This, is Dog.
As far as I can tell, he has no collar, and no owner. Chances are that he doesn’t have a name either. There are dogs everywhere in this country. Spaying and Neutering is pretty uncommon, so overpopulation is the norm here, and a lot of them go hungry.
In north america it’s pretty normal for government-enforced fixing of animals, and people are pretty happy to pay for it, since pretty much nobody wants their pets running off and getting freaky with the neighbour’s pets.
Here, the most common view is that if there are puppies, then you can sell them, and get some money out of it. Really, I don’t blame the people here who think that way. From what I’ve seen, the poverty here is crippling. In a perfect world, every puppy from every litter would get bought by a family who would be able to consistently provide a good home. In this world, a lot of the puppies go unsold and grow up quickly to procreate. Hence the overpopulation issue. Here comes the really shitty part. Kind of awful actually.
The population can’t grow indefinitely, there would just be too many dogs in the towns. So, to quell the growth, the locals band together and (sigh) put out poisoned food for the malnourished dogs to eat. This results in, a lot of dead dogs. In effect the only dogs who survive are the ones who have owners who can prevent their pets from eating the poison. It’s pretty sad, really. It’s an endless cycle of unhappy dogs. But whenever you visit another culture you always have to be the observer, never the judge, and just tell yourself ‘that’s just the way it is’.
The good news, is that a group of people have hired a few veterinarians and have set up a by-donation fixing service. Once or twice a month, these vets do a circuit of the villages around the lake, and fix dogs. So there is change happening, it’s just can’t come sooner.
This post isn’t meant to make you sad, or inspire you to move to central america and start an animal clinic, it’s an example that while people in north america are pretty lucky compared to central/south Americans, the animals are pretty lucky back home too. When there’s more to go around, everybody benefits. Even the pets.
-A
Letters From The Great White North 
Even tho there are issues of cruelty and chained dogs, and not everyone getting on the spay/neuter bandwagon in teh US- you are right, dogs here have it waaaay better here than alot of other countries. TFS.