Shanti's Sin

Here in the rural Dominican Republic there is one single sin that a dog can commit that will shun her from society forever. They have a name for the dogs that do it, a scarlet letter that will never be forgotten… “comepollo” - ”chicken eater,” and the minute a chicken, duck or hatchling comes up missing you’ll be the first one they turn to.

A couple weeks ago a duck came up missing in a neighbor’s yard and every night for a week the owner’s teenage son killed every dog that wandered near his property, by poison or hanging. There were at least 6. True story. Biting a person is typically forgiven, stealing their chicken or its eggs, life ending.

My dog Shanti has not eaten a chicken…not one that she killed herself, anyway. She has a knack for finding them rotted from days or weeks back and gnawing on them, and not just chickens. She has a nose for rotten eggs, too. As an American (who refrigerates eggs) I thought I knew the smell of a rotten egg…you know, like the sulfur pools at Yellowstone or something. Actually I had NEVER smelled a rotten egg before she got a hold of one and I wish I was never going to smell it again. The last time she ate one was a week or so back and her mouth still smells like the day she ate it. We couldn’t even get near her, like if a skunk sprayed sulfur at her face. If we were in the States I might brush her teeth, here they would think I was a lunatic if I did that.

Apparently the American volunteers who have been in this site (A woman named Alicia who was here in the 80s and myself), we have a history of having chicken eating dogs. (Let me take a moment to clarify again that I do not have a chicken eating dog. Shanti eats dead animals regardless of their species and she eats rotten eggs but the people here “know” that she will quickly learn to hunt and eat them fresh.) Alicia’s dog killed and ate someone’s chicken sometime in the 80s and people still talk about it. Apparently Alicia said to the chicken’s owner– and I completely agree – “Well YOU eat chicken, don’t you?” and then she had to pay the owner for the chicken. This is very serious.

I think that dogs should be loose and chickens should be confined, but here they think it’s the other way around.