For There to Be Many Happy Endings
HAVANA TIMES– His name is Ansei, which in Japanese means “serene.” But at first he was a nameless puppy, the last of the litter left without adoption. Covered in fleas and deeply attached to his mother, he followed her around the surroundings of an apartment building in Alamar, where some neighbors fed her. She was a beautiful dog who had appeared out of nowhere, with a past lost in the mist, like all stray dogs.
A rescuer saw them both, photographed them, and posted the image on her social networks. Puppies are adopted quickly. Adult dogs do not have the same luck. But the days passed and the puppy was still there, on the street. So she decided to take him with her, bathe him, and post new photos that might win the heart of someone compassionate and responsible.
Ansei was so fragile. With a calm, very sweet temperament, he followed her everywhere. He slept in her bed, pressed against her, as if afraid of being torn away from this second mother. The day she finally chose a woman who convinced her as an adopter, they set a meeting place on a central street in Nuevo Vedado.
During the taxi ride, curled up in her lap, Ansei would not stop trembling. And she trembled too, as if something visceral were being torn from her. But she already had other dogs, lived in an apartment, and the economic situation was becoming more and more unstable.
When she got out of the taxi and a young woman approached smiling with her hands outstretched, she clutched the puppy tightly to her chest and simply said, “I can’t give him to you…” She did everything she herself did not expect. She was almost rude, turned her back, and retraced her steps, thinking about the money wasted on the taxi, about the extra fare she would now have to pay when she had planned to return alone by bus.
She noticed that Ansei had stopped trembling. As if he knew that his fate was now firm, unalterable. She thought about how to explain it to her husband, reproached herself for her weakness, and asked herself why. There are so many people who live only for themselves, without the added agony of caring for animals… In a country where salaries are not enough, prices rise every day, and survival depends on a strange kind of magic, beyond all reasonable calculations.
Yet Ansei seemed to know something she did not: that she would fight for him, even when, in trying to help an abandoned female dog in heat, she offered a temporary space to save her from the harassment of male dogs, without knowing that the dog was incubating the horrible distemper, the nightmare of dogs in Cuba.
Yes, Ansei became infected. They had to run, and with the help of another rescuer she obtained the medications which, if administered immediately, could keep him from an imminent agony: seizures, brain damage, paralysis, death…
Disglobin to boost his defenses (available only in specialized pharmacies), and penicillin injected with evaporated milk. A combination born of improvisation in precarious and desperate veterinary practices. It worked. Ansei’s body overcame the virus, although he was never the same again. He became nervous, almost frantic.
He developed a deep bond, an emotional dependence on his human dad, and during his absences he waits for him anxiously every second, tracking him in every scent that travels through the air, in every sound. He does not regain his peace until he sees him arrive and greets him with joyful jumps and affectionate licks.
When Ansei goes for walks with his canine siblings in the same area where he was found, sometimes he sees his biological mother. Her name is now Niña, and she is even more beautiful and proud. She was adopted by the same neighbors who used to feed her, after being spayed in a free campaign—one of those organized by anonymous rescuers, slowly changing the harsh reality of abandoned animals in Cuba.
They do so with their difficult, ignored lives, without donations from national or foreign animal rights organizations. In a crushing day-to-day existence that consumes their bodies, almost all their time, their health, and their dreams. Battling against logic, against indifference, against the legal void, taking on—without honors or recognition—responsibilities that others have abandoned.