Mis Cuatro Amigos

There are a lot of dogs which run free on Easter Island. They aren´t feral dogs, they´re quite time actually, but no one owns them. They sort of just run all over and occasionally run up to a person and walk with them for a while.

While taking photos today, I was sitting on the grass waiting for some clouds to pass and one dog came up to me, laid down and rested his head on my leg like he was mine. I guess for about fifteen minutes, he was mine. I tried to play catch with him with a ball I’ve been carrying around with me. He would run after the ball no problem, but had issues with running back with the ball and giving it up.

Later I ran into a puppy which was hiding behind a small statue. It started barking at me trying to defend its little puppy turf. I just stood there and eventually he cautiously came over to sniff me. Next thing you know, I had a new friend. A about a hundred feet away there were three more puppies all of the same size. They must have all been from the same litter. Once they saw the one puppy running around with me, they all joined in and nibbled at my boots and licked my legs. If I stepped up a little stone wall, they´d climb all over themselves to get up the wall.

I set up my video camera to take some footage of me and my new four friends. I should have a short clip of it up when I get the rest of my Easter Island footage up. The puppies followed me for close to a mile until I ran into a couple walking on the path. Then the puppied abruptly abandoned me and followed them.

Oh well….

5 thoughts on “Mis Cuatro Amigos”

  1. LOL!

    So that´s why the statues were done. As a monument honoring the armistice.

    It all makes sense now.

  2. There were also horses grazing all around. They dogs would always bark at the horses and chase them. I had a theory that the dogs were at war with the horses but had lived under a long term truce with the humans. The cats were the wild card.

  3. THe stray dogs thing seems to be a theme all throughout Chile. I´m currently spending a semester in Santiago, and i actually started a photo essay about the stray dogs. Even in the big cities, they all seem friendly and happy. They are surprisingly well fed and healthy. In the four months i´ve lived here i have yet to see a sick looking dog with skin conditions, etc.

    Isabel Allende, the world renowned chilean author, says that Chile´s dogs have a secret pact to take care of each other. Its really strange.

  4. They play a game called Futball. Some call it soccer. It was started by a group of Jesuits who ran a school for boys without arms.

  5. In your pictures on flickr, there’s pictures of really colorful boats and a ball field. Do they play baseball there?

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