Some months ago a feral dog appeared in the neighborhood with three puppies. My sister saw them and asked “what are we going to do about it?”, I shrugged and said “there is nothing to do about it”. The puppies have grown to be young dogs, and they frequently appear in the land behind the house. Sometimes they come to the backyard and start barking at Nina, who gets hysterical and pounds on the glass window while she barks.

When this happens I go out and I woo them away. Sometimes they won’t bulge and bark at me, in which case I throw things at them so that they will go away. It makes me peculiarly angry that they come to my house to bark at me, but then I realize these are just young feral dogs who do not understand about human territory yet. Their mother would not dare to put a foot in a private backyard.

I sometimes wonder if what I told my sister is true: is there really nothing to do? There’s way too many stray dogs in Mexico as to expect adoption to be a positive outcome. And in the case of feral dogs adoption is doubly difficult.

I see two possibilities for action: one is to be hostile towards them, as to educate them in matters of human property. The second is to be friendly and possibly leave them food, as to be able to capture them and sterilize them.

Nina seems to be equally ambigous towards them too. Sometimes she will charge towards them at full speed, not really intending to get into a fight but to intimidate. The dogs inevitably whimper an run away. Other times she simply looks at them and wags her tail. The dogs bark from a distance.

I too, sometimes whistle at them, try to coax them into submission to the human hand, but they seem to be immune to human charm, and stand barking defiantly despite my best efforts.

In the end, it is not me who makes the choice between hostility and sterilization, it will be them. And even then I wonder: if they are friendly to me, they will receive the worst end of the deal, because they won’t get a home or offspring to pass their genes unto.