Animals Sure Are Treated Differently Here in Guatemala

My host family has many "pets." I say "pets" because the most interaction that they have with them is yelling at them to get away or occasionally throwing them leftover scraps of food. (*I'm sure there are many people in Guatemala who love their pets and treat them nicely, but from what I have seen this is not the norm out in the rural countryside*). Animals here serve a purpose and it's definitely not to cuddle with you at night. They are used to protect the house. The vast majority of the animals are "outdoor" animals, meaning they are given free range of the family compounds and often the whole town. From my experience in the states usually when you call a dogs name you want them to come to you, but when they say the dog's name it intuitively backs away and goes back into the yard. Even the two year old knows to yell and throw things at the dogs when they get too close. Being an animal lover this was really hard for me to become accustomed to. I for the most part just tried to ignore it and be nice to the animals myself, giving them food, and hoping that my host family would see me doing this and being a little nicer to them themselves. I'm pretty certain that this just put me further on the list of crazy foreigner. Worth it. This cat and dog (below) I happened across on the street and are probably someone's "pets."

They also tied the animals up to wherever with whatever they could find.

Our skinny dog, "canchita" tied up and eating some bread I gave her

Animals pretty much had free reign over the house. A pig once walked into my kitchen (no it's not a joke).

Front entrance to our house - you can see two of the cats hanging out in the yard/driveway

our backyard

View from the window on my door - pigs everywhere

The front door to my room

Bathroom trash bid that had just been washed

I found some chicks eating my mint plant (and I just thought I had a brown thumb).

On the flip-side, here is a chicken that was a little bit of an "indoor pet" at least at that moment. 

On one especially cold night I let two of their cats into my room whileI gave them some eggs. Big mistake. After that they always tried to get into my room. I would have let them into my room more often except for the fear that they were going to give me fleas (which really did happen - I even wrote a blog post: Fleas...Not Just for Animals). 

I NEVER saw a single person in my town walk their dog, but I did see plenty of people walking their sheep.