I tried the police one more time after the attack at the boathouse.
“I tell you already. Don’t go there no more,” the cop said.
“I’m burying two or three dogs a day, man. You’ve got to do something! Please!”
“It is illegal, what you are doing. You cannot bury any animal on the island without proper authorization. We could have you arrested.”
They were going to arrest me? What was wrong with this place?
I felt like I was losing another piece of myself every time I buried another dog. If I didn’t do something drastic, nothing would ever change for them. In the meantime, Pam and I were fighting more and more the further down this spiral I traveled. She was watching the man she loved drown in a cause that was likely going to kill him.
I also put her job at risk after a run-in with one of the security guards at her office one evening when I went to pick her up. They usually allowed me to drive inside the gates to spare her walking across the dark parking lot alone, but one night a new guard wouldn’t let me in and I lost it. The guard reported me to the company for threatening him, and Pam was called in to speak to HR and her boss.
That night, she was furious. “It’s like you can’t control yourself anymore,” she said over dinner.
“The guy was an asshole, Pam. He’s lucky I didn’t kick his ass.”
“This is my job, Steve! You were out of line.”
“All you care about is that damn job!”
“That job is our bread and butter, Steve! What do you think pays for all that dog food? For our house?”
She was completely right. The old me would have handled the situation differently.
I hung my head. “I’m sorry, Pammie. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m losing it. I can feel myself slipping further and further away.”
She reached across the table for my hand. Her eyes filled with tears. “Steve,” she said, her voice quiet now, “my biggest fear is that I’m going to get a call at my office one day telling me you’re dead.”
While she had accepted years earlier that she’d likely lose me to a climbing or flying accident, she never imagined it could be a homicide instead.
To save me, to save us, Pam decided to call in reinforcements. She still had contacts at a shelter in California where she’d volunteered years earlier, but they told her that they couldn’t take dogs from Puerto Rico because of local rabies laws. After a little Internet research, she found a group called Save a Sato in San Juan. Save a Sato was founded in the midnineties by two women who had basically done what I was doing now—fed strays on the streets of San Juan. They teamed up and started a small animal shelter that had partnerships with a network of no-kill shelters in the States. Pam sent them an e-mail asking for advice or help.
She heard back from Betsy Freedman, Save a Sato’s outreach coordinator, who was based in Boston. “Talk to Isabel Ramirez,” she suggested. Isabel was a director at Save a Sato in San Juan. Pam and I felt hopeful for the first time in months.
Sadly, that hope didn’t last long.
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you,” Isabel told Pam when they spoke on the phone. “We’ve got our hands full here.”
Clearly we were on our own.
Meanwhile, the situation was getting worse on the beach. A few times I saw what appeared to be locals, just regular guys hanging out with their families at the beach for the day, throwing food to the dogs. The dogs would grab the meat and run. Within minutes the dogs would be staggering like drunks until they fell down convulsing and died. A few times I was able to get the scraps before the dogs took them. I could see the beads of rat poison concealed inside the food.
Most weekends there were so many families that the dogs were always at risk of injury or worse. People would get angry when the dogs approached their barbecue pits and would shoo them away. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I’d find one or two dogs with half-eaten hot dogs in their mouths. The poison was so fast acting that they’d hit the ground dead before they could take a second bite.
During the week, it was the guys driving the refinery trucks I worried about. A couple of times I witnessed men jumping out of the trucks and pouring antifreeze into puddles of rainwater or the water dishes I’d set out for the dogs.
I was losing this battle, and I had nowhere to turn.
And then in April, Pam received an e-mail from a woman in Florida named Martha Sampson. She explained that she worked at the refinery several days every month, and that during her last trip to the island she’d noticed a new mom with her puppies by the main gate and was concerned for their welfare, so she contacted Isabel Ramirez, who then put her in touch with us.
She asked if we could help rescue the dogs and get them medical attention, and said that “maybe” she could find them a home.
What the hell was I going to do with the mom and her puppies even if I was able to capture them? The refinery plant’s security guards weren’t going to let me anywhere near the property. I had several dozen dogs of my own at the beach that needed better medical attention than I’d been able to provide. And even if we could afford to bring the dogs to a vet for treatment, the vets in the area had already made it pretty clear they wanted nothing to do with them.
I wasn’t sure we’d be able to help Martha, considering we needed so much help ourselves.
