The Passing of Cucaron, and Other Adventures

Tonight, we came back to our hotel to discover a tragedy. We found Cucaron floating in the swimming pool, very near to a sunken rock with string tied around it. These are considered to be very suspicious circumstances:

Back to this morning's adventures though. Our driver picked us up at 10ish in the morning. We saw real breadfruit growing in a real breadfruit tree. It's much more appealing sliced and fried and on my plate, but nice to know where to find it.

 Once we got to town, we walked around the boardwalk-style area and explored little alleys of tiny shops for a good hour and a half or so. While we were near the beach, we saw windsurfers, and I became insanely jealous:

 The birthday girl herself, in the best birthday spot around - San Andres!

 Dee's not the only one who had a fantastic day though. I found an amazing new dress at a random tiny hole-in-the wall shop, and then a few blocks down the street was a shoe shop, with the perfect shoes (in my size) sitting in their display window. I had heard we'd be going out to a concert of sorts tonight, and this seemed about perfect:

 Then we went back out to the beach area for some refreshment.

Limonade de coco is still amazing, just in case anyone was wondering. After that, we headed to one last shop: one with guaranteed handcrafted items, by local artisans. Basically a gallery for local artists, at very reasonable prices. A few people got souvenirs at at that shop, and then it was back to the hotel to blog before the boat ride.
Our boat ride earlier was fantastic: Richardson and Noel took us on a party boat/barge sort of thing with benches all around the edges and a dance floor in the middle. Just before we got on the boat, we sampled a few coconut sweets, which I found to be fantastic. The DJ on the boat taught us a few dances and had a dance contest to break the ice, and then the boat was off to cruise around the East side of the island. We got some great views and danced and laughed, and then Noel told everyone it was Dee's birthday (oh yeah, today is Dee's birthday!) and the whole boatfull of vacationers (about 50 people) sang "Cumpleanoz a Dee".

At dinner tonight, Lesley (who had spent the whole day diving and photographing fish) demonstrated her appreciation of the scaly little dudes by transforming this:

 into this:

 After dinner, the staff surprised our birthday girl with a cake. Candles here are awesome - there was a giant sparkler sort of thing that is surely illegal in the US. The frosting is beaten with egg whites, so it's light and fluffy, but holds its shape without being too greasy or sugary. Wonderful.
Manuel, who had helped our SCUBA divers earlier today, brought over a slideshow later, that he'd put together of photos from the day. They watched it together on our hotel patio.

Clinics, Day - Ridiculously Busy

Three tiny "bittens" with girl names showed up. We neutered all three boys and told their owners they had three hombres. They woke up together in a suitcase (some of the pet carriers were very creative). Their paper collars are practically bigger than they are!

 I kept looking for one patient in the "lobby" and just couldn't find her. Turns out her owner had left her tied to a tree, and she had the most amazing camouflage...

 There were so many big dogs that a lot of the pre-meds happened in the empty lot next to our clinic. I had to carry an armful of muzzles and a bag of medical supplies from truck to truck to inject all the dogs:

 Some patients just came in for a "Consulta" or exam. Most of them just needed parasite control or vaccines, but there were a few sick pets we were able to help.

 Several of the big dogs were either fat, or had infected "privates", making surgery more difficult for the dog and surgeon both. At this clinic, we had many older dogs too. We figured the owners had all the puppies they wanted, and decided to stop breeding the dogs so they could retire. Thank goodness. This poor girl had had several litters, was fat, AND had an infected uterus (called pyometra). Pyometra can be deadly if not treated, and usually requires a spay to make it go away. This dog might not have lived much longer if we hadn't been there. Hooray for World Vets!

 Our new friend Wilson surprised us by showing up on the last day and just cleaning and sterilizing surgery instruments all day. He was great! We didn't have a sterilizing machine, and had to use a series of cold water washes with different chemicals in them to make sure everything was perfectly clean for surgery:

 Each surgeon was in charge of getting a new tray of instruments, or "surgery pack" when they needed them. Two of our doctors had brought their own packs from home to use at the clinic, so they would make sure they had all the right tools. During surgeries, Sandy monitored anesthesia, checked vitals, and just helped out wherever was needed. Surgical assistants are very important, and much appreciated!

 I wish we had a better picture of this dog. She has the most amazing blue eyes, but she was very aggressive and kept trying to attack people before we could get her in to surgery. I have no idea how anyone got her on her chain to begin with. We had to use a catch pole to hold her, and a special anesthetic that can be injected into the muscle very quickly. Even then, there were several people with heavy gloves on hand to make sure Suzanne was safe as she gave the injection.

