Creative Solutions

It’s been a while since I have posted anything on here so here we go.

It has really been amazing what I’ve learned from the volunteers that have come from various countries and clinics in the world. Being on an island it is often hard to find everything one needs to accomplish the tasks needed just for everyday life. In a veterinary clinic it can sometimes be harder and it takes an amount of creativity to come up with solutions for many of our problems. This post talks just about three of these kinds of solutions.

A volunteer Vet, Alex, visiting from New Zealand had a problem in finding the right size e-collar for dogs so they wouldn’t chew out their stitches or wounds. So she told us to get some buckets and cut out the bottom. We’ve now had numerous dogs with buckets attached to their necks and it is sometimes quite humorous to see these dogs jumping in and out of cars. More often than not these dogs get the nick name “Bucket head”, but it does the trick.

About a month back now we also had a problem when cleaning out all the cage and litter trays for the various cats and dogs in the mornings and afternoons. A puddle would accumulate and make the grassy area into a swamp which you would not like to step into. Those who were here at the time tried to think of a solution with nothing feasible coming out of it until a new volunteer, Brian, a Vet Student from the States, came in and suggested we lay down gravel in the area to create a suitable area for cleaning and a drainable surface that wouldn’t create a swamp. Perfect! Problem solved.

The last trick really astounded me in its simplicity. A vet nurse, Kristen, from Germany came up with a creative solution for a dog which had a bandage in his leg due to a break. The bandage came down over the dogs paw so we had the problem that if we took it out to walk in the morning or after it had rained that the bandage would get wet and would need to be changed again, which is a nuisance. There have been many dogs that we have looked after at the clinic with the exact same problem and we have tried many things including tying a plastic bag around the bandage. Well, Kristen decided to cut the bottom half off a plastic bottle and tape it to the foot to create a cup. Not only does it work but we can tell when this dog is now sneaking up on us. This also saves on material that we are constantly running out of at the clinic.

When coming into areas like this where resources are limited it is important to keep your mind open to creative solutions to fixing a problem. There are probably many that I have not written down here so sorry if I didn’t mention yours. Thanks so much for everyone’s input in making this clinic run to the best of its ability. I hope it continues to move forward and grow.