Niebla, the sweet and fierce street dog

Niebla made it to our lives in January 2017. She was a beautiful mixed-breed dog, similar in appearance to a large black German Shepherd. She had lived many years as a street dog in the University of Chile campus in La Florida in the South of Santiago, and it showed. Many students there knew her as Guaily for her big size. We were told that in her old age she befriended, and used to follow around, the gardener of the campus while he was carrying out his daily tasks. However, that year, when the students left for the summer holidays, she fell into a depression and she was advertised as a dog that needed re-homing (and who probably would not live longer than a few months). Thank you to A4 U Chile for their incredible work looking after and re-homing these animals.

Around the time, a black street dog called Cholito had been murdered by a couple who had beaten him to death with a stick because they wanted him out of a shopping complex... so adopting Niebla was a way to make us feel better about the human race and have a positive impact. There is an earlier blog post from back then with a little more background on the story.

Niebla (in the centre) with her new adoptive family

Niebla must have been quite a scary dog during her youth because of her size, appearance and stubbornness, though actually she had quite a gentle character. When she was brought to our home, our two other dogs were initially quite intimidated by her, and not exactly happy about the new addition to the pack. By the time we got her, although one could still guess the power of her youth, she had only some molars and her four canine teeth left, and she also suffered from hip dysplasia and probably arthritis.

Initially she was reserved but when she opened up we found a dog of such sweet nature that even the garden birds and pigeons had no issues being very close (almost on top of her). One day, Patricia rescued a pigeon chick and Niebla was quite happy to share the space with him (and vice versa). 

We made a big point of buying her the most expensive, neon-coloured collar that we could find so that everyone would know that she had a family and was no longer a street dog. As far as we could tell, she had never had a home and always had her own free agenda. She was a good dog and it was easy to live with her, but it took her 3 months to finally enter our house. She was allowed in but she felt it was a bit claustrophobic. It seemed that she did not like looking up and not seeing the sky. So instead, she used to sleep in a small wooden "house" that we had built for the rare occasions when our dogs had to be left in the patio while it was raining. At times she also tried to make herself comfortable in one of the boxes that served as beds for our smaller dogs, but that wasn't exactly a good fit...

It took her a while to learn that in the food in her new home was plentiful and that she did not need to set the boundaries with our other dogs. Also to learn that, apart from bread (which appears to be the staple food of street dogs in Santiago), she could eat rice, apples, watermelon, carrots or Cochayuyo. Actually, she never got too much into carrots or apples (unlike our other two dogs), but she ended up loving Cochayuyo ;) We caught her once "borrowing" a whole loaf of french bagette bread that we had just placed on the kitchen surface but she was quick to give it back under soft interrogation.

Although much of the day she spent sleeping, we noticed that after a couple of weeks with us she started really looking forward to going for short walks. When we all went out in the evenings she even started to run, jump and get quite excited like a puppy, despite her old age and arthritic hips.

She came with some strange habits. When we lived in Santiago, we used to take the dogs out to a small square/park just outside our home. Often there would be groups of teenagers listening to music or smoking. She used to enjoy sitting with them while our other dogs played nearby. Probably reminiscent of her university days. She could tell which people were scared of her, so she would put her head down and change direction or sit somewhere else. She was not a dog that looked for conflict, although if conflict came to her, she could handle it. On one occasion, a young male Argentine Dogo roaming freely came towards us displaying quite dominant and slightly aggressive behaviour while we were walking her on the leash. Niebla was very quick to set boundaries and snapped at him close to the neck. He went elsewhere and did not bother us again.

It also became clear to us fairly quickly that Niebla must have been at the wrong side of violent human beings during her life on more than one occasion. One night towards the beginning of her time with us, she was sleeping outside and she got scared from some rowdy people in the park. So she found herself a place to hide: under (and over) our beautiful courgette plant, which also required breaking through the improvised fence that we had installed to separate the "dog space" from our veggie patch. Christian heard her so he went out to tell her that that place was out of bounds, but she would not come out (she definitely did have a very independent mind after years of managing herself in the street). It was difficult to get to her without damaging all the veggies so Christian got a broom to help... 

She really freaked out when she saw the broom, growling and barking at Christian. The end result was Patricia (a smaller and less threatening version of Christian) trying to negotiate with her while wearing a bike helmet with light (to be able to see) and in her underwear... it was the middle of the night, after all. Once Patricia got her out of the predicament without anyone getting hurt, though, she realised that she could trust us and that we were not going to hurt her.

We took her to as many places as we thought she could handle. Her expression the first time she saw the beach was quite something ("this is nothing like La Florida", "what is all that water?", "smells salty") but she quickly got into it and ended up loving wandering the beach.

Niebla on the beach in Pichilemu

In the first years with us she quickly appeared to renew her will to live and get back into enjoying herself, sometimes even getting excited. Towards the third year she preferred to relax.

Ready for some travelling, literally taking the backseat (AKA the luggage compartment)

Always finding a comfy spot to rest on

Niebla in the Valle Del Elqui watching the solar eclipse in 2019

When we moved to the Araucanía Region in February 2019, at first to a cabin just outside the village of Malalcahuello, Niebla loved it there. For the first time in her life, there weren't cars and people everywhere. She would spend long hours outside in the brisk autumn air, smelling things, walking slowly around our cabin and the plot of land it occupied, sometimes eating lichens in the woods (not sure why, but she liked those). She would come back whenever she felt like it, never missing lunch or dinner time. However, one day... she did not come back and we got really worried. We looked for her... but searching for a black dog who is hard of hearing after sunset is not easy. The next morning we got a phone call from the Carabineros (the chilean police), who have a little station in the middle of the village, about 2km from our cabin. She had walked all the way there on her own the afternoon before (at a guess, she probably fancied a loaf of bread XD as she had seen us buying there a few days before) and spent the night with them 💚. She always made friends, in the morning they finally read her name tag with our phone numbers and that's how this little adventure found a lucky outcome... phew!

Her new life in the Araucanía

Eventually her hips were quite bad and she really struggled walking and getting up. Especially when the floor was slippery... so we got her some boots (though she wasn't too keen on having to use them... and she usually got her way when she was not keen).

Niebla with her "anti slip" booties

Late at night on the 30th of December 2019, she asked us to let her out for a walk. She often did that and then just slept outside the cabin door where we would put a blanket. It was a nice night. This time though... she must have decided to go for a longer nightly walk and was nowhere to be seen the following morning.

Supposedly, a neighbour saw her on the dirt track a couple of kilometers from our cabin on the 31st of December. That was the last time anyone saw her. She never came back. No one called the phone numbers on her collar, nor identified her by her microchip. We looked for her for several weeks, checking with all the neighbours, even with the workers at the rubbish dump which was a few kilometers away (which also had kennels where "problematic" street dog picked up from the streets of nearby Pucon would be "rehomed" to). But to no avail. This was 7 months ago. Even under the best circumstances, we thought that Niebla would no longer be with us during this winter because of her old age and deteriorating health. But that nice mid-summer night Niebla took charge of her own fate, spared us the hard decision to set the date that would end her life, and left us wondering what happened to her...

This post is a big goodbye hug to our friend who always lived life freely and on her own terms. We miss you.

A water colour of our three canine family members (by our friend Meli)