Plot summary: In Elena Garro’s The Day We Were Dogs (El día que fuimos perros), two girls, Eva and Leli, are left alone in a large house in the countryside while their family flees the summer heat. Amid abandonment and boredom, they decide to symbolically transform themselves into dogs and join the world of Toni, the house dog chained up in the garden. They adopt the names Cristo and Buda and live a day in a parallel time, alien to the human order. There, they witness a scene of violence: two men fight, and one kills the other. Soldiers interrogate the dog-girls, who respond with barks, and the murderer is arrested. The crime, however, marks them; the game is broken, and when they return home, they can no longer maintain the animal fiction. The night is filled with ghostly presences, and the girls realize that they have crossed a line: the experience of crime has expelled them from innocence and any possible heaven, even the one imagined for dogs.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The Day We Were Dogs by Elena Garro
Elena Garro’s short story The Day We Were Dogs recounts a strange and ambiguous day in the lives of two girls, Eva and Leli (the narrator), in a large colonial house that has been left empty after its adult inhabitants fled the August heat. The story begins with an everyday scene that soon turns into a dreamlike and symbolic experience, in which reality splits into two parallel dimensions: “a day with two days inside.” Abandoned in the solitude of the house with the servants, the girls are confronted with the immensity of the space and the weight of silence. What might seem like an adventure turns into a disturbing experience fraught with symbolism and mystery.
Determined to escape the tedium, the girls begin to explore their surroundings with a new, almost ritualistic gaze. Eva looks at the paintings on the wall—Christ, Buddha, and a Soviet image of Kroupuskaia—and declares her sympathy for the Russians, hinting at a pluralistic perception of spirituality. No one answers their calls; the servants are in a kind of stupor. Then, the girls venture into one of the parallel days—the day outside, the day in the garden—and find Toni, the chained dog. They lie down beside him, and Eva announces that now they, too, will be dogs.
A voluntary and symbolic transformation then takes place. The girls adopt dog names: one is called Christ, and the other is Buddha. They agree to live as animals in a world apart from humans, far from the religion, philosophy, and culture that filled the library and the table in their home. In this world, there are no rules, no commandments, no promised heaven. There is only the immediate present of the garden, with its insects, its suffocating heat, and the silent company of Toni.
The day progresses with a different logic. They receive water and food brought to them by Rutilio, an old servant who, without surprise or question, accepts the girls’ new reality and treats them like dogs. The food—rice with meat and bones—defies their vegetarian habits imposed by a previous morality. Now, they eat without restrictions, like dogs. The transformation seems complete. The reality of the garden imposes itself with force: the ground burns, the animals seek shade, and the sun punishes them. In this environment, Eva (Buddha) and Leli (Christ) experience a form of freedom and marginality.
However, the apparent stillness is broken by the explosion of a firework. Since the other day—the day of the humans—a bang has been setting the dogs on alert. They run to the gate, manage to get out into the street, and are confronted with a violent and real scene: two men are engaged in a deadly fight. One stabs the other, who manages to shoot him in the forehead. The girls, still in their role as dogs, watch the scene in astonishment. The men who arrive afterward, armed, interrogate the sole survivor. When he mentions that the girls (the dogs) are witnesses, the men question them directly. They respond with barks. The strangers accept this absurd response as a sign of assent. They arrest the perpetrator, and the body of the dead man is left lying in the street.
The scene freezes on the image of death: a fly explores the open wound, and the blood glistens in the afternoon heat. A woman arrives crying to say goodbye to the deceased. The girls show no reaction. They remain there, like stray dogs, unrecognized by anyone. Only when night falls does Rutilio call them by their real names, scold them, and take them inside. They are no longer dogs, but they are not quite girls either. Something has changed.
Rutilio, annoyed, watches them and threatens them with witches who suck blood. Candelaria, another maid, also scolds them. The atmosphere becomes oppressive and almost fantastical. On this new night, the dead reappear as ghosts. The murdered man lies on one of the beds, and next to him stands the bleeding murderer.
In the darkness, the “other day” has settled in the room. The girls feel the horror closing in on them. The line between reality and imagination blurs. They are no longer playing or fantasizing. The story ends with the bitter realization that the illusion has been shattered. Eva declares that they are no longer dogs.
