Last Clinic Day

 

Mauritius October 6, 2012 Saturday

We had an early start today because we had a long drive to the clinic site and needed to set up. The PAWS group was not there yet, so we wandered around for a while. The site is a new building across the street from a lagoon. Some fishermen were out and had just caught a small shark. They cut off pieces of fin and gave them to the street dogs. Now there is some good stuff for the joints!! (Chondroitin in glucosamine supplements is shark cartilage).

Natural chondroitin!

 

This lady was pleased to pose for a photo with her dog.

 

Once the PAWS group arrived, set up went quickly. There were many people waiting with their pets today. The canvassing worked in this area! Once we got started, we got surgeries moved through. We were like machines! The PAWS techs are very good and kept the preps going well. Blue and Karen did all the other help that was needed. 

Getting set up!

 

Lots of folks showed up today!

Blue working to keep the day flowing well.

The PAWS techs were very skilled and efficient.  They were wonderful to work with.

 

World Vets is participating in a research project that is tracking TVT’s (transmissible venereal tumors) in dogs around the world. We often see cases in the third world countries that we visit. (Something we learned about in veterinary school, but I never saw until I was on these trips). Blue and Karen learned how to collect all the samples needed to be sent to the lab. We saw several cases on this trip, I had two cases: one in a male, one in a female.

Moira and her daughter

 

I believe we did over 90 surgeries today, close to the 100 animal goal. We really worked hard. Some of the vets broke off and did some treatments; Lisa saw a young dog in cardiac failure and drained a huge volume of fluid off of her abdomen. Probably heartworm disease, but we don’t have a test or treatment available. So the dog will feel better for a while, but will ultimately die from the disease. Very sad.

Recovery

 

Today was Siobhan’s birthday and we had hoped to celebrate with her, but after the long day everybody decided to go home. Hopefully, next week we can get together for a lunch or something. It has been great working with the staff from PAWS!

Clean up and packing went amazingly quickly, then we parted ways. Our group did a rapid people cleanup then we went back to The Beach House for one more dinner together with Moira. She has been so supportive of this week of work. She and her young daughter helped all day today at the clinics and had a wonderful time.

Woofie, the keeper of the toilet paper!  A very important commodity, worth its weight in gold!

 

For dinner, most of our group order the giant prawns from Columbia… and they were giant!!!  Looked like little lobsters!  I had another steak, man, they are soooooo good here!

There was a little fireworks display that we could see from the restaurant, it was pretty nice.  Blue and I finally took a taxi back to the house.  It was late, we were pooped and tomorrow we all need to pack and move to our next locations.

Overall it has been a very good sterilization campaign.  We made some new friends and got to reconnect with colleagues.  Now it is time for some more fun!

Ciao for now!