asakiyume | Dog with a message

Because Bogotá is pretty close to the Equator (though up very high in the mountains, so it's very cool), there's almost no twilight. It goes from day to night almost as fast as the scene at the bridge near the start of Spirited Away, like someone waved a wand and now it's nighttime. Sunset was at about 6 pm, and at 5 pm the streets were filled with buses and taxis and motorbikes--everyone going home. And the sidewalks were filled with pedestrians. On our second evening there, we stepped out around that time, and across the street from us, I happened to see a dog trotting along, holding a small rod, a cylinder, in its mouth, from which hung a card that said "La vida es bella." He set it down for a moment, and the card was stiff, so it stood up, there on the sidewalk, proclaiming the message. Then the dog picked it up again and continued on its way. I was pointing exclaiming over it to Wakanomori, and my eyes met the eyes of the man who must have been with the dog, who smiled at me broadly.

What a cool thing, I thought.

And then, even cooler, some days later, we came across this street art. If you look to the right, you'll see a portrait of the dog, with the sign, and the dog's human friend. So this dog is famous! Famous enough to be the subject of street art!

I've looked online to see if anyone has written up the story of this dog, but I can't find anything!

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From:

sovay

So this dog is famous! Famous enough to be the subject of street art!

We have people like that who have been locally immortalized, but I'm not sure any dogs! Nice.

asakiyume

I think what made it so cool was to have seen both things: both the actual dog and the art celebrating him. The dog alone was a wonderful oddity; seeing the art let me know that he's well known--at least among street artists! In the reverse order would have been equally cool: if I'd just seen the art, I might have thought it was simply the artist's imagination, but if I then had seen the dog, I would have known that it was real.

osprey_archer

Ah, that's so cool! It's kind of frustrating that there's not more on the internet (TELL ME YOUR STORY< DOG WITH SIGN) but also kind of cool to see something with such localized fame in this era where everything seems to be on the web... Clearly not quite everything.

I agree in principle of the local-treasure-not-broadcast-to-the-interwebs, but selfishly, I WANT TO KNOW. My search is complicated by the fact that "La Vida Es Bella" is a movie title, and just typing dog+sign+Bogotá or dog+sign+"La Candelaria"(the neighborhood we were in) gets me things about animal shelters or pictures of dogs with "beware of dog" signs, etc. (I've tried the searches in Spanish, too.)

I've discovered, however, that there's a famous skateboarding bulldog in the area, thanks to my search. Alas, not the ~~droid~~ dog I'm looking for. And what is it with bulldogs who skateboard? That breed must really like skateboarding. There was one who visited our neighborhood--here in the US--that liked to skateboard, too.