Comfortably in the Tropics at last, we spend a couple of days in Mazatlan doing stuff – the town is pretty enough; long seafront boulevard with free parking, instead we chose to overnight on the busy, main road close to a Telcel shop whose wi-fi fuels an internet session (this time for financial reward, hopefully). Yes, we missed the famous Mazatlan sunset, the deepest of reds over rocky islands set in a bay but I guess you can google pictures of them – what you can’t google is the film of Dunia in the hot seat as we push-started Jigsaw on the busiest street on a Friday afternoon rush-hour… Flat battery, broken battery isolater, solar panel not connected? We couldn’t figure out why Jigsaw wouldn’t start but the next day all was fine… Hmm.

But the biggest news for us was Vaga testing negative for heartworm. The story began a few years ago when any vet checking Vaga’s heart beat heard that there was a massive heart murmur and the likely cause would be heartworm. But we never had her tested – vets in the rich countries advised us to get her treated (which is very expensive, very dangerous for the dog and traumatizing for everyone), while our more sensible vet, Dr. Richter of the Czech Republic, always said that it was kinder to just leave it and hope for the best… We always followed his advice mainly because Vaga never showed any symptoms of having a dodgy heart – the medical recommendation being to avoid over-working her (ha – this dog sleeps for Jesus!).

So, anyway, heading into the Tropics means heading into heartworm country. The worm spreads from animal to animal via mosquito and requires warm temperatures at all stages of its life cycle. This high risk meant we were looking at prevention (chewy drug-laced morsels administered once a month) which means in turn you should test the animal for any existing heartworm. The point is you have to be careful not to kill the heartworm as there’s a high risk that the dead worm blocks a major artery.

At Mazatlan’s finest, poshest veterinary practice, we got Vaga’s blood tested and half an hour later got the all clear. She’s still got a dodgy heart but it’s the heart that she was born with 10 years ago, worm-free and persistently pumping…