Keeping busy

With one more sleep till I go on holiday (or, more accurately, I go on a giant shopping spree!) there is plenty to be done! Our raffle tickets have finally been printed and should start selling today (there’s some pretty awesome prizes if I do say so myself, so be sure to check it out on our Facebook site), and there are seven vet students plus two assistants to keep busy. Which means, with any luck, you won’t even notice I’m gone!

Gregg put his back out helping to lift a 50+ kg dog, most of us have a cold that is going around, we have had surprise parents visits, the car had a wee accident and we temporarily misplaced a mama cat (luckily, she quite liked her kittens and came back when the rain stopped bless her), but things at the clinic continue to plod along as per ever.

Francis – for those who know her – has made amazing progress this week and is now intermittently getting up for a run when she sees food. A pretty impressive break, considering none of us gave her half a chance. For those who don’t know who Francis is, check out her case study on the Facebook site too.

Our current vet students are incredibly eager, and we have spent a lot of the previous week having suturing lessons and tests, and generally putting them on the spot with awkward questions; they are living up to it with gusto. Go Massey students! I happen to know that their singing is also pretty impressive; and for this we didn’t even make it as far as a karaoke bar.
There are five unbelievably sweet puppies in for rehoming, all from different litters, and all have been introduced to their first few swimming lessons in our on-site hydrotherapy pool (ie the beach). We hope to have them all rehomed by the end of the week; I have the volunteers on a gold star basis for numbers of animals rehomed and we are having a great month for successful adoptions. Who would have thought?

I wish everyone a fabulous start to February, and you shall hear next week from someone new and exciting!

It has been – for once – a quiet week here at the clinic. With lots of assistant volunteers and only one vet to keep them all busy, we have started quite a few new projects such as building and fundraising. With six newbies arriving on the weekend, we have a few big days of training and teaching coming up so it’s a good week to be less busy.

We also had a lot of interest, and got our name out and about really well with two cruise ships docking in Raro on the same day this week! Gregg and Marg had fun chatting to all the keen tourists who loved Rarotonga and were really impressed by our work.

Our generously donated solar panels were put in this week also; the $10,000 donation by Mary Smith to make it possible, with the rest of the value kindly being absorbed by Solar Bob, the panels act to both help the environment and hugely reduce our monthly electricity bill, ensuring more of our resources can go directly to the animals.
We are all crossing fingers and toes for our lovely wee black kittens Bagheera and Baloo, who don’t seem to be thriving this week which is tragic since they are so adorable and, when they first came in, were literally the stockiest, healthiest two week old kittens we’d ever seen. Unfortunately, no amount of care or milk replacer is as good as their mum, so we all have to watch anxiously as they grow.

In other news, since karaoke has become a weekly outing the last few months, Gregg tried out for The ‘H’ Factor (The ‘X’ Factor at a local pub called Heidis) and his audition was amazing. Despite all the non-working team cheering him on, he unfortunately didn’t make it through, he made EHF super proud.

Looks like more karaoke practice is in store!

Quiz Night 2012.

Saturday night was the first of our now-to-be-annual Quiz Night events. After MUCH stressing and a week of trying to get ten billion things ready then still finding on the day you forgot hundreds of them, but are too busy making your costume to get them done, the night went off without a hitch anyway.
A fabulous local MC, Metua, generously donated his time to host our evening, much to the delight of all the attendees. With endless laughs and amazing organisation of stalling teams, Metua helped make the night a fabulous success. The video of his introduction is attached!
The quiz was animal themed, though only the most die-hard got into the full spirit. Best dressed went to the blow up turtle pool ring, ‘nesting’ on the straw hat, and the shirt with all the baby turtles swimming away…
As the questions got underway, it quickly became evident that there were some hard ones, some easy ones and some silly ones (from name the seven Von Trapp children to the colour of zebra stripes to how many vaginas does a kangaroo have…). The between-round entertainment included paper plane engineering, talent contests and attempts to build the tallest tower out of straws, cups and paperclips. Cheating was aplenty, and bribes were encouraged from the Esther Honeys, who made a fair amount for the kitty by sharing clues… As the writer of the questions (and therefore the answers) I was even auctioned off for a round. And not for a bad amount if I do say so myself!
The real auctions were a massive success, with donated stays and vouchers for local resorts being in hot demand. Gregg even found himself speechless as a last minute surprise donation by The Crown Beach Resort was auctioned for $1412!
There were even a few tears in the room for the promo video, so we achieved the number one most important goal of the evening; spreading the knowledge and understanding of the work Esther Honey does.
Overall, the evening couldn’t have gone better even if I hadn’t forgotten the silly details, and we are all delighted to announce that we successfully raised over $5000 from the single evening. An amazing step, which wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of both our sponsors and donors, as well as the wonderful participants. Can’t wait to do it again!

As the island gets back to normal functioning, the clinic settles back into routine. All preparations are go for next week’s Quiz Night which is looking to be great fun and full of laughs.
I am delighted to (finally) inform all the friends of Mama, that she is officially recovered from her bout of fish poisoning. Possibly due to her age (and perhaps the fact that she is such a pig she probably ate a huge amount of the dodgy fish she scavenged), she has taken MUCH longer to get better than we would have hoped. At first, she presented unlike a fish poisoning with respiratory issues and major neurological abnormalities and we suspected she had something more dire than fish poisoning. Over a few days however, she progressed to become a more typical case, though a very severe one. It took Mama six weeks to attempt walking, another two weeks to succeed and two weeks later now she is back to her normal (somewhat thinner) self; escorting the volunteers to the beach and scavenging for food with only a slightly shaky head. A successful diet method that I wouldn’t recommend!!

Surgery is incredibly busy with Lucinda and Fiona both superfast surgeons; Gregg is booking in 10 desexings a day! And with the rain, we have had to do lots of visits as people can’t bring their animals in to us. This means more than one occasion of traipsing knee deep through mud to find a lame pig, chasing a goat around its tether until it wound itself tight enough to catch, and crawling under flooded houses to catch abandoned kittens.
Fun times!
Now we are down to one vet for the entire month of January, so looking forward to the ensuing mayhem and hoping one of our eager, blog-reading vets might fancy a tropical holiday :-)