Potcake Dogs...

Hey there,

I'm Bahamian and though now living in Utah, used to do a lot of work with the potcake dogs.

re: SNR - there are programs down there doing just that. Volunteerism tends to come and go as does funding, but seems like every few years there's a big push.

re: potcakes, temperament: they are in general fairly intelligent, but not human-oriented socially. The horrible fates they tend to suffer at the hands of humans has made them very wary (I've personally seen boiling water scalds, machete chops, lye scalds, rope cuts - those were pretty common). You can't really train a street potcake - they're like cats in that they live with you because they decide they like you. If you get one from a very small puppy, they socialize to humans just like any other dog, but have no behavioral breed traits at all. This can make them hard to train - they always have their own agendas. "Fetch? Huh? Why?"

re: potcakes, physical traits: I have never witnessed a hardier kind of dog. From what I've seen, if all someone does is feed a potcake adequately, the dog will live on average 7 years absolutely chock full of heartworms and intestinal worms. If you worm a potcake, they're well-nigh indestructible. I worked with the street dogs for four years on Abaco island, and if you looked at the packs the dogs with breed blood were always the sickest. I was on hand when a full potcake got run over and his spine severed (of course with no vet on the island) - I called in a favor from a doctor friend and we tried to at least sedate the dog (around 50 lbs), as he was in terrible pain. 2x the human dose of injectible barbituates later, the dog was still conscious, and he stayed that way until the vet's local assistant could be found to euthanize the dog a couple of hours later. Another half potcake half pit bull who was of my acquaintance was dying in my back yard -  (horribly, of heartworm, at about 1.5 years of age - that's what breed blood does to a street dog genome - and you do not want to witness a dog dying of heartworm) again as always on a Saturday when there was no vet - a friend and I took matters into our own hands and tried to euthanize the dog with 600+ mg phenobarbitol and 400 mg hydrocodone for good measure - and though we made the dog very tipsy, he never passed out, much less died. He staggered off into the bushes and turned up a week and a half later cured of worms and begging for food...