Clinic in Jaibalito 10 July 2013

Hola!

Today we packed up a boat and made our way to a small village called Jaibalito on the lake. We held a vaccine and sterilization clinic. We sterilized 11 animals and vaccinated/dewormed approximately 20 dogs. We were set up in a small house in a house that was donated by someone in the community. We quickly shuffled some things around and set up for the surgeries. Soon enough people from the community started coming with their animals. It was so great to see the families coming in with their pets and their health records from the previous year. There were many kids and adults dropping by to watch. Sometimes there would be a big group of people surrounding us as we vaccinated their dogs.
 

      We saw a lot of dogs with ticks, some with at least 3-4 in each ear, however all of the 4DX tests donated to AYUDA were negative which was great to see. We used Advantix donated from St. Lawrence Valley Animal hospital and the dewormer from Pfizer. The supplies that we got as donations were quickly put to use during the clinic. We would like to sincerely thank all of our sponsors as the items were drastically needed!

      We saw a lot of dogs with mange. There was a group of 3 dogs from the same home who were all in really rough shape. The youngest one either had demodex or sarcaoptic mange or microsporum caninum. In order to properly diagnose we would need to look at a skin scraping under a microscope. However, we didn't have this luxury. We treated the dog with Ivermectin, long lasting antibiotic for the folliculitis and Advantix. The vet said if he came back and saw he dog was still ill than we would know if was ring worm.

For the surgeries the vet uses Ketamine and Xylazine. The 1st top up dose was 1/2 the amount of both Xylazine and Ketamine. On the second top up is 1/2 the amount of ketamine only. We recovered the animals outside and sometimes got the owners to sit with their dogs as the recovered so that they were involved i the whole process. During recovery we would give them antibiotics (Pen B), flea/tick prevention, remove the ticks if we saw some (Mike was great at this), trim nails and remove dreadlocks if necessary. We talked to the owners about keeping their animals quiet and off the streets.

During the clinic we noticed a female in heat being harrassed  by a male (if you know what I mean). We found the owners and got the ok to fix both of them. It was done right away since many males will stay around a female in heat forming dangerous heat packs. During their recoveries the male hopped up when he saw the female walking by; little did he know she was no longer the same dog.

Overall it was a wonderful experience working with so many dedicated people. It was great to see the community getting involved, however it is still evident that more improvement can be made. Many people won't sterilize their animals, more specifically the males, because they feel it makes them less of a "man" hence less useful as a guard dog.

We're off to do another clinic tomorrow in San Pedro!

Michelle