I can’t believe our training is over already. It went by incredibly fast but still managed to fit in an amazing amount of information and the time for each of us to build our skills.
The weather again abbreviated our surgery day. Snow was supposed to arrive this afternoon and go throughout the night, so many people didn’t bring their animals in for their appointment today since they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to pick them up in the morning. And many transports again canceled since they are in the mountainy areas that already have snow.
Even though the surgery day was short, we still got a bunch done. Jenny and I got to help with the second part of check in. On previous days we had done the paperwork with the owners at drop off, but today we got to help with the next step of taking the animals back and assisting with their vet checks, pre-medding and getting them settled in cages.
One of the things I love about this clinic and their staff is how genuinely happy everyone is to see the individual animals coming in. Everyone has a kind word or a compliment about the patients, connecting with the pet’s owner as they do the pet-pass-off. Seeing this many animals day in and day out and still being able to ooh and aah over the amazing cuteness of these critters is heartwarming.
Today I also got to spend time watching other surgery teams who weren’t working with a training group to see their flow. One of these groups had a pretty Great Dane to spay. Of course that made me think of my Romeo (which is of course an excuse to put another picture of my big baby in here).
Yep, he's big
He’s a lot bigger than this girl was, especially his head, but she had the beautiful merle markings. She was very sweet and cooperative, but after her pre-meds, it took two people to walk her down to surgery, one with the leash and one nudging along behind, since all she wanted to do was nap.
But the team from Michigan won the prize for cutest dogs of the day, purely based on the number they had – every single dog I saw of theirs was beyond adorable. They had a litter of six cute fuzzy puppies and some incredibly cute teenage and young adult mutts. Here is this team at the end of training, ready to head back to Ann Arbor.
It was great to meet you, Chelsea, Luke and Dr Mary. Come visit us if you're ever in Oregon!
Today we got to learn how to wrap packs, which is one of my favorite things ever! I loved their method of testing to see if you wrapped the pack tight enough – you throw it against the wall and if it doesn’t come undone, you succeeded.
Marissa and Dawn talking over the instruments with Holly in preparation for pack wrapping
Since our team was done with surgery early, we had our final classroom session before it was even lunchtime and reviewed things we learned over the week. We officially got welcomed into the high volume, high quality spay/neuter family and received our medallions to prove it.
Then it was time for our final lunch at the clinic. This was one of my favorite parts of this trip. Every day we had a great lunch homemade by Diane. Today was corn chowder and cornbread day – yum! Thanks Diane for the great food this week!!
Diane checking our delicious lunch one more time
After this we made our rounds to say goodbye to all the wonderful people we met here.
Thanks again to Dr Brestle, Joey and Melissa for all the help this week. Y'all were wonderful to work with! We couldn't have asked for better teachers.
I hope I make it back to this area someday and can come visit again!