Cochabamba Goes to the Dogs – and the Cats

It is a big weekend in Bolivia. Yesterday was Father’s Day here (I am the proud new owner of a blue t-shirt emblazoned with my two year old daughter’s hand prints). Today is Palm Sunday, marked by large processions of Catholics wielding palm fronds, which will be saved until next Ash Wednesday and burned to ash to make crosses on the foreheads of the faithful.

But the big news is that it is Vaccination Day! Here in Cochabamba 2,500 volunteers armed with 100,000 rabies vaccinations have set themselves up across the city and Cochabamba has turned into a parade of dogs and cats. Outside my house as I write the street is filled with every imaginable variety of dog, probably sixty or more. Large ones with short stubby legs, odds mixes of Dalmatian and German Shepard, black dogs with mysteriously white snouts, and fluffy white puppies known affectionately here as “Chapis”.

The dog parade is a highlight for my two year old. I also took note that one of the neighbors is sporting an old anti-Michael Dukakis t-shirt, in which the fluffy-haired 1988 Democratic nominee looks a bit like a dog. Where does this memorabilia come from?

Thanks to the wild cross breeding that takes place here among street dogs, the result is that dogs in Cochabamba are like snow flakes – no two are alike. Our own two – a mother and daughter duo named Simone and Little Bear – are some odd mix that makes them look like mini-Black Labradors. I once described them to a woman walking real Labradors in a posh section of Upper East Side Manhattan. After recovering from the shock that there were apparently mixed-breed mongrels in the world she said to me, “Oh, that would make them apartment-sized Labs then wouldn’t it?”

Palm fronds, Father’s Day presents, and dogs on parade. Do weekends get any better?