A week in Málaga

Everybody says "spaying and neutering aren't day one competencies", however, I do like to be prepared - so I booked a week at a spay and neuter clinic in Spain.

The clinic is run by a very nice man, Wayne, who retired to Spain 20 years ago. Not one to settle down, and concious of the many lost and stray animals around Spain, he set up the neuter clinic to help learning and newly graduated vets to improve their surgical skills. We also get to practice putting in catheters and intubating animals, which is a good skill to have too.

This was another thing that I sorted out about a year ago, when I was still a bit unsure if I really liked surgery or not. I've watched a lot of surgeries, I'm not squicked by the blood or anything, but as time has gone on, I realised that I much prefer the medical side of things. However, it wasn't cheap to visit, and I'm going to have to do surgery at some point, so I might as well learn in a relatively controlled environment. 

On Monday, we visited a government funded shelter close to Gibraltar, where we would spay and neuter dogs. I did my first dog castrate on an old and fibrous German Shepherd, in a very hot room. 

On Tuesday I did my first bitch spay (that's really what we call them). It was very tricky and took a long time, but I did do it with a lot of guidance. I was partnered with a recently graduated vet, who had a bit of experience, and he helped me get through it. 

On Wