Dog Tales - An adventure in Cholula, México

You´ve always seen my adventures from my point of view, but how about this time we explore Cholula from the eyes of a dog?

Alai, my miniature Schnauzer and the princess of the house, took me and @eveuncovered - thanks for most of the pictures here by the way - on a 7 hour walk across Cholula, one of the most touristic towns in the state of Puebla, México.

Have you seen those travel-as-a-couple bloggers who take pictures holding hands and walking everywhere? Well, that´s for rookies, the real deal is taking pictures with your dog walking you everywhere.

Cholula (and México in general) is a dog town, meaning: There are house dogs and street dogs everywhere. For a small dog like Alai, despite all the special forces training I gave her - seriously, she´s a bad ass who´s survived some extreme crap - it´s a bit dangerous to walk around a town with so many dogs. You don´t know which one is aggressive, which one is trained and so on.

Funny enough, it´s not the street dogs you have to worry about - even though I kept my eyes open all the time - because they are used to interaction with other dogs and humans. These dogs are usually scared of humans because there are some crappy Mexicans that don´t like dogs hanging around their streets and they hit or scare the canines on a daily basis. If you don´t mind some flies jumping from the street dog to yours, great encounters and meetups can happen with street dogs; besides, they are not big enough to kick Alai´s ass.

The real problem is house dogs, who are usually behind fences or on the roofs; it´s very common to see dogs hanging out in their owners roofs. The problem is, most of these dogs don´t interact with other dogs and sometimes they don´t even get to hang out with humans, they grow up in a sort of confinement and become very territorial, barking aggresively at every dog that comes near and if able, attacking them.

I´ve heard many - and experienced some - stories of big house dogs attacking street dogs and other house dogs when the dumb owners forget to close their fence or are not careful enough to keep their beast on a leash when leaving their doors open. Let´s face it, despite all her experience and training - I swear, in her younger years Alai used to come hiking with me to the Mexican mountains, she has some training - she has nothing to do against a pitbull or a rotweiler, and my kicks and punches will not be enough, that´s why I always stride carefully in a city full of dogs.

At some point we got hungry and asked Alai for permission to stop at a waffle house and get something to eat. She allowed it and got into surveilance position, below her fortress and watching the door at all times.

She also got some water to keep her hydrated and alert at all times.

We walked next to a football field and we lost her for a second. Football balls are her weakness and she forgets about everything else. When she was younger, we used to play with a tennis or a football ball for hours every day, playing with balls is her drug.

But not this time, today we were exploring, so we kept walking.

December 12th is a National religious Holiday (Yeah, National and religious in the same phrase because Mexicans) and there was a celebration going on in the main Church atrium. Alai was pleased to see all the people shouting, running around, having some drinks and celebrating the National day of Guadalupe, the most important religious figure in Mexican Catholicism.

We still had a lot of exploring to do and dogs to meet, people to let them pet her and pictures to take, so we kept our journey accross Cholula.

Alai is a great model when she wants to. The problem is, she doesn´t like to pose for pictures for a long time.

After making a few more new friends, us three started to get hungry - again -, you can´t blame us, we walked a looong time and covered several tens of streets. We went for some proper supper and obviously Alai joined in.

What? Are you serious about leaving already? Let´s stay a bit longer, Alai!

Alright, but just a bit longer, Eric. Let´s pose here and watch the city while Eve takes a picture of us. Let´s act as if we don´t know she is taking it, don´t look at the camera.