Kiribati dog capers revisited: Tuesday 9th June. Leesa's blonde day.

It was great to have Leesa back on board after her enforced bed rest due to illness. She had a dilemma, did she come back to help us or see what the medical officers were like on board the US Millinocket ship if she was still feeling ill?! But as she was still recovering she was allowing herself a blonde day (only once!).

So we started in a new location today at the Teinainano Urban Council (TUC) in Teaoraereke village (basically instead of turning left from the hotel, today we turned right!). On our previous visit this location had seen our most successful surgery numbers due to the enthusiastic dog wardens, trucks to pick up dogs and very positive council mayor.

Helen with her injection pole which was very useful again.

Set up under the garage area.

This time we were setting up outside under a new car repair shed area instead of inside a tiny office. Better place for onlookers to view things, but easier place for animals to run away. We have got into a good rhythm with set up so it was pretty straight forward to be ready by 8am. We had a cage of a few dogs waiting for us and a pig, which was added to during the day by several more cages of dogs. Again, the injection pole to administer sedatives was extremely useful. All the loads of dogs were taken home uneventfully by the dog wardens in successive cage loads. We had Rui and Temwa doing more surgery and catheter placements and it was great to see their ongoing dedication and committment to learning and to practicing their skills. It was also great to be able to meet one of the really good dog wardens again who had a real empathy for dogs. I later heard him speaking to waiting owners and asked him what he was saying and he was telling them (without instruction from us) to keep their dogs quiet, in the shade, and give a little soft food and water as they recover. Wonderful!!

We provided a great source of interest to school kids
before (and during!) school.

Paige worked her magic with "piggy magic" (a zoletil mix) and we called her queen of pigs, but she was also the master at the injection pole (I am a complete wimp!). It was also Gabriel's last day with us as he was needed on another project, so it was our last day as a full team. Getting sad...

We also took opportunity to talk with the Australian volunteer who is helping review council bylaws at the TUC about humane euthanasia methods of unwanted dogs, care of impounded dogs and ongoing education of locals regarding desexing and health care of their dogs.

Pododermatitis (in all 4 feet) in one dog.

A few interesting things we saw was our first positive snap blood test which turned out to be Heartworm infection in a relatively young dog (which belonged to a friend of mine!). A cryptorchid male, more diarrhoea, body condition scores generally around 1-2 out of 5, and one dog presented with very large foot pads which were red and maybe swollen. I wondered if this dog was in the water alot and had a moisture dermatitis. Some dogs are good at fishing for food so this could be possible.

Helen in her element.

The mayor had a brief chat with all of us at the end of the day and expressed his gratitude to us for all our work which was really nice. I then took opportunity at the end of the day to visit old neighbours nearby and had a few good chats. Later in the evening we had internet success and skyped home to Australia, not using my laptop of course!