Laia’s Story
Laia’s Story
Sometimes, when we rescue dogs, we don’t realize just how smart and resilient they truly are. One particular day, we were feeding dogs in a small town called Santa María de Jesús — a beautiful but very tough village about 20 minutes north of Antigua. Few tourists ever visit, and veterinary care is almost non-existent. Even human medical care is scarce. Street dogs there are everywhere: starving, sick, and desperate for food.
That day, my pack and three volunteers joined me as we laid food along the streets. Dogs came out from every direction, ribs showing, tails tucked, too weak to bark. Among them was one little dog, Laia. At first, she seemed no different than the others — emaciated, mangy, fighting to survive.
But then something remarkable happened. After the feeding rounds, while we were talking with locals about the ongoing dog crisis (and how the local muni had been poisoning dogs to control the population), Laia kept following us. Step by step, she shadowed my pack. Half-joking, I told one of my volunteers, “If this dog follows us all the way back to the truck and jumps in, she’s coming with us.”
Thirty... forty... fifty minutes later, we returned to the truck. I opened the driver’s side door, and there was Laia, staring up at me. She sniffed around the truck, nervous but curious. The truck was lifted—a good eight inches higher than normal — so it wasn’t easy for a weak street dog to climb in. We watched and waited. Finally, my volunteer Mark smiled, scooped her up, and said, “She jumped in. Let’s go.”
And that was it—Laia chose us, and we chose her. When she came home, she entered into a pack of nine adult dogs and seven puppies. Integration was no different than it had been for countless rescues before. She was a street dog — she understood pack life. Right away, she read the room. She wasn’t a number one dog. She wasn’t a number two dog. She was just a dog — humble, patient, willing to find her place. And over the next two months, she transformed.
Laia went from being a feral street dog to becoming an amazing family dog. She learned not just dog language, but also Spanish and English. She adapted so beautifully that one of my longtime volunteers from Antigua, and her mother, fell in love with her energy and her story. Eventually, they adopted Laia themselves. This is significant because, for many locals, street dogs blend into the background. People might say, “Oh, that dog needs help,” but most avoid them.
What made Laia’s adoption so special was that a local family truly saw her — not as another stray, but as a diamond in the rough. The truth is, she was no different than my own dogs — Cypress, Dhurva, Miss Ginny, or Nala — or any of the thousands we’ve taken in, rehabilitated, and trained. They all started the same way: broken, abused, hungry, overlooked. But each one, including Laia, had the potential to shine.
After at least a year of surviving the streets—beaten, starved, tormented, and tortured—Laia finally found what every dog deserves: food, love, and shelter. And she found it not with a foreign adopter, but with a Guatemalan family willing to open their home and their hearts.
This is what our work is about. This is what inspires others to see, to help, to give back.
This is Laia’s journey — and it is why we continue ours.