Luna, our moon dog

July started very sad. With tears in our eyes we saw how our little black dog Tronco fought against his illness. 

June was a very cold month, it rained a lot and the vet was very incompetent.

I sat in the kitchen with the ill dog in his box and he blinked his eye three times. It looked like he was saying that very soon he would not be with us anymore, a goodbye.

The next morning at 6 AM our little friend passed away. My wife and I, we were crying a lot. I dug a hole in the garden near the (to become) lemon tree and there we buried him, along with some of his toys.

During the following days, I felt bad as h*ll and couldn´t stop the tears rolling down my eyes. Then on the 4^th of July, auntie Teresa called and she said to my wife: Look, I can offer you this little rebel dog for free, come over to my neighborhood.

Her neighbor came with the dog that looks a bit like a Jack Russel, but it must be a blend of several species.
We brought the dog to Miltons house where she played with Choco, a big dog (also adopted).  Since the dog had no name, we decided to call her Luna.

At home we gave Luna a small green plastic baby bath tub where she slept in. Soon we found out that she was incredibly hungry. Yina prepared a nice soup, and Luna finished it almost instantly.

Yina has a friend in the outskirts of Santa Cruz, her name is Bea. She invited us to come on a Saturday to have lunch.  Obviously, Luna had to come. She liked to travel in those really small micro buses and she ran around in the garden. Luna is very fond of children. Liz, one of the kids in our quarter always calls her the “perrito cariñosito”  

Luna is happy to play with anything, especially balls and ropes. When you take the ball away from her she does protest, but she will not bite you. In the patio I dumped a load of sand for her to dig in. When the sand got flushed away by the wind and the rain, she decided to move on and dig holes in the garden.

Very soon, Luna found friends, the dogs from the garage who come over to visit her, they run and jump in the garden and they bite her while she bites back. Luna has a lot of energy to spend and after some time, the other dogs are tired and walk to the fence so that we can let them out. In case we leave the fence open, Luna escapes immediately to visit her boyfriends.

In the meantime, she got bigger and did not fit in the green tub anymore. Yina bought her a new larger red tub. One of the issues is that Luna never has enough on her plate. When we are having dinner, she tries to manipulate us to give her small snacks of meat, bread or veggies.

Luckily for Luna, we found a good vet in the village. She went already too many times to know what is going on there, and when we go there we need to carry her inside.

Luna knows how to give you her left and right foot, but sometimes she is just lazy and she will not give you her foot. In the evening when I come home she always comes running to me, she jumps on my leg, gives her foot and then we go inside where she is anxiously checking on Yina preparing dinner.

When you wake up in the morning, she is already being dramatic to enter the house and our room. So I wake up, I open the door, Luna rushes in and inexpectedly jumps on the bed!
The owners of the convenience store near us have a dog too. As soon as there is no more milk, the essential breakfast for Luna, we go to the store and while we buy, she plays with her friend, whose name we do not know.
Luna loves to take her (long) naps at any time: in the morning, in the afternoon and evening. The easiest way to wake her up is to make some noise with a pack of cookies, she will wake up immediately.

Another curious thing, or maybe it is just dogs nature, is that she is an excellent hunter. In the beginning we saw that she killed a small lizard (there are lots of them here in tropical Bolivia) in less than 5 minutes. This behaviour takes place every once in a while. Luna also likes to catch ants, butterflies, mosquitos, etc.

Our dog loves to bark, especially during the night. It´s like she is having some kind of meeting with the other dogs. When an ambulance comes with high speed and sirens over the “7” (the old road from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba, always crowded and between la Guardia and Santa Cruz it is in a terrible state, however the ABC is not willing to fix this while on TV you see their propaganda of new “highways” throughout the country”)  Luna sits near the door and howls like a little wolf.

We are very fond of our little moon dog!