Day Two

I just can't leave out the clever wine bottle wind chimes that surround our hotel! This morning, we started with breakfast at the ridiculously early hour of 7-ish am (about 4am at home). The hotel ladies are very accomodating, especially after we told them that, in America, coffee comes in VERY large cups, not the tiny adorable cups they were giving us. Now we have bigger cups. This hotel is lovely!

 When we got to the clinic, this little guy was waiting for us, as were a few other dogs and cats.

This lady brought in her mama dog and puppy. She thought the puppy was too young to neuter, but we got to spay his mom and remove a mass from her thigh.  

 Several animals were brought in by kids. The kids acted much more interested in what we were doing than most of the adults. They asked questions and watched through windows.

 Dee made good with the toys again today: this time she gave away a jump rope, and showed the kids how to use it!

 Contrary to popular belief, Stacy does take breaks once in a while... just kidding - she's monitoring a patient. That tinfoil-looking package is a dog wrapped in a space blanket for warmth. She got too cold during surgery, and needed to be out under the sun to warm up. See the thermometer?

 Suzanne took a few turns in recovery, spelling off our Josefina, so she could pick up more patients from around town. Patients in recovery got injections of pain meds and antibiotics, a rabies vaccine, and medication for flea and tick control.

As each pet was given their treatments, we marked off all those things on the pet's travel sheet. As each pet checked out of the clinic, the health department workers collected their sheets, to keep a record of what had been done.

 Here, some kids help keep an eye on recovery patients through a convenient window:

  One of our patients had a very serious condition: she was pregnant and had lost some of the puppies. Her whole uterus was infected, and she still had puppies inside her. Surgeon Stacy to the rescue! Several of our local helpers had never seen a surgery like this one before, so the surgery room was pretty crowded with helpers and watchers. No pressure! It was too late to save any puppies, but the mama dog came through surgery very well, and went home with antibiotics and lots of pain medicine. She seems like she'll be ok.

 Something else that we had to set up at the clinic was our "tick station" made out of a paper cup with rubbing alcohol in it, and a pair of hemostats (very fancy tweezers). Alcohol kills ticks, and tweezers make it much easier to pull them off dogs to put them in the alcohol. This is a blurry photo, but all those ticks were from just one dog! After that, I was suddenly very itchy! There are a few very serious tick-borne diseases in San Andres, which is why we treated all of our patients with a tick preventive before they left the clinic.

Even more of our volunteers learned new skills today - we doubled the number of people who can place IV catheters! One of our helpers usually works with children, and new how to put IVs in people, but had to learn a few new tricks to do it for a dog. Dogs' skin is WAY tougher than ours, and people don't usually have to be muzzled beforehand! Even more volunteers learned how to hold a dog for someone else to work with, or how to clip and clean for surgeries.

 I didn't even have to touch this cat: Dee and Isamar took care of surgery prep all by themselves!

 These kids brought three dogs and two cats to the clinic today. This dog was very scared, and cried until the boy helped coax her in to the clinic. He was great at holding them for their injections!