They have come to understand that, despite their attempts to escape the human world, crime and death have caught up with them. The sky they longed for is not theirs neither as girls nor as dogs. The story ends with a bleak reflection: dogs do not share crime with humans. And they have crossed that line. There is no longer any refuge in animal innocence.
Characters from The Day We Were Dogs by Elena Garro
Eva is one of the two protagonists of the story, a girl who embodies spontaneity, irreverence, and an insatiable curiosity to transgress the structures of the adult world. From the very first lines, her ability to perceive and manipulate reality is evident: she is the one who observes the “two days” overlapping and decides that they must become dogs. Eva does not just play; she reconfigures the world with the logic of a child’s imagination. Her choice of the name “Buddha” is not naive, as it alludes to a figure who represents the dissolution of the self and the renunciation of the moral codification of the human world. In this sense, Eva presents herself as a mediator between childhood and the awareness that the world around her offers no place for those who refuse to accept the imposed rules. In the end, she is also the first to understand that the game is over, that the boundary between her world and that of adults has been crossed with no return.
The narrator, Leli, is Eva’s companion and accomplice, although her voice is more introspective and observant. If Eva is the one who drives the action and reconfigures reality, Leli is the one who narrates it, interprets it, and gives it a philosophical dimension. Through her story, we understand that the world they inhabit is permeated by a series of ethical and mystical codes inherited from the adult world—the idea of heaven, the condemnation of sin, the hierarchical structure of knowledge—which she reproduces without question until the transition to animality forces her to confront her symbolic exclusion from that order. When she agrees to be called “Christ,” she does so with a mixture of irony and necessity: it is a powerful name but also a tragic one, as it anticipates her symbolic sacrifice. Leli represents the gaze that tries to understand the meaning of what she has experienced, although she does not always succeed. Her gradual awareness marks the transition from play to revelation.
Toni, the real dog, acts as a threshold between the human and animal worlds. Chained to a tree, he is the only being who inhabits the “other day” from the beginning, and when he accepts the girls into that plane, his act has a ritualistic tone. He is a silent character but one who is full of meaning: the physical and symbolic space of the story is organized around him. Toni does not speak, but his sad gaze and behavior convey a serenity that contrasts with human confusion. He represents loyalty, resignation, and also exclusion: he is chained, outside the realm of humans, with no right to redemption. Toni is, in a way, the image of what the girls believe they are choosing when they decide to stop being human.
Rutilio, the old servant, represents the figure of the marginalized adult trapped between his role of authority and his limited capacity for real control. He is the one who feeds the “dogs,” scolds them, and threatens them with punishment by witches and blood. However, his presence does not prevent the girls from crossing boundaries but rather confirms his inability to understand what they are going through. Rutilio is part of the “parallel” day of the world that has lost touch with childhood experience. His speech is steeped in superstition, resignation, and veiled resentment. He represents a worn-out domestic power that tries to preserve an authority it can no longer exercise.
Candelaria, the maid, appears briefly but contributes to creating an atmosphere of decay and alienation. With theatrical gestures and strutting, she seems more interested in the spectacle than in keeping watch. Her role reinforces the idea that the adults who remained in the house also live on another plane of reality, one where disorder, laziness, and superstition reign. Like Rutilio, she is a passive witness to what is happening and, like him, is unable to intervene in the girls’ transformative experience.
Finally, the men who appear toward the end of the story embody the brutal irruption of adult violence into the world of children. First, there are the two who fight to the death in the street; then, the armed group arrives to interrogate the survivor and, absurdly, accepts the testimony of the dog-girls expressed in barks. This scene has a grotesque, almost absurd tone that underscores the distance between the two worlds: that of the adults, ruled by violence and power, and that of the girls, who try to remain outside but end up being inevitably drawn into it. The naturalness with which the men accept the canine version of the testimony suggests a profound critique of the logic of authority, in which even nonsense is accepted if it suits the ends of power.
Analysis of The Day We Were Dogs by Elena Garro
“The Day We Were Dogs,” by Elena Garro, is a story that takes place in a liminal space between imagination and reality, using a child’s point of view to challenge adult logic. Narrated by a girl, the story introduces us to an experience of symbolic transformation in which two girls, Eva and the narrator (Leli), assume the identity of dogs and escape from the human world and its rules to enter a parallel dimension governed by instinct, observation, and a direct relationship with the present.
