A change of pace

There have been those days where I have helped out in surgery but today was a little different back in the med room. Today I helped with intakes of the new second chance dogs along with a few rabbits that came in as well.

My day started with helping out with the morning meds. This is usually pretty quick but when you have a group of ten new arrivals that test positive for ghiardia you have to administer panacur, a de wormer, to all of them. This sounds easy but it's in powder form so first you have to mix it into wet food than try to get every one of these new dogs to eat all of it. Eventually we were able to finish but not before we got pooed by the little dogs paws. Luckily this is only once a day so hopefully by the time I go home I won't smell as bad.

Next it was a matter of getting ready for the intakes. This is a pretty simple process of cleaning up the med room, laying down a nice comfortable blanket, and getting some cream cheese and dog treats ready for the new arrivals. Once all of the that was done it was time to get the syringes ready for blood draw which included running an anti coagulant through them to make sure the blood flowed freely for the test we were going to perform. Then of course we actually had to get all of the tests ready. They are a simple snap test to check for a few things including heart worms and erlichia, a tick born disease pretty common in these animals. In addition to this we had to get all of the microchips and scanners ready as well.

Now it was time to start bringing in the dogs. I have to say, this group was very cooperative. After going through a "tutorial" on blood draw it was my turn. After a few failed attempts I was able to draw enough and got the hang of it by the end. In fact by the last one I didn't even blow the vein. I still feel bad for the majority of the little guys that now have both of their legs shaved because of blood draw.

Once the blood was drawn it was mixed with a solution then put on the snap tests. You have to wait about a minute, without taking your eyes off of it, until the blood runs down to a certain point then you click the test. Unfortunately one of the tests came back positive which means we have to to a jugular draw and send the blood work out to the lab. Hopefully the animal was just exposed to it because you never want to see a sweet dog like this go through anything difficult.

Of course on top of all of this we also had to microchip all of these animals. It's a pretty simple procedure but when you actually see the size of the syringe compared to some of these dogs you are amazed that you can actually do it. Luckily, like I said before, this group was amazing and we only had one screamer. I really can't explain how loud it was except for the fact that everyone was a little dazed afterwards.

Closing out it was time to do the rabbit intakes. I pretty much remember weighing the little guys and that's about it. When you are confined in an eight by eight room with ten or so rabbits with the door closed your mind tends to get a bit hazy. Weather you are allergic or not, the amount of hair and dander in this room was crazy. Luckily fresh air was waiting for us, along with a lint brush, and the intake was over. If I hear of what actually went on in there I'll let you know.

Thanks for reading everyone and the picture up top is a sweet little puppy named Digit that we brought in from another shelter. The picture isn't great but the underbite on this guy is hilarious.