Van Dame doesn’t speak English

Our host family has a dog, Van Dame, I can only assume that they named him after the action movie star; for some reason the Nicas are all about the violent movies with plots no deeper than 2 Pac’s lyrics. Despite the goofy name Van Dame is a great dog. He is so excited whenever we come home. He is partially trained as a guard dog by Marcio to protect the chickens and to ward off nighttime intruders. Needless to say, Van Dame is damn smart. When we come up to the gate he knows instantly that we are friend, not foe, and greets us with his tail wagging. When we get home after dark often times by the time we get to the top of the hill he is already waiting for us at the gate and he will escort us for the 100 yards to the house. Sometimes he runs ahead of us and takes a lap around the house before we get there; checking things out to make sure it is all clear. Marcio just has to make this squeaky kissy noise to Van Dame and his ears perk straight up, his head pops up and he will run out sweeping the property doing for unwelcome guests.

I have always wanted a dog, but with out any responsibility or pain in the butt early morning walks, shoes chewed up, or poop in the house and now I’ve got it. Now its great, Van Dame will come up to our house and visit us every morning to eat our stale bread or what ever we dropped on the floor at breakfast, and sometimes a special treat. At dinner when there is something I just don’t like (like slimy cooked plantains) I can just slip it to him real quick so no one will notice. He knows when I want him to take care of it fast so we don’t get caught and he’ll sneak up next to my chair real slyly and gobble it up in seconds.

The funny thing is that when talking to Van Dame I still have to deal with the language barrier. He doesn’t get “sit”, “come”, “stay” or any of those things; actually, I don’t think he understands them in Spanish either. He only responds to “veni” “afuera”, “si”, and “no”. Sometimes I forget and I tell him sit or hold on in English and he has no idea what I am saying, I change back to Spanish and he responds right away. Its interesting because its just something that you never think about, but all the dogs here only speak Spanish.

Speaking of dogs, there is a totally different dog culture in Nica. All of the dogs roam free all the time. They have TONS of land and open farm area to play around in. None of them have tags or collars or anything though. Basically the only way you know if it’s a stray or not is if you know the dog or who it belongs to. They have a pretty good life. None of them are spayed or neutered, which was kind of weird for us at first because we aren’t used to seeing dogs with all those extra parts. They all have pretty much complete free roam of where ever they want to go, but they always come back home. Its like they have their own social network, Van Dame even has a couple girl friends; although at times that seems like the only social interaction aside from fighting with each other. So, its totally not weird to just pass a dog on the road walking the other direction; you just look at him and he looks at you, just like as if you were both people and we continue walking by.

Most of the dogs pretty much pay no mind to people coming by except if they think you have food for them. At night they get pretty territorial and seemingly more aggressive near their own property. Even if you are on the path, they will bark like crazy and some times run out at you. Luckily they are all a bunch of chickens though and all you have to do is turn around and yell back at them—just make sure you do it in Spanish though!