Introducing Manito
On November 10th 2019 Manito came to live with us. This was not long after we were having lunch at Lolha Restaurant in Akumal with our friends - Laura, Myrna and Vicky – during which Myrna received a phone call about a small dog that had been abandoned in one of her rental units. After lunch she and Laura went and rescued the dog, and Laura immediately started sending us photos of this scruffy, thin, very scared pooch. Mike and I had just recently moved to Puerto Aventuras, but our house in South Carolina had not yet sold, our last dog, Maya, was fairly recently deceased, so we just didn’t feel ready for another companion. Laura, however, could not keep this little guy because she had 3 large dogs who were not going to accept him. Myrna couldn’t take him because she had cats that wouldn’t get along with him. Vicky couldn’t take him because her condo doesn’t allow dogs.
What was to become of this poor abandoned guy? Laura and Myrna were heading to Austin and asked us to take him until they came back and could figure something out. Well, being “Foster Fails” we took him in, and he immediately became ours. Ready or not we have a dog. Laura and Myrna are his Madrinas (God Mothers) and he now has quite a village of friends and family.
The next thing was selecting a name. He is the color of a peanut shell and, at the time, weighed in at all 4 kilos (8.8 lbs), so “peanut” seemed an appropriate name, EXCEPT for the fact that, in Mexico, the word for peanut is cacahuate, and who wants wants their dog’s nick name to be Caca! So, we went with the broader Spanish translation for peanut: Mani (mah-NEE). Spanish speakers often add ito or ita to the end of a name, to indicate small size and/or familiarty. So “Manito” (mah-NEE-toe) became his name – Little Peanut.
We will never know the story of his first 4 or 5 years, but whatever it was like, we do know he is scared to death of children. If he sees them, he literally shakes and growls. Only a very few have been able to win him over, we hope over time that may improve.
Manito, is a very good travel companion and in the few years we have had him he has visited Akumal many times, enjoyed a house on the water in Bacalar and an Airbnb on Cozumel. He has traveled by car and ferry and even been known to enjoy the water aboard both boat and kayak.
But his most favorite thing to do, which we started during the COVID shutdown, is visiting his dolphin friends*** in “downtown” PA. During COVID, the dolphins had no tourists to perform for and were alone for many hours, often becoming bored. We would take walks with Manito and several of the dolphins started to interact with the three of us. It became apparent that there were some dolphins in particular that were intrigued with Manito, and he felt exactly the same way towards them. This became a part of our routine throughout the pandemic, and to this day he and his dolphins have a special bond.
If Manito could talk or write, in this case, we believe this blog would be the result. Please enjoy his daily life in Mexico and his experiences in the Mundo Maya, as he travels his own sac-be.
***We have been posting videos of our little dog, Manito, on YouTube for quite a while. To date, most of them have involved encounters with the captive dolphins in the heart of our Mexican Caribbean town of Puerto Aventuras. While we in no way condone dolphins being held in captivity, these dolphins have been here for their entire lives, and it is very unlikely they will ever be able to be released. Mexico long ago outlawed taking them from the wild and has recently passed a law that will eventually eliminate the keeping of dolphins for entertainment purposes.