By Alexis Heckley, PhD candidate at McGill University

In February 2020, I travelled to Trinidad to collect data for my research on how the abiotic environment is associated with Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) behavioural variation. I expected to leave Trinidad with some interesting data – which I did – but, to my surprise, I also left with a dog! 

During my first week in Trinidad, my colleagues and I found a dog on the side of the road. He was clearly in rough shape, and we weren’t sure that he would survive if we drove away. We decided among the three of us that we would bring him to a vet, so we put him in the car. Unfortunately, we were hours away from the nearest vet and, by the time we got to a city, all of the veterinary clinics were closed. With no other reasonable options, we brought the dog back to the field station. What was supposed to be a brief overnight stay turned into a week before we were able to see a vet. I didn’t realize immediately that I would be bringing this dog back to Canada, but after the first week or so I knew I wouldn’t be able to re-home him and he was sticking around for good. 

We were in Trinidad for another month before we returned to Canada. During that time, we brought the dog to the field with us every day, carrying him in fish-holding buckets to traverse deep sections of the rivers. While catching guppies in the field, and while doing behavioural assays in the lab, we’d mostly leave him unsupervised – he never had a leash on when we were outside, and we’d leave all doors to the outside wide open at the field station. Fortunately, he knew how good he had it with us and he never strayed far.

We named him Mr. Flea – the “Flea” honoured his street dog roots, and the “Mr.” gave him a bit of dignity. Bringing Mr. Flea home was an ordeal because it coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (it’s hard to get export permits when all government offices are shut down!). Fortunately, owing to the generosity of several kind people from Trinidad who went out of their way to help us, everything worked out.

So, not only did I leave Trinidad with a lot of interesting data, but I also came home with a dog who has turned out to be the best adventure companion.

About the author: At the time of writing, Alexis Heckley was a PhD candidate in Andrew Hendry’s lab at McGill University. She is now an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include disease ecology, behavioural ecology, and evolution, and she studies fish and bats.

Bluesky: @alexisheckley

Website: alexisheckley.wixsite.com/mysite