Oops I forgot...

Now that I have all the photos of the team, I thought I would share how amazing the Rogz for Dogz Vaka Eiva team was to Esther Honey and our animals.
With the clinic spending well over $500 a week on food for our strays and inpatients, the $4000 worth of food donated, and HEAPS of other stuff, is incredible.
We can't thank them enough for all the hard work and generosity, especially Kylie who had the uncool task of cataloging and organising most of it!
Oh and nice job in the races too!! :-)

Puppies puppies and more puppies...

Posted on our Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Esther-Honey-Foundation/123120337604), is a new video of what has been consuming our lives for the last 5 weeks; eight tiny puppies who's mum needed help raising them...

Other than the puppies, life has been uneventful in paradise. A few of us braved the Boiler Swim (an open water charity swim around a shipwreck - totally just under 1km), and other than Vicky who kicked some butt, the rest of us left a wee bit like jelly as we 'kept the slow kids at the back company'...

The weather is getting hotter (feed and clean starting to hurt!) and the rain a little less predictable. This week we celebrate two years of having Gregg as our clinical director, and hence are having a wee party. Lots of thanks go out to Gregg for all the great work he has done here, and will continue to do...

We have some exciting news coming up; Esther Honey will be having a fundraising Quiz Night in January. It will be fancy dress (animal themed of course) and lots of fun, with prizes and drinks specials galore. Hope all our local readers will be there!

Ducks, pigs and other surprises

A hectic week here at the clinic - so much so we had to ship in a super experienced vet at the last minute (thanks Nicola!). Our surgery list on Monday has a total of 13 procedures, none of which were nice easy routine neuterings. And then - of course - it is the one week when a whole bunch of people decide it is the right time to have their pets desexed... Needless to say we are still making our way through Monday's list! But the vets are doing an amazing job; they just need a few more cocktails at the end of the day than usual. Which is convenient, since the lovely management at the Crown Beach Resort (my personal favourite hammock hangout on the island) have been very generous to the Esther Honeys when cocktails are involved... :-)

It has also been a week of surprises; sick ducks, injured piglets and a feral kitten with a birth defected foot, which we are going to have to be very ingenuitive in surgically turning into a functional limb.

Outside of work, the team enjoyed a laughter-filled night at the RoadHouse Bar and Grill for kareoke night! With a few super keen singers, and many more excellent cheerleaders, we even managed to take home the winning bottle of wine (I'm almost sure there was no bias involved...)! Thanks again to the Road House for their generous donation last month!
Gregg and I also attended the 2011 Cook Islands Tourism Awards, which was a spectacularly impressive event. With Air New Zealand sponsors, the entire national auditorium had been converted into an aeroplane, hostesses, captains message and all. The five course meal was divine, and the speakers entertaining. Congratulations to all the winners, and congratulations to Esther Honey for making a huge contribution to the tourism of the country; happy animals means happy tourists after all...

Big plans are in the works for upcoming fundraising events, including a gala dinner and a quiz night (animal fancy dress mandatory). More info to follow as plans become official... :-)

Rain and sleep deprivation...

So it appears the rain dance worked. Showers are back in action, not that we need it now with just stepping out the door for feed and clean... But we are all very happy to have some water in the tanks anyway.




We have adopted a tiny wee kitten that we have called 'Mango'. Mango was found on the side of the road with his brother who had already passed away, no mother in sight. At less than a week old, Mango requires feeding every two hours, including overnight so the volunteers are all in surprisingly good spirits considering their lack of sleep. In the past, we have had no luck raising such young kittens as we have had to make up concoctions of milk, egg, condensed milk etc in an attempt to give them sufficient nutrients, but they have not made it. Thanks to a generous donation of a bucket of "Di-Vetelac" baby animal milk replacement, we all have our fingers tightly crossed that Mango will be our first success story from so young.

Rain dancing

So it turns out that the Cook Islands has run out of water...!With only a couple of percent in the tanks before a national state or emergency is called, most of the volunteers are mainly upset about the lack of a shower. Thank God we live across the road from the beach!
It does, however, make the daily feed and clean somewhat more challenging, with the inability to clean, and Gregg doing regular runs across the road (where, being a few metres further down hill, still has a little) for water for animals!
Luckily, the last two days have seen some drizzle and we now have a trickle of water in the toilet - hooray!!
As for the patients, the fish poisonings continue to come in. Just when one gets better, two more arrive. However, Blackie, Bourbon and Bobbi all now have lovely homes and our clinic dog Mama- who came down with fish poisoning due to her scavenging ways - is starting to improve with lots of TLC. She now appears mainly upset that Hovis is in the house without her!
The last few weeks have also seen a sad number of puppies too young to be taken from their mums, doing very poorly. One even died, no matter how much we tried to rehydrate the three week old, who had been away from her mum for more than two weeks. Unfortunately, her new owners had been trying to work out what to feed her and - knowing she was too young for dog food - offered her Weetbix and UHT milk. Sad though the story is, I hope that we can all learn from it, and a new educational missive begins... One more thing for Gregg to teach the kids on his school visits :-) The kittens also keep rolling in, though thankfully we have been donated some kitten milk so can feed them (though 4 hrly feeds makes for tired volunteers!)




As for the volunteers, there has been big changes (going from 13 people 2 weeks ago to 4 on the weekend - Friday night was our first quiet (ish) one in a long time). It is lovely to meet another team of enthusiastic caring young people keen to make a difference to the animals of Rarotonga.