This transition does not occur as a simple fantasy but as a form of silent resistance to a hostile and absurd environment where religious, social, and emotional hierarchies have lost their meaning. From the very first lines, the story is set in an atmosphere of strangeness.
The day has “two days inside it,” an image that disrupts temporal categories and announces that what follows should not be read from a conventional realist perspective. This temporal unfolding is also ontological: the girls not only live in a house with two times, but they inhabit a world where things can have other meanings and where bodies can take on new forms without rational explanation. The transformation into dogs is neither explained nor dramatized; it simply happens. But this acceptance of the impossible reveals something profound: childhood, rather than a stage of growth, is presented as a state of openness to multiple realities, where the boundaries between the human and the animal, the sacred and the profane, the visible and the invisible, are malleable.
The space in which the story takes place—an empty, hot house with apathetic servants and a dense atmosphere—functions as a theater of abandonment. The absence of adults frees the girls but also exposes them to a world that, far from offering them fulfillment or joy, reveals an absurd and indifferent structure. The servants, such as Rutilio and Candelaria, act more like ritual figures than active characters. Their role is to maintain a certain appearance of order. Still, in reality, they are immersed in superstitions, songs, and fantastical threats that reinforce the idea that the adult world is governed by empty mechanisms with no real connection to the girls’ experiences.
The choice of the names “Christ” and “Buddha” for the girls transformed into dogs is not a mere decorative gesture. Garro establishes an ironic play on the religious and philosophical figures who have served as moral models for humanity. Both girls, reduced to the status of animals, are symbolically excluded from any possibility of redemption: dogs do not go to heaven or Nirvana. This ironic exclusion is a veiled criticism of religious constructs that define the value of life according to hierarchies that exclude bodies considered inferior. However, in this marginalization, a possibility of authenticity can be glimpsed: the dogs—Christ, Buddha, and Toni—are the only beings who do not participate in violence, do not reproduce crime, observe without intervening, and are incapable of justifying or avenging.
The central episode of the story—the murder of two men in the middle of the street—bursts in like a brutal and inexplicable scene. What is remarkable is that it occurs on “the other afternoon,” on that second day that runs parallel, as if human violence were encapsulated in a plane from which the girls have distanced themselves by transforming themselves. This distance allows Garro to present the crime not as a dramatic event that transforms the characters but as an absurd spectacle that only makes sense from the perspective of those who do not participate in it. Christ and Buddha do not understand murder; they do not judge it; they only observe it. They are silent witnesses to a foreign logic.
The response of the armed men, who accept the barking as testimony, reinforces this reversal of meaning: the human order has lost all coherence. The dogs, symbolizing the margins, ultimately validate a judicial act. Language no longer communicates the law is exercised as a farce, and traditional values are displaced by an absurd logic in which even animals have a voice, albeit one that is not human.
The literary construction of the story employs sensory prose, rich in tactile, olfactory, and visual images. Garro does not focus on action or explanatory dialogue: the story progresses through the accumulation of atmospheres, fragmentary perceptions, and minute details, such as the smell of the earth or the shadow of a fly. This writing accompanies the children’s gaze without simplifying it: what the girls do not understand, the reader should not fully understand either. However, this is not a narrative flaw, but rather part of the design of an experience that must be lived, not deciphered in logical terms. The story is meant to disturb perception, not to provide answers.
In the end, when the girls return home and are treated as if nothing had happened, it is confirmed that they have crossed an invisible boundary: they are no longer where they were before. The final sentence—“it was no longer true”—undoes the entire symbolic construction of the story without deactivating it. It is not that the game is over, but that consciousness has changed. The return to human life does not erase what has been experienced but transforms it into a mark, a memory that no longer fits into normality.
The Day We Were Dogs is not a fable about childhood or a fantastical story about animality; it is a complex tale about otherness, structural violence, the loss of meaning, and the perception of a divided world. Garro uses the child’s voice not to embellish the experience but to destabilize conventional notions of identity, power, and justice. The story does not invite us to look for morals but to remain in confusion, in that place where the word “woof” can mean as much as a testimony before the law and where the question of who we are is answered, at least for one day, from the back of a dog lying under a tree.
