It´s Day 11 in Todos Santos and Day 9 of the clinics. We´re into our spay clinics now and doing follow up housecalls on patients - and also some housecalls on other dogs. As we´re walking down the street or along one of the hillside trails, people will come up to us and ask if we can check their dogs out because there is something wrong. We´re pretty limited in what we can do here as we have limited drugs and limited equipment and no diagnostics - such as labwork or x-rays - no diagnostics except our eyes, nose, hands and ears.
All our post sterilization patients are doing well. It can take them a day or so to start to eat though some eat within a few hours. For the ones that aren´t eating we do a housecall and check their temperature, check for infection and pain. we can treat with pain control and with
antibiotics. With some of the patients all that is needed is good old-fashioned tlc: keeping them warm till they are more active and feeding them palatable food.
Terry the rottweiler is doing well. He is eating well and comfortable - the swelling is all gone and he´s been seen walking around town. When we go to check on him, he growls and barks at us and is too aggressive to pill any more so he is definitely feeling better.
Yesterday we did our last male sterilizations - timed so that so if they have complications they´ll occur before we leave saturday and while we can do something about them. There were 2 dogs that were too aggressive for the owners to handle so they couldn´t bring them into any of our clinics but the owners really wanted to have them vaccinated against rabies and sterilized. Yesterday we gave the owners some oral sedatives to feed the dogs and had them lure them inside with food so that we could try and catch them. It took all day but by the end of the day they were confined and slightly sedate and we were able to restrain them enough to sedate them further and sterlize them at the houses. We are hoping this helps with the aggression.
Doing the housecalls takes quite a bit of time as we have to walk to each house and there are no street names or numbers. We just have to ask someone local to show us where the owner lives. we´re treating almost all the patients outside. the people here have been very friendly and very patient.
It´s time for dinner - my guess is the menu will be potatoes, frijoles, chicken and tortillas. My team mates have mutinied with the tortillas and though we get served dozens of tortillas with every meal, I´m the only one eating them anymore and finding it hard to represent for the whole team.
Got to keep strong and healthy for tomorrow.
All our post sterilization patients are doing well. It can take them a day or so to start to eat though some eat within a few hours. For the ones that aren´t eating we do a housecall and check their temperature, check for infection and pain. we can treat with pain control and with
antibiotics. With some of the patients all that is needed is good old-fashioned tlc: keeping them warm till they are more active and feeding them palatable food.Terry the rottweiler is doing well. He is eating well and comfortable - the swelling is all gone and he´s been seen walking around town. When we go to check on him, he growls and barks at us and is too aggressive to pill any more so he is definitely feeling better.
Yesterday we did our last male sterilizations - timed so that so if they have complications they´ll occur before we leave saturday and while we can do something about them. There were 2 dogs that were too aggressive for the owners to handle so they couldn´t bring them into any of our clinics but the owners really wanted to have them vaccinated against rabies and sterilized. Yesterday we gave the owners some oral sedatives to feed the dogs and had them lure them inside with food so that we could try and catch them. It took all day but by the end of the day they were confined and slightly sedate and we were able to restrain them enough to sedate them further and sterlize them at the houses. We are hoping this helps with the aggression.Doing the housecalls takes quite a bit of time as we have to walk to each house and there are no street names or numbers. We just have to ask someone local to show us where the owner lives. we´re treating almost all the patients outside. the people here have been very friendly and very patient.
It´s time for dinner - my guess is the menu will be potatoes, frijoles, chicken and tortillas. My team mates have mutinied with the tortillas and though we get served dozens of tortillas with every meal, I´m the only one eating them anymore and finding it hard to represent for the whole team.
Got to keep strong and healthy for tomorrow.
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