UNO/ Perros (Dogs)

El perro que ladra no muerde. (The dog that barks doesn’t bite.)
—Chilean saying

Dogs in Chile fall into two categories: mascotas (pets), much the smaller of the two groups, and feral dogs. The wild dogs are everywhere, downtown, in neighborhoods, some even claim the grounds of specific restaurants and seem to be tolerated there, though I never saw one beg at a table. They are un-neutered, not attached to humans, and carry themselves proudly, as if they are busy working at something, which is true—they are locating their daily food, as no one provides it for them.


Rex, in a favorite home spot at Don Octavio's.

It’s hard to say which dog category is easier to encounter. Wild dogs are mostly uninterested in passersby. But their self-confidence can be a little unnerving for a norteamericano—what are they up to? Eduardo provided two helpful approaches when they do seem to want something. “Speak to them in Spanish,” he said. “Try ‘sale!’ (‘go away!’)” That worked well in town and on beaches, where wild dogs are mainly scavenging. The other method is more appropriate for dogs out in the countryside. “Reach down as if you are going to pick up a stone and throw it,” he said. The first time I tried this was on a hiking trail in a Mapuche agricultural area, against a dog that was obviously lying in wait for us near a wet, soppy area we had to cross. The dog, maybe a German shepherd mix, sat very still until we neared, then began to bark intensely and bare its teeth. I reached down to the ground, and it took off like a shot in the opposite direction at a fast trot, never looking back. I think I saw the same dog later, sleeping near a farmstead with its head turned away from our path, as if we didn’t exist. (I should add here that Eduardo uses the sound of a small dog barking—a sharp “arf-arf”—as a secret signal for locating friends and family in a crowd. It works like our family signal, “woo’-oo woo’-oo woo’-oo,” but is more discreet outdoors in a dog-rich environment—only those humans who know “his” bark will hear it at all.)

Pet dogs on leash in Chile seem well behaved, like obedient dogs in the U.S. But many pet dogs are never walked and are kept inside fenced yards or even smaller spaces in town. So they bark a lot, at each passerby, until the end of the day, when they look exhausted and apologetic at a fence opening, as if to say, “I’ve been barking at everyone who passes all day, and I’m just worn out, okay, so don’t look at me as if I’m not doing my job here.” Pet dogs are often let out of the yard for a time in the evening, or they just jump the fence when in need of an adventure, so they move back and forth between two worlds in Chile: the human/house realm and the world of the feral dogs. I saw a man calling a dog one evening, and four dogs responded and came trotting up to the fence. “Wow,” I thought, “he has four dogs!” But, no; he only let one dog inside.

Our worst encounter with pet dogs was with a pair of Jack Russells at a house between our hostal and Lucy’s, one evening when the fence was open and they were actively, seriously, patrolling their territory. We had passed the house many times: morning, midday, evening, late at night, always with the dogs inside the fence. They had barked in an obligatory way, almost a hello: “Oh, you again, sorry, but I have to do this, it’s my job.” But this one evening, the gate was wide open, and our presence on the public sidewalk was anathema. They barked, snarled, snapped at our heels, and no words or gestures in English or Spanish seemed to make any difference. I finally gave up and crossed to the other side of the street, vacating their territory. This seemed to make them even crazier about Michael still on “their” sidewalk. The tone of the snarling and angling toward his feet ratcheted up a significant notch, and I thought they would tear open his ankles. He quickly crossed the street as well, and, just like that, it was over, they were ordinary pets again.

Evenings, and all night sometimes, it seems, the wild dogs in Valdivia roam in groups, a barking chorus. Then the pet dogs inside fences answer, or maybe it’s the other way around. One morning, after a particularly bark-filled night at the hostal, Michael told me a dream that used the rhythm of the barking dogs—“argh argh argh argh’ … argh argh’.” And the dream added words to the rhythm, to make: “A-vant garde mu’-sic, I know’.” When he told me the dream, I recognized the bark pattern that I, too, had been hearing just a few minutes earlier in sleep.

—Jane