next morning, Pam joined me at the beach. Peggy quietly greeted us; she seemed understandably worried and sad. She sighed as she soaked in our comforting caresses. I distracted her while Pam carefully extracted the injured puppy from her litter. She held him in a soft towel and, along with Sandra, we drove to a nearby horse farmer Sandra knew, hoping to get the pup some medical attention.

When we arrived, Sandra explained to the farmer in Spanish what had happened.

The farmer peeked inside the towel and shook his head, his expression grim.

Sandra pleaded.

The farmer finally gave in. He reset the shattered bone as best he could, then stitched up the gash in the pup's skin where the bone had torn through. Although we tried our best to comfort the little dog, he whimpered and yelped in pain. Pam and I cried because we knew this wasn't a real fix. The puppy's bone was still severely broken, and there was nothing we could do about that. And although the care we gave would prolong his life, I knew it wasn't going to save him, and that broke my heart.

Back at the beach, Peggy sniffed at her sleeping pup's leg, then calmly allowed us to nestle the puppy against her chest. A few days earlier Peggy wouldn't come near us, but now she leaned her muzzle toward our hands so we could cuddle her face. I believe she knew we were trying to help her.

Later that day, Pam's growing concerns about my health were vindicated. I came down with a serious case of shingles that covered my back and left side. When I visited the doctor at Palmas del Mar, she exclaimed as soon as she met me, “You're the guy from the beach with the dogs.” It seemed I was gaining a reputation. She noted that shingles are often sparked by “extreme emotional stress.”

Just like mange in dogs, I thought.

I was not going to let it interfere with our trip, partly because of my commitment to Pam but also because I obviously needed to relieve my stress. We headed to Saint Thomas for our diving lessons on December 26. As the small plane took off from San Juan and headed over the eastern side of the island, I felt like a neglectful father leaving his children in need. I didn't talk the entire flight.

The first few days, I was too embarrassed about the hideous rash covering my body to let go and enjoy myself. Even on vacation, I felt like a leper.

But by the end of the week, I started to feel like my old self.

“Hey, Pammie, why don't we come back here every month? It's not far. We could totally do this!”

But when we got back to our lives in Puerto Rico, I resumed sliding downhill.

Since the event with her puppies, Peggy never let me out of her sight. She followed me around the beach while I did my rounds. She needed to know where I was all the time. She proudly showed me her puppies every day, allowing me to pick them up and enjoy them with her. She savored my contact, always breathing a sigh of relief at my touch.

But, as with so many of these dogs' stories, our interventions only went so far. A few months after we rescued Peggy's litter, Peggy wandered away from the pack and me during the morning feeding. Suddenly I heard a screech of car tires on the road. I was filled with dread. I ran toward the sound and found Peggy lying limp on the side of the road. I would bury another friend that day.

I
still ran into Carlos and Dominga, the old fisherman and his wife, from time to time, and they never failed to warn me to be careful. But one morning, their tone was different.

“There are men looking for you, asking a lot of questions: when you come to the beach, where you park, if you're alone.”

“Really? What else do they say?” I asked the couple.

They shook their heads in unison. “We don't want to get involved, Stephen. It's not safe.” I knew they were concerned for my safety, but fearful about their own as well, so I didn't push the issue.

“Thank you for warning me,” I said. “It'll be okay, I promise.”

“Keep your eyes open,
mi hijo
. The men driving Yabucoa municipal cars and the pickup trucks from the refinery up the road are asking about you. So are the people from the hotel down the other end of the beach. You gotta watch your back.”

Dominga gave me a hug and Carlos offered a steely handshake before they walked off to fish for their food for the week.

I walked the beach with my pack, my thoughts consumed with what they'd told me. For the past few weeks, I'd had a bad feeling I was being watched. Now my suspicions were confirmed. It was reassuring to know I hadn't become totally paranoid, but this meant that there were in fact strange men tracking my movements. Quite frankly, I think I'd have preferred paranoia.

Heeding the warning—in my own way—I started carrying a billy club and a machete on my belt when I went to the beach. I was worried not just about myself, but about what this meant for my dogs. At least I had a better idea who was watching now.

Or I thought I did.

The area of the beach where I spent my days with the dogs may have been remote, but Playa Lucia is also home to a couple of resort hotels. One day I wandered off my stretch of sand toward the hotels, looking for a few of the dogs that had gone missing a few days before. As I poked around, three hotel employees wielding machetes approached me.

