Mexican dog steals their hearts

By Dan Hilborn
Published April 20, 2005


What started out as a rainy day at the beach turned into an odyssey of thousands of kilometres for a lucky little dog named Cabo Wabo.

Tony Robertson, owner-operator of the Sunny Slope Dog Grooming shop on Royal Oak Avenue, rescued the cold and shivering terrier after he and a group of friends travelled to Cabo San Lucas earlier this year.

"He just followed us home," Robertson said with a chuckle, when he recounts the story of how the dog made the 3,156-km trip from one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.

It happened on the only rainy day during Robertson's vacation in February, when the veteran dog groomer and friends were hoping to go to a secluded beach. Unable to enjoy the beach because of the weather, they started to drive back to their hacienda when they noticed the little dog following behind their RV.

"He was hypothermic, shivering and had mange real bad," Robertson said. "We had tuna buns with us, so we decided to give the dog one. He swallowed it in one bite."

At first, Robertson and his friends took the small terrier cross to a Mexican veterinarian, who cleaned up the animal and treated it for an infection.

But when Robertson got home to Burnaby, his curiosity and compassion got the better of him, and he couldn't get the little dog out of his mind.

"When we got back home, we were curious, so we e-mailed the veterinarian and found out the dog didn't have a home, yet," he said. "We said we'd be interested in bringing him here if they couldn't find a good home for him in Mexico, and the woman told us there were no good homes there."

And once the decision was made to bring the dog north, Robertson then began the arduous task of find a travelling companion for the dog, which had since been given the new name of Cabo Wabo.

"Getting him here wasn't easy," admitted Robertson, who asked four different groups of travellers for help in bringing the dog north.

Eventually, Robertson tracked down a woman from Victoria who agreed to help bring the dog into Canada, but even that had complications.

"She had a stop in Seattle, and we agreed to meet her there, but she was unable to get out of security to make the switch because she was still flying into another country," Robertson said.

And that's when yet another fortuitous twist of fate came into play. The stranger sitting beside Cabo Waco on the plane was in fact a Seattle-area veterinarian who heard his story and promptly agreed to carry the dog off the airplane and into the waiting arms of its new owners.

Cabo Waco arrived in Canada on April 10 and "he's doing real good," Robertson said. "I have a 13-year-old poodle at home, and they get along great."