FitzpatrickLand!

Now our clinic is fully and officially open. Today was our first day doing spays and neuters for the public’s pets. Ten cats and five dogs visited our clinic today and went home this afternoon minus the ability to contribute to the pet population.

Things ran remarkably smoothly today and I think we have most of the kinks worked out of our paperwork process.

The local paper did a story on last Friday’s grand opening which I’m sure contributed to the mass of emails and calls that came in over the weekend and today.

Tomorrow we have lots of our shelter’s animals making the trek down the hallway to have surgery so they can get ready for adoption. Yippee!

I learned a new word today, but found out that I had already been using it. For years I have called Alice, my ex-foster dog and now my mom’s loyal companion, a “pwetty wittle pibble” not knowing that pibble is actually used as a cute name for pit bulls. So of course I had to search for pibble stuff online and found fun things at Cafe Press. I found a t-shirt I want, but loved this too…

Cute pit bull attire from Cafe Press. I can picture Alice in this!

I’m hanging out at my parent’s house this weekend and enjoying spending time with their pibbles.

Alice was my foster for over a year when I worked at Heartland and was then adopted by my parents. She’s so pretty:

Cute thing! The scar on her forehead is from an abscess she had as a puppy - don't worry, nothing traumatic for this pampered girl :)

We adopted Rose from my current shelter before I had any idea I’d be working there. At the time it was Humane Society of the Willamette Valley and had a satellite adoption center at the mall. On impulse my mom, my sister and I had a look around while visiting the mall one weekend during my freshman year of college and found an adorable 8 week old puppy named Rose.  Now Rose is almost 12 years old and still a wonderful girl!

Pretty RosieKins

Strangely enough, I learned years later that my boss at Heartland had been Rose’s foster mom briefly. It took us a long time working together before we even realized this connection. Small world!

We did it! We completed our first week of surgeries in our spay/neuter clinic and celebrated at our grand opening tonight. Grand total so far: 44 spays & neuters. Next week this number is going to go up much faster when we officially open to the public.

We had a short day of surgery today so we could be cleaned up and ready for our celebration this evening. Today was our first Feral Friday and we had 9 cats arrive in live traps for surgery so they could be returned to their colonies minus reproductive organs. We also had two adorable foster puppies who I missed getting pictures of – one was the scruffiest thing ever.

Our clinic was prettied up when the Turners, exceptionally dedicated, longtime volunteers and supporters of WHS, sent us flowers yesterday to celebrate the dream of a spay/neuter clinic becoming a reality.

Jenny busily scheduling more appointments. We are completely booked for the next two weeks already.

In preparation for the open house, staff staged the different areas of the clinic with stuffed animals to show the different steps in an animal’s day in the clinic, from initial check up to surgery recovery.

A willing volunteer from our education hall's herd of stuffed animals demonstrating the use of equipment in the surgery suite.

This dog in surgery made me do a double take when I walked by it for the first time. I saw the animal and couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t anyone in there with the animal to monitor anesthesia and why Dr Holt wasn’t anywhere in sight. It made a lot more sense when I realized what was up.

Some very nice "feral" cats demonstrating the use of our live traps in the feral cat room. And another volunteer showing the use of the recovery mat for animals just coming out of surgery.

Everyone hanging out before the open house begins. From left to right: Beth, Dr Holt, Marissa, Dr Eure (vet from Humane Alliance), Melissa (tech from Humane Alliance), Jenny, Dawn

All of our clinic staff milled around during the event to show visitors around the clinic and answer questions. It was great to get to show off the clinic and talk about what we are doing.

Just before the open house there was a VIP reception for donors to the clinic. It was so nice to be able to thank this dedicated bunch for their contributions and to show them the tangible results of their support.

Susan unveiling the donor recognition board

To kick off the main event, we honored the tradition of ribbon cutting with enormous scissors.

Susan preparing to officially usher in our shelter's era of high volume, high quality spay and neuter services for our community's animals

During the three hour event over 100 people visited us, ate munchies, toured the clinic and got to meet our staff. I’m not sure how many people actually attended since I’m not good at estimating crowds and since people dropped in over the course of the whole event, but there were lots of people everywhere the whole time.

What an exhausting week – I may not get up before noon tomorrow. Bright and early Monday morning we get to kick off our clinic’s first real week serving our community!

Our clinic’s pretty lobby…

In just five days this space will be full of people dropping off pets for spays and neuters! Yippee!!

And on Friday it will be full of people during our grand opening festivities. Can’t wait!