 Every day, we had a great lunch. Our friend Noel ate with us. He worked with us too, all three days. He is an English tutor on the island, so his English is much more clear than the native Creole most locals speak. A lot of people who have emigrated to the island from Colombia speak Spanish, but Creole is the original language of the natives.

Among the many big dogs of the day, we had one tiny chihuahua. Most of the volunteers were nervous because it kept snapping at all of us, and was too small for any of our muzzles. 

 Lesley is some sort of land-shark whisperer, and was able to calm the little girl down, even give her kisses after surgery. Wow!

 Towards the end of the day, we got in a litter of puppies to be "fixed". The boys woke up very quickly after surgery, and several people got puppy photo ops - Stacy:

 Dee (or "Coco Loco"):

 Collette got to do the last spay of the campaign, starting just as most of the other surgeons were finishing up their final surgeries. We used the water bottles to help stabilize animals on the surgery table. Although Collette is a very quick surgeon, she still finished quite a bit after everyone else, so we had most of the other surgery areas cleaned up already.

She did, however, still have time for a puppy photo op:

 I, on the other hand, was collecting all our leashes, so this is the cuteness that I got to "snuggle":

 And then I got sort of startled from behind:

 After we were done cleaning up, we piled into our van for the last time - our driver had brought his daughter to see the group of vets, and she rode with us back to our hotel:

And then the clinics were over. We ate, we crashed, and then this morning we went into town to shop. I finally found some Colombian coffee to bring home, and now it's siesta - for about 5 minutes. Then it's off for a boat ride around the island!

Last Day of Clinics

Considering that we all worked for more than 12 hours, with an average lunch break of about 7 and a half minutes, and that we ran short on drinking water today... you'd think we'd all be in way worse moods than we are. We're basically all just super exhausted and need to sleep. I'll post a nice long story full of pictures tomorrow, after i can brain again.

As I was Blogging...

This guy showed up. Nicole told us earlier about these beetles. She had met one on a previous trip to the Caribbean, and it bit her quite nastily on a, well, a girly part of the anatomy. So we decided to take a picture to show how big, but how not-scary he was since we were super brave, and he was just a beetle. One of the hotel workers brought us a broom to pick him up with:

While we were getting ready that photo, he flapped his wings, and Dee and I both screamed, and she took a picture of the floor instead:

 Then we got the first picture taken, and suddenly he leaped off the broom, buzzed threateningly, zoomed over and thumped a landing on my same girly part of anatomy. After a flailing beetle dance, during which I very nearly lost my shirt, and got hit in the chest a couple of times with a broom, he was finally gone, and I turned around in time to see a camera not-quite-flash:

Then the nice hotel worker brought me a glass of water, and she told me the beetle's name is Cucaron. Little bastard.

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!

Can't believe I forgot...

I did a house call yesterday! Noel and I (along with a couple of helpers) rode in the back of a pickup truck to a house where a man has 16 dogs. We brought the pre-anesthesia sedatives with us, so that we could sedate the dogs before putting them in the truck to take back to the clinic. Even though they were his dogs, the man could only catch 13 of them for us. After 5 of the dogs were ready, our helpers took them back in the truck, while Noel and I stayed behind to pre-med the rest of the 13. Then we loaded them all up and headed back to the clinic for surgeries. I'll write a post about today's clinic after I upload photos from everyone's cameras.

Buenos dias!

Hola!  Woofie here.  Yesterday morning Mom and I strolled down the dirt road from the hotel towards the ocean.  It is probably only a ten minute walk, through the "jungle" to watch the sunrise.  It was very pretty, between little rain squalls, but we decided not to go all the way to the beach on our own.  Maybe we can get someone on the team to walk with us one morning...

So the sunrises don't have the colors we see at home, but the glowing clouds are quite beautiful.

 

The grounds around the hotel are magnificent.  I believe there is a full time master gardener that keeps it all so gorgeous.

Ummm, Mom, these are really beautiful flowers...

...but where are more pictures of ME!!

OH!  There I am!  Hanging in the Hammock outside our room  as the sun rises.  Ahhhh, life on the island.  Some things are tough, but some little Woofie has to do it!

Here I am with my new BBF: Farnsworth!  He lives with Sandy and is very much out of his element.  He has never traveled internationally before, so I am making it much easier for him!

Yesterday Linda blogged about (and posted funny pictures of) her experience with the "fake persimmon" lulu  fruit.  Here is ME enjoying the green juice it makes!

 

And here is Linda thoroughly enjoying the juice also! 

Farnsworth decided to join me In The Hammock.  He may start enjoying international travel after all!!