Day 2: small animals

We worked a full day in the clinic today.

We took in 41 dogs and cats, most of them for spaying. The vets also performed one leg amputation and fixed up trachea dog (mentioned in previous post).  I worked at the anaesthesia area, and shaved and prepped the animals for surgery. I got to do a few of the pre-anaestethic im injections, however the one IV I tried I couldn't hit the vein. Hopefully later on the trip I'll get proficient at that.  I also did my first surgery! Just a neuter on a little kitten, very closely supervised, but it was fun to actually hold a scalpel and get involved.

                                           Cleaning the tools

 Our biggest problem today was keeping the animals asleep, even with extra doses of the anesthetic they kept wanting to wake up, which is not a good surgery trick!

We ended the day with the trach dog. They prepped him and cleanned him up, and intubated him (which was crazy, cause you could see the tube through the hole in his neck). It worked out better than we all expected I think. They where able to close the trachea w/o having to cut into any of the rings, and then stitch up the skin over it. We wrapped his neck up in cotton to prevent him from moving his head back and opening it up too far. As he started waking up from surgery he barked! Before this due to the hole he'd been hoarse and could barely make a noise, so this was promising. Apparently the next day he barked alot, so hopefully its healing well.

                                                  Getting ready for surgery.
                           
                               

                                                                     All stitched up