They said something to me in Spanish, and I made out a few phrases: “You're on private property, man. . . . You need to leave.”

Taking the nice-guy approach, I responded, in English, “No worries, bro. I've just gotta find my dogs and I'll be on my way.” I smiled and gave them a polite wave.

Then they shouted something at me. I had no idea what the words meant, but given the irate tone of their voices, confrontational body language, and raised machetes, I was pretty sure they weren't offering to buy me a drink at the poolside bar.

I've always believed you shouldn't escalate a situation by drawing a weapon except when you plan to use it, but I was quickly formulating a plan of attack if things went bad. It was one machete against three.

With my hands in front of me, palms facing them to communicate that I wasn't a threat, I asked politely, “Do any of you speak English?”

“A little,” one of the men said.

“I don't want any trouble, man. I'm just taking care of some sick dogs over at the old boathouse a mile up the beach, and a couple of them wandered off.”

The man's expression softened. He turned to the others and translated what I said. They lowered their machetes.

“Have you seen my dogs?”

The English speaker nodded. “Dead.” He pointed to an area at the edge of the jungle with his leathery hand. “Over there.”

I knew not to ask who did it, or how. The uncomfortable expressions on their faces said it all.

The men were looking over their shoulders, as though they feared getting in trouble for talking to me.

“A local hotel is trying to make the beach more beautiful for visitors. They told us to kill any stray dog on the beach and stop anyone from feeding them.” He paused. “Including you.”

“Really? The hotel owners know about me?”

“They want you to stay away. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

He didn't answer. He wasn't trying to threaten me as he had at the start of the confrontation. And while I appreciated that they were cutting me some slack, I also knew they meant business and I needed to be more careful about venturing to this part of the beach.

“Can I please get the dogs so I can give them a proper burial?”

They looked anxious and talked among themselves for a minute.

“Make it fast.”

When I returned with my truck twenty minutes later, the men were waiting next to the dogs. The smell of decay coming off the corpses was sickening. They'd covered their noses with their bandannas to ward off the stench. Sadly, I had become accustomed to it.

The men watched as I struggled to roll the dogs into the sheets I'd brought and put them in the plastic storage bins in the back of my truck. It was the only sanitary way to transport them. After I'd moved a couple of the dogs on my own, the men stepped in to help.

“Thank you,” I said to them. I felt a little light-headed. It was a bit surreal to express gratitude to the very men who had committed such a violent act.

As I got in the truck to leave, I glanced back at the sanitation men. They were all staring at their feet. I had a feeling—or perhaps just a hope—that this was because they felt ashamed.

I
n the weeks that followed, more and more dogs disappeared from the beach. I started slowly driving the entire length of the long road to the beach, combing for remains. The stench of death along that route became overwhelming. I started finding dead dogs stuffed into plastic bags, crammed into five-gallon pails, and thrown into the ditch on the side of the road. Some appeared to have been poisoned, others beaten to death.

The attacks were escalating—in frequency and brutality. I couldn't continue to just clean up the mess without doing anything about it. It was time for another visit to the police station to see if I could finally persuade the authorities to step in.

“Local hotel owners are killing the dogs,” I told the desk sergeant.

“How do you know?”

I didn't want to tell them about my encounter with the men on the beach a few days earlier. Nor did I want to rat out the fishermen who'd also told me the hotels were poisoning the dogs. It didn't matter anyway. The policeman behind the counter seemed pissed off that I was bothering him with such trivial matters.

Afterward, I decided to go over their heads: to the mayor's office. But even there, I got the same response: nothing.

So I continued to care for the survivors and newcomers to the pack—or, as I started calling it, perhaps a sign of my increasing preoccupation and obsession, “my pack.” One day a young male German shepherd showed up. Not yet fully grown, he had the bravado of a teenager. He tried to mount all the females in my pack and challenge the already-established alpha males. I had to break up a few near battles before they escalated into something more serious that could result in injury.

Despite the troublemaking, it was obvious that this newcomer, whom I named Kyle, wanted to please me and that he had a lot of potential to be a great dog. Kyle had no food aggression, and even his roughhousing with the other males showed no killer tendencies. He was just trying in his clumsy young way to establish himself in the pack. When he wasn't causing mischief with the other dogs, he followed me around like he was glued to my knee. He just wanted to be near me all the time.

One morning while doing my rounds, I knelt down to pet some puppies while Kyle rubbed his face and shoulder against my side and nuzzled my face with his nose. It was a little obnoxious, but I ignored him as I focused on the little ones.