Tags
dog friendly, holiday, how to, humor, International Dog of Mystery, Spain, Spanish, summer, travel, Veterinary communication
Yesterday my friend 
Actually we’re back in Spain again and had just spent our usual quality time with the local vet. The dog is recovering, the temperatures are hovering in the 100F/37C+ range, and every dog in the kennel started by the enterprising farmer down the road had been howling “Holy effing barksters it’s hot.” For the past six effing hours.
The Hub had gone in search of middle of the night sustenance and just come back to the room.
HUB: “Um… there’s a piece of information you probably should know.”
ME: “Does it involve dog murder? Because normally I’d be against that. But whoever owns those dogs has got to be fair game. I’m just not sure we’re up to hiding the bodies, this being a foreign country and all.”
HUB: “There’s no water.”
ME: “!”
HUB: “But don’t worry. I brought in some buckets of water from the swimming pool. You can still use the toilet as long as you manually refill its tank each time.”
ME: “!!!”
HUB: “Good night.”
In the morning our wonderful landlord Paco came by to talk water, or lack thereof. He said that so many people had come here from Madrid to escape the heat (because it usually cools off at night up here in the mountains) that with this year’s lack of rain the reservoir was empty. Then I think he said not to worry because he has a 1K liter emergency tank of water. But by then the weefee had also died (of thirst probably) so our phone translators didn’t work and I was down to my rudimentary Spanish skills, and he might have been giving us the latest football scores.
So while I go off to search for bottled water, I’m going to take Krizar’s example and revisit this post from a few years ago.
Please sir, may we have our chickens back?
Communication. It’s one of those things I take for granted until I travel. Turns out that most of the words my Spanish teacher imparted all those decades ago are completely useless. I’ve been in Spain for a month now, and not one person has asked about the pen of my uncle or the ball of my brother. Take last week when my dog started trying to projectile-eject every fluid internal drop from every available external orifice. I’m fairly sure that not one single word related to this situation had ever come up in Spanish class, no matter how creatively I tried to apply pens and balls (the dog is female).
A local acquaintance explained that in rural Spain, people don’t really have pets. The numerous feral cats just kind of hang out and dogs are pretty much on the payroll. So we ended up at the offices of a local large animal veterinarian, waiting for him to return from several emergency calls.
That morning I’d tried to buy some chicken to grill for dinner, but the butcher had told me his chickens wouldn’t be arriving until xxx. (I actually have no idea what he said at the xxx-point, except that it didn’t seem to involve pens or balls.) But while I waited for the vet to return from large-animal lifesaving, I suggested the Hub go down to the butcher shop and try again. Now that it was after five o’clock and presumably the chickens were finished with siesta or whatever else had delayed their arrival, he could convey our pollo-needs. After a surprisingly long time, he returned carrying chicken. A LOT of chicken.
It started out fine, he said. The butcher seemed to understand his request for pollo, and held up a couple of fat chickens. The Hub pointed to one, and it was duly bagged. But it was such a chubby fellow, that he asked for a second bag. That’s where communication broke down. The butcher grabbed a second chicken and put it into the bag. No, mimed the Hub. He wanted uno pollo and dos bags. Nods all around. The butcher disappeared to the back and returned with two bags, each with a pair of fat chickens. No, no, no! Much head shaking on both sides, along with hand signals. The butcher seemed surprised, but started hauling out piles of chickens and bags. Seeing where this was going, the Hub indicated that he’d take the double-pollo bags already loaded, and beat a retreat.
The sun was still high in the sky and heat was rising in visible waves from every surface. The two returned veterinarians and I stared at the bags of rapidly warming raw chicken, and everyone looked nervous. Finally one of the vets suggested that he put our dead chicken collection into their fridge until we finished up. My husband looked so relieved that I didn’t have the heart to tell him what else that fridge contained. (Let’s just say that containers for certain biological samples are pretty much the same world over, although clearly some of the sample-providers were over-achievers…)
By this time, the two veterinary staffers were focused on my dog. And that’s where the next communication issue developed.
“Eeeets?” This was accompanied by a vague gesture toward the dog’s business end.
We both tried a wide variety of words before the embarrassed vet inquired, “Caca?” The Hub looked alarmed and began to back away, but I was relieved.
“¡Sí, caca! Oh, yeah, eeeets caca!” I could tell we were communicating at last, so I confided further. “Eeeets mucho, mucho, mucho cacas.” I was on a roll. “Gato caca, burro caca, caballo caca, otros animale cacas, and—my personal favorite—vaca caca…” By this time the Hub was out the door. The vets were laughing. Over the next few hours while various blood tests were running and shots administered to my caca-eating dog, the Hub sat outside with his dictionary. Finally after hours of the vet’s time and a bill requesting an astonishingly small number of euros, we were almost ready to leave.
Veterinarios 24 Hr, Piedrahita, Spain
The Hub came up to the vet, shook him by the hand, looked him in the eyes, and uttered the immortal words: “Por favor, señor. ¿Podemos tener nuestros pollos de vuelta?”**
[**Please sir, may we have our chickens back?]
So if you find yourselves in Spain in the next few weeks, you should stop by for some (lots) grilled chicken. We can kick back and talk about my uncle’s pens and my brother’s balls. Or maybe not…
“All they told me was don’t drink the water…”
Barb Taub 
Oh, they joys of language classes. I once took a short intro to Japanese. I learned to ask any number of questions. I never did learn to understand the answers. Our friends who lived in Japan told me I had a pretty fair accent, which meant I sounded like someone you’d answer in more-than-one-word sentences.
It did not go well.
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I’m so impressed that you even attempted it. Speaking of which, how are the speak British lessons going?
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British? I don’t speak it, but it continues to amaze me.
(Just noticed I typed “they joys.” The American lessons don’t seem to have taken either.)
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Nice one! I’m giggling away to myself here!
My family in Malta were telling me about this waiter who was serving a table in a restaurant they were in. He didn’t know the translation for salad and instead used the word ‘hashish’ and in turn had said to the lady ‘Grass Madam?’ <- English translation. Now we have a running joke, every time we are talking about having salad we find a way to bring ‘Grass Madam?’ into the conversation.
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Haha! Wouldn’t it have been fun if he’d just gone ahead and offered “Hashish Madam?”
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Oh perish the thought 😂😂 a bong on a platter! I believe it was an English lady and she was taken back by the word hashish being used. My husband only speaks English so we were translating the story and he presumed the guy had said grass as in garden grass. It was a number of years before I realised and had to explain. Another one was my nephew’s first language is French and when he needs need to make caca boudin -> poop pudding and we would joke we need to caca boudin so husband thought it meant toilet…
We sing in English I need to pee pee I need to pee pee only swaping the word pee for the word my mum would have used ‘boola’ instead of the proper malti word. Because we sing it to the tune of ‘I like to move it’ it becomes an earworm. There we are in Malta sitting with my grandparents and hubby started singing without realising. Nana speaks no English and was doubled over laughing and Nanu, who does speak English, was poking my daughter saying Daddy needs a pee. Needless to say my daughter was mortified, as was hubby when he realised! Husbands are great to laugh at!
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So funny, Barb (though maybe not so much for Peri).
Hope you found plenty of bottled water. It sounds like you’ll need it with those temperatures.
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This was very funny! Glad your dog is OK. We live in Spain. Lots of communication faux paus. Mind you I have trouble making myself understood to the British as well. Canadian is so difficult!
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