With a work exchange, there are often many responsibilities. Such was the case yesterday when I held several different titles: dog trainer, laborer, arborist and hero.

The day began with the regular feeding and cleaning up after the dogs. After those chores were done, we let each of the dogs out to play in “the park”. La Manada (Spanish for “the pack”) is more than just a doggy hotel; it could even be called a dog resort.

Inside the largest building on the property are the traditional smaller kennels where the dogs spend the night. During the day, the dogs are moved to the day kennels, larger spaces outdoors where the dogs can enjoy fresh air and sunshine. The outdoor kennels are laid out in the shape of a triangle, creating an enclosed space that we call the park. This makes it easy to simply open the door of the day kennel so that a dog can get out for some supervised play a couple of times a day.

As with any interview, I had exaggerated my skill set when doing the phone interview with one of the two owners. I mentioned my experience with dog training and agility. To be honest, I did have experience with both but primarily with my own dog. This boasting garnered me the position of dog trainer for those dogs whose owners had paid extra for some training while being boarded here.

It turned out to be a double edged sword. While it did relieve me of the physical labor that many of the volunteers did daily, it was exhausting mental labor. Training a dog can be similar to teaching a child. It requires patience, consistency, and discipline.

After three training sessions in a row, I was wiped, but I’d become the defacto trainer because of my inflated self promotion. I occasionally found myself looking longingly at the volunteers doing labor that didn’t require any thinking. Today, however, I got the opportunity to join them. 

It was the week before Christmas, and we’d taken reservations for kennels that didn’t exist yet. This meant everyone was pulled into construction. We erected posts, built walls, mounted doors, and even created a driveway for people to enter the compound to drop off their dogs.

To make the driveway, we had to remove the bricks of an existing staircase, grade a slope, and trim overhanging trees. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, tree trimming cannot be done without a permit and, even then, requires a certified arborist to do the labor, but this is Mexico.

We trimmed some of the lower branches using a Sawzall, and I climbed up the tree to take off some of the higher branches. This was important because one of the branches we wanted to trim was fairly large, and we wanted it to be less unwieldy as we felled it.

La Manada is located next to a four lane highway, and the section that passes by the front of the facility is the part where everyone speeds up, having cleared the last stoplight in town. The tree branch overhung the highway, which meant we needed to do our best to pull it from the roadway as soon as it fell.

I scaled as high as I dared and fastened a rope to the branch I intended to cut. As soon as the traffic was as clear as it was going to be, I cut through the large branch and the other staff pulled it out of the road as soon as it hit the ground. We managed to do it without it punching through the windshield of oncoming traffic.

It was then time to pave the driveway. One of the dog resort owners showed us how concrete work was done in Mexico. He brought forth a bunch of five gallon buckets filled with sand and gravel he’d scooped out of the dry creek bed behind the property. He set up a screen against a wall, and demonstrated how we were to remove the larger stones by tossing the gravel through the screen.

Once the buckets were empty of gravel, we filled them with water, added the filtered gravel and cement from bags he’d bought at the hardware store. We stirred the mixture like you would making old fashioned ice cream in a barrel. Once it reached the right consistency, we poured it over the mesh we’d staked in the new driveway.

Pushing the wheelbarrow was quite a task as the tire was flat and seemed a ridiculous affront to the concept of a wheel. I offered to take it off and run to town to get the flat fixed, and the owner was happy to lend me his bicycle for the errand. 20 minutes later, I returned with the repaired tire. Everybody praised me as a hero, saying they had been using it with a flat tire for the past four weeks.

I was flabbergasted that I was the only one to suggest making the repair in all that time, but it goes to show that time is not valued the same in Mexico as it is in the US. Apparently here, they’ve got plenty of time, so there’s no motivation to be efficient. This was further exemplified by the paving of the driveway.

After two days of pouring cement 5 gallons at a time, we asked the owner, “wouldn’t it have been more efficient to have paid a cement truck to come by and have the driveway poured in an hour”? He replied, “it’s Mexico; what’s your hurry”? My thought was that if we’d paid someone to deliver concrete, it would have been more consistent, and we would have had two extra days to work on the non-existing kennels. 

This has been an excellent experience working with a variety of personalities with different cultural values, and we all share the goal of making this the best place in Guadalajara to board your dog. I’ve learned skills that have already made it easier to get responses from other work exchanges I’ve contacted: teamwork, construction, animal care, tree trimming and maybe even hero. Perhaps this is what school should look more like.

A footnote: The first week I arrived, I was asked to give a dog an injection. Perhaps I can add vet tech to my resume!