“Martha’s in town,” Pam said one afternoon a few days later when she called me from her office. “She wants to meet you at the plant. Will you call her?” She gave me Martha’s number. I didn’t know what the hell I could do for her, but I dutifully called and we arranged to meet.
At the appointed time, I drove up to the main gate, but Martha wasn’t there.
A couple of imposing security guards approached my truck. “This is private property. You need to leave now,” one said in a way that didn’t invite discussion.
“Please, I’m picking up an employee.”
Just in time, a freckle-faced, auburn-haired woman came bouncing along in a bright orange jumpsuit. She had the kind of complexion that didn’t fare well in the Puerto Rican sun. It had to be Martha.
“Jump in!” I said, pushing open the passenger door for her. My plan was to show her the dogs already in my care, so she would understand where I was coming from before she asked for any favors.
When we got to the beach, the sight of the dogs had her in tears. “I’ve been working with these dogs for months now,” I explained to her.” “I’m barely keeping them alive, and new strays turn up practically every day.”
“What you’re doing here is amazing, Stephen. I don’t know how I could handle it.”
“Caring about them isn’t enough, though,” I replied, hoping to enlist an ally to my cause. “There’s an entire culture that needs to be changed. It’s the people who dump them, the vets, the politicians, the businesspeople who ignore them and worse. To most of the locals, they’re not even dogs, they’re rats. The way the dogs beg for food is just an annoyance to them. Martha, I’m not making this up. Pam’s coworkers, people who have lived here their whole lives, people who actually admire what I’m doing here, have told me that I’m fighting a losing battle. The only way to make a difference is to do something.”
“Will you please come back to the plant and help me get that mother dog and her pups?”
Clearly she had her own cause. I appreciated her faith in me, but I couldn’t take on another cause. I had to pick my battles.
“It won’t be easy to do. A scared mother isn’t going to want to be caught. And I don’t know if you noticed, but the security guard wasn’t too receptive when I arrived to pick you up. What makes you think they’re going to let me help some stray dogs?”
“Can we please try?”
“What are you planning to do with the mother and the pups if we get them? Have you thought about that?”
She glanced at my pack nervously. “Can’t we bring them down here?”
“Martha! You realize the locals call this place Dead Dog Beach, don’t you?”
“I know, I know! But they’ll kill her if she stays at the plant.”
“They’re probably going to kill her if she comes here. I lose dogs every day.”
“Don’t you think they have a better shot with you and your dogs?”
“Martha, my wife and I are already shelling out nearly a grand every month to feed these dogs. We’re stretched pretty thin financially.”
She smiled and nodded like she was listening to me, but I knew she wasn’t.
“I’d like to get the dogs to a vet,” she said in a singsong voice. I imagine she thought it would somehow sway me.
“Even if we were able to catch these dogs, there’s no vet I know of who will take them. Do you know of someone who will? Maybe I missed one?”
Nope, nothing. She was full of hope and not much else.
As much as I was trying to resist Martha, I couldn’t say no. I knew it from the moment I received her e-mail. These were innocent lives, and if I didn’t do something about it, they faced certain death. I took Martha back to the plant to see what I could do.
Martha went in the gate herself and made her way to a rotting wooden foundation shielded by thick undergrowth where she thought the mother had made her den. She was only forty or fifty feet from where I stood on the outside of the fence. Watching her crawl through thick brush in her orange jumpsuit was a sight to see. She thrust her head into a narrow space between the foundation and the ground, then pulled out and yelled back at me, “I saw her for a second!”
“Forget it, Martha. It’s not gonna happen now. You’ve scared her. She’s going to move her pups all the way under the building. She has to want your help or you’ll never get her. She’ll just run, and I don’t want her to abandon her pups.”
Martha came back out, crying, her hands clenched. “She’s all alone in there.”
I asked Martha to stay by the truck for a few minutes. I walked over to the guards and asked if there was any way possible that they might let me in for a few minutes to get the dog and her pups. They wouldn’t budge and insisted it was time for me to get in my truck and drive away
“I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better, Martha. Sadly, I deal with this stuff daily, and there’s nothing we can do right now.”
“I feel so helpless, like I failed her,” she said.
“I’ll keep an eye out for her, okay? If she does relocate her pups outside the plant, I’ll do everything in my power to get them to a safer place. It’s the best I can do for now. The guards have pretty much tied my hands.” I knew this wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for.
I left Martha standing at the gate, tears still flowing down her cheeks. As I drove away, I felt bad. Not for Martha, but for the dogs.