Busy,,,

Busy, busy. Yesterday and today were 10 hour work days. I'm not sure how Aren does it week after week. This week is especially bad - working 6 days in a row which is unusual now. I'll go backwards I guess;
Thursday - my surgery day so I start before 7. I had told Brandi to not come in today for kennels since there was only 1 boarder. Of course that meant I had to take care of Isaac myself as well as Festus, my surgery dog. I also had 4 cats up front to take care of. Milo, the 2 year old tom cat had used his litterbox, which is good, but tomcat urine stinks like crazy. I could tell the minute I walked through the door. In order to get the clinic smelling nice again before clients started showing up, I had to do super cleanup fast. Milo's a good boy and was neutered and declawed today to get ready for his new life as a house cat. I hope it works for him since tomcats often cannot stop spraying in the house even after being neutered. Oh well, if he gets booted outside at least he'll be fixed.
Two other kitties - Lilly and Bert, or Roberta, were here to be spayed and declawed. Bert is a cute bluecream kitten, very affectionate. Lilly is a beautiful long haired cat that looks like the Fancy Feast cat on TV.




 Also there was Squirt, a cat that ate chickens bones before Christmas and is having serious trouble due to bone pieces still stuck in her gut. She's ouchy and not happy at all but you do the best you can for her.
That was my surgeries today. There was also a hernia repair on a show dairy heifer (cow).



I helped the client get his cow into the barn but I let Pam help with that one since I was helping Dennis with all the other surgeries. The doctors can do most things by themselves, especially once the animal is sedated, but declaws require a technician to help with the tourniquet as well as holding the toes open for the tissue glue to be dropped in.


This looks similar to our cats after we're done. The cats have bandages on their feet and stay overnight. I will take the bandages off tomorrow morning and watch for bleeding. The cats go home after 10 tomorrow.
One last picture of a dog like Festus:


Festus was neutered today. Nice dog - very muscular and athletic. He lives on a Boer goat farm where I bought some goat kids a couple of years ago. The owners had to put their other boxer down a few months ago and went out and bought another like him.
The afternoon today was spent cleaning up 4 surgery packs, the surgery room, the kennel, checking in surgeries for tomorrow, helping Dennis x-ray Squirt with our new digital x-ray, checking out Festus, helping load back up the heifer...doing kennels after 5 since I had told my kennel person to not come in (silly me)., and sterilizing the packs. Still, not as tired as I was last night when I went to bed an hour earlier after napping on the sofa all evening.
The dogs are starting to feel abandoned...