We’re up to 19 surgeries in our clinic so far – 9 yesterday and 10 today. Today was only a half day though and we’re getting up to speed pretty quickly. I’m so excited that we’re getting caught up on shelter animal spays/neuters this week!

My biggest happy thought of the day was getting our admission forms off to the printer so we can have them back by the end of the week to be ready for the public’s animals next week. Not too big a deal since everyone else did a bunch of the work, but a nice project to get off my desk.

Tomorrow we have some adorable kitties scheduled for surgery!

Today was the first surgery day in our clinic! I wanted to share a few quick highlights of our great day…

Here's our suite before it saw its first surgery this morning

The calm before the excitement begins

Cutest surgery patients EVER! A litter of 3 Golden mixes and a litter of 3 Chis

Pre surgery check ups

Puppies on pre meds... much mellower :)

Jessi & Charlotte helping out while waiting for the day to get rolling

Sprite the Chi, our first surgery

We had quite a crowd this morning to help celebrate our clinic's first day. We've been waiting years to see this happen!

Eager onlookers

Dr H spaying Sprite

Sprite thinking about waking up

Sprite's brother Buffalo getting his turn

Gotta love WHS volunteers! Autumn stopped by to say hi and ended up working with Jenny on data entry... Autumn showed Jenny PetPoint and Jenny showed Autumn the clinic software.

We did 9 surgeries today and have many more scheduled for this week. It is great having Humane Alliance’s staff here with us as we settle into our groove and figure out the details of our clinic.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

In about 12 hours we will be doing our first surgeries in our spay/neuter clinic! Most of our clinic team assembled today to finish organizing our supplies, put away orders that arrived while we were gone, and to catch up on making appointments.

Happily, we got confirmation that Dr Eure and Melissa from Humane Alliance made it in from North Carolina and found their way to Salem this afternoon. We’re thrilled to have them with us for our first two weeks!

Now it’s off to bed to hopefully catch up from my lingering jet lag to be ready for tomorrow’s fun.

After a relatively uneventful day of travel we made it back to rainy Oregon late last night. Our flight leaving Asheville was delayed about an hour and a half, which ended up working out well. Originally our layover in Chicago was going to be about three hours. So we still weren’t in danger of missing our connecting flight and got to hang out at the Asheville airport longer, which was more comfortable and had free wifi.

It was still extremely cold in Asheville yesterday. When I got up it was only 12 degrees and -5 with the wind chill. Since we were on a semi small plane between Asheville and Chicago we had to walk outside to get into the terminal. I thought it was funny that Chicago felt warm compared to what we had been used to.

While trekking to the other terminal for our connecting flight, we got to go through the rainbow tunnel again.

Lots of colorful lights!

Finally on the last leg of our trip home.

Almost home!

After getting to Salem after midnight, we all dispersed from the shelter’s parking lot to go home and adjust back to this time zone before we meet back up on Sunday morning to put the finishing touches on our clinic. Just two days until we do our first surgeries in our clinic!

Trent picked me up in Salem last night and greeted me with flowers… awww! But even more impressive was that he cleaned the house for me :) I’m glad to be home!

Since we were done working so early yesterday we were able to go play in the afternoon. One of the big sights to see around Asheville is the Biltmore House, the 250 room country retreat built by George Vanderbilt.

The enormous Biltmore House

After my first two pictures here, my camera battery decided it had worked enough on this trip. Thanks to Jenny for sharing her pictures with me so I could use them here!

One of my favorite parts of the house was the huge staircase. When inside, looking down from the fourth floor was dizzying!

Main entrance and exterior of the grand staircase. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

The house has 4 acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. There was also a basement that had a swimming pool, gymnasium, changing rooms, bowling alley, servants’ quarters, and kitchens.

There were lots of gargoyles. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

Taken from the garden at the side of the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

There were statues scattered around this garden and the ponds at the front of the house.

One of the statues surrounding the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

The ponds lining the length of the final drive leading to the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

The entire driveway to the house was over 3 miles long and wound through the amazing land surrounding the house.

Even in the dead of winter, the views from the estate were amazing.

Views of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

I would love to see this place in spring or fall. We got to drive through the gardens, which were huge but pretty brown since it’s winter. It would be amazing to see them in full bloom. There were some nice pics on their website though.

One of the lions at the main entrance to the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

After touring the house and the nearby grounds, we drove through the gardens on our way to the winery. We took their mini tour and browsed the gift shop before heading into Biltmore Village for an early dinner.

If I lived around here, it would be fun to get a yearly pass to to Biltmore Estate to be able to come back to see the different seasons and explore the property more.

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!