Tuesday, October 23, 2012

My alarm goes off at 6:00 am and I am amazed to see that Dad and Brad are already up and moving. I get in gear and hurry up myself. Kellie had mapped out directions to our event today to the St. Bishop High School. We decide instead to follow her from the Coffee shop we had gone to the morning before.

When we first arrived at the high school, the van has not yet made an appearance.  The parking lot, however, is full of people with their pets waiting to drop-off.  At the far end of the parking lot, a woman is standing with her chow-chow.  Dad starts up a conversation with her and finds out the chow, Simba, belongs to the woman’s son who has gone off to college.  The woman is concerned because the dog is aggressive and she has a hard time managing him.

Dad takes this opportunity to give a little behavioral advice.  He tells the woman he looks forward to following up with her when we hope to return next spring.  The van finally arrives and everyone springs into action.

The system the shelter has in play for identifying the patients is quite different from ours back at Abbey, but it seems to work.  The shelter staff use masking tape to keep track of who’s who.  They number each patient and place a piece of tape with the number on each of the pet’s foreheads.  The number coincides with records that has the pet’s actual name, their owner’s name and information written down.

Simba gets numbered “1” and the shelter staff began the pre-med stage.  Once Simba is pre-meded, the staff began to prep him for surgery by shaving the surgical site.  The staff is dismayed when they discover Simba appears to be missing 2 crucial parts of his anatomy.  Kellie gets to work calling the owner to verify that Simba has indeed not been fixed.  This was not Dad’s first crypt orchid, however, and he knew exactly where to look for Simba’s missing parts.  Kellie returns to tell us she was unsuccessful at reaching Simba’s owner.  By this time, Dad has found his MIA anatomy.  The surgery was a success!

When Simba goes into recovery, Kellie asks me if I can help Liza, outside with intake.  I’m here to help and will go where needed so of course I tell her I will.  Outside, there isn’t much shade.  The kennels set up for recovery patients are in the little shade that there is available.

Liza seems a bit flustered with the handouts that she is preparing to send home with each patient.  The wind is constantly blowing the forms around and on top of that the patient sheets are mixed all together.  I offer suggestions to keep the patient sheets organized and Liza gets excited and tells me I should talk to Kellie about it.  I tell her I will definitely get on that.

Eventually the shade we were protecting the recovery animals with disappears.  Kellie comes to the rescue and helps us set up a tent where we move all the kennels under for the patients.  One by one recovery patients come outside and Liza and I watch them.

Around lunch time Brad arrives to get a lunch order.  Liza tells him about a sandwich place nearby called “Mencho’s” and Brad goes with it.  He takes everyone’s lunch order and goes to pick-up food for us.  He also stops by K-Mart and picks up a case of sprite for us.

After lunch, a group of students come up for some education on the fix-it foundation and how important pet care is.  Kellie opens the back door to the van which opens up right to Dad’s surgery table.  The children watch with amazement as Dad continues performing surgeries.

The teacher of the group of students and owner of the pet in surgery watches as Dad unknowingly continues.  She seems curious and only near the end of the surgery does she admit that it is her cat.  In fact several of the teachers and students had pets that were performed on that day.

The rest of the surgeries for the day went smoothly.  Dad’s tally for the day was 3 cat spays and 1 cat neuter, 7 dog spays, and 7 dog neuters counting Simba.  That is a total of 18 surgeries in one day.

We head back to the house with plans to go snorkeling.  Overly exhausted from his long day of surgeries, Dad decides to take a nap.  During his siesta, I enjoy the view around the house.  I discover many little hermit crabs wandering around the pavement that leads inside.  So close to the welcome mat outside the door, I hope they find a safer place at night.

There are also a ton of conk shells all around the walls outside.  Liza had told us earlier that the locals were very protective of their shells and no one was aloud to take them off the island.  She told us how there were organizations that go to the airport to collect all their “stolen” souvenirs.

I return to the back porch patiently waiting for the sun to set.  I am surprised to see a tan dog walking along the shore and I call to it.  It turns and looks up at me wagging its tag then disappears.  I think nothing of it until I turn and see that the dog has now joined me on the porch.  I see that the dog is a female and she is wearing a collar with the name “Misti” on it as well as a phone number without an area code.

Misti wags her tail excitedly while panting and I feel sorry for her.  I find a plastic bowl in the cupboard and fill it with water for her.  She laps it up greedily and in no time the bowl was empty again.  I refill it but now Misti is much more interested in getting attention from me than drinking the water.

I notice Misti’s feet appear swollen and callused and her stomach appears bloated.  I wonder if she is pregnant and what the protocol is for taking care of Misti.  I go inside and look for Dad’s phone to find Kellie’s number.  I call her and ask what I should do.

Kellie informs me that many dogs and cats wonder around the island without their owners.  She suggests I call the owner and let them know about the fixit foundation and where we will be tomorrow.  Kellie gives me the local area code and I wonder back outside to find Misti.  She is now across to the neighbors’ yard.  Brad suggests that maybe she is on her way home.  I try to follow her but she disappears in the heavily treed area that separates the houses.

It is starting to get dark so I make my way back to the terrace to enjoy the sunset I had sought after.  As I watch the sun go down, Dad finally gets up from his nap and we make a plan for dinner.  We decide to return to the Cheeseburger restaurant to have a real meal this time.

The night life is happening there and we enjoy the atmosphere of the Island locals.  Our waitress (different from the other day) doesn’t appear to like us.  She is young and has an accent different from the locals.  She would much rather wait on the group of young college-aged men then us, although I can’t say that I blame her.

After dinner we head home to rest and prepare for the following day.