By Irina Pino
HAVANA TIMES — A few days ago, while I was walking along 1st Street, in Miramar, Havana, I heard mournful howls. I immediately realized they were coming from a dog, which was lying in a flowerbed beneath a tree. Then a couple arrived and explained that a car had run her over, and the driver hadn’t even stopped.
The young people stayed for a while watching her, then left. I had been on my way to buy something at a nearby store, but I decided to return. When I reached the entrance of my building, I ran into a neighbor and told her what had happened. Together we decided to help the little animal, which apparently had some kind of fracture, because her back leg looked loose.
We quickly went back with a cardboard box, and she called someone she knew from the neighborhood, a veterinary student. We also gave the dog a little water, which she drank desperately. She was no longer crying out. Between the student and another young man, they placed her inside the box. Then the student’s mother came in a car and took us to Felicia’s apartment, my neighbor, who would care for her while we looked for alternatives to help her.
Before leaving the spot where we had found her, Felicia asked around at several nearby houses in case someone might be the dog’s owner. She was robust and had very white teeth; it was clear she wasn’t a stray.
Once at the apartment, I made a post on my Facebook wall as we urgently needed financial help. Thanks to Verónica Vega, a friend and colleague from HT, the story began to circulate quickly.
We needed enough money to transport her by taxi, and we also had to find out which veterinary clinic to take her to, since not all of them provide orthopedic services. We learned that X-rays are only done at polyclinics; the technicians charge more than 10,000 pesos for the exam. In the same way, because gasoline is scarce, a taxi driver wanted to charge us 6,000 pesos just to take her there.
A foreigner offered to send money, and another woman from the USA sent us the address of VETPRO, a clinic in the Víbora neighborhood that has orthopedic services and a good reputation.
Meanwhile, the dog felt worse; sometimes she cried softly. Felicia barely slept the first night. She kept talking to her so she wouldn’t suffer, petting her to calm her. She gave her Duralgin to relieve the pain. The dog drank water, though she refused food. Eventually she ate a little. What worried us most was that she wasn’t urinating.
All of this happened last weekend. On Monday, the owners appeared. They called me on my cellphone. They had seen the Facebook post.
We went together to my neighbor’s place, but she had gone out and wasn’t answering either her cellphone or the landline. With these long blackouts, I imagined she probably didn’t even have charge on her phone.
While we waited, they told us that they had found the dog in the street and later adopted her. They named her Crazy because she was very mischievous. She never went out because they have a large yard, and she probably escaped when someone who was fixing their garden left the gate open. The strangest thing is that they live on 7th Avenue, and the dog ended up quite far from her usual surroundings.
After a while Felicia arrived. She had gone to a veterinary clinic in Vedado to ask about the cost of the tests, with the idea of taking the dog there using money we collected ourselves, plus some we might borrow, in order to end her agony.
When she saw the owners, she could hardly believe it. She had even prayed that they would appear. Both of us had been very worried about the whole situation. I said goodbye to the little dog and saw her face one last time; they had already settled her in the car. We thought everything would be resolved more quickly because the owners had their own transportation.
Later I spoke with the man from Spain so he wouldn’t send the money—it was no longer necessary.
Felicia was very sad and cried. She had grown attached to the dog, since she has always had dogs and even feeds two cats. We promised ourselves we would go visit Crazy as soon as she recovered.
The worry did not end; we kept communicating every day to find out how she was doing. Yesterday we received the bitter news: Crazy had died (at one point I had a premonition of that). She had a fissure in her pelvis and her hip was destroyed. They couldn’t operate, and they prescribed treatment. She seemed lively and appeared to be improving, but then she began to urinate blood and passed away.
We feel powerless. Felicia thinks we took too long to act. I don’t think we are guilty for having waited—the damage had already been done. A heartless driver is responsible. The worst thing is that here we don’t have laws that protect those who have no voice; we live in a country where not even citizens themselves have essential rights.
Read more here from the diary of Irina Pino.