Surgeries Day 2

I have to preface today's post with the announcement that allergies SUCK! I've been doing pretty well lately, but for some reason today was faucet-nose day. So yes, I did walk around recovery with wads of paper towel stuffed up my nose. I needed my hands free to take care of critters...

This morning there were several dogs waiting for us - at the boat dock! I made friends with a little beagley sort of dog from a neighboring village and picked her up to go on her first ever boat ride:

She was super friendly, and amazingly calm about the whole thing:

 Christine got to cuddle an adorable foster puppy named Cashew (her sister is Pistachio):

 Not all the dogs were as well-behaved. Here Randy shows off his wrangling skills so that a patient can be sedated, while Jason cleans up the poop. Yes, the poor dog had the poop scared out of her:

 Today was absolutely puppy day! We did a total of 63 surgeries, and at least a dozen were young pups like this batch of four that ended up being abandoned at our clinic. No worries though, with faces like these, and dedicated foster folks at Ayuda, the pups will be well taken care of, and placed in forever homes when they're ready:

In between surgeries, Dr. Steele loves on the beagley dog from the boat. She was just as sweet post-surgery as she was when we met her:

Awwwwww....

We ran out of kennels to keep patients in while they waited for owners to pick them up, so several dogs were either tied up or placed with volunteers to be watched while we kept on doing surgeries:

 After today's clinic, we had to pack up all of our gear and clean the room out - tomorrow we move on to a different village to spay and neuter pets there:

 Stacy and Sandy catch their breath between surgeries. Although Sandy is a veterinarian, she works in a lab, so she doesn't get to even watch surgeries very often. She filled in as a fantastic surgical nurse, as well as helping out just about everyone with whatever they were doing. Stacy, of course, has been nicknamed "the Machine" and spayed and spayed and spayed all day:

 For the boat ride home, sandy cuddled one of the Ayuda foster dogs. Again, the dogs were remarkably calm considering all that was going on:

 After a well-earned soak in the hot tub, several of us headed out for dinner. I ordered a pina colada, but I had NO IDEA what was in store for me! The sparkler that was sticking out the top died fairly quickly, since it was windy again, but check this out (aside from the dorky face I mean):

 And then, after something like that, plus the live band was playing Nirvana, well, Papa Tom and I had to do a little bit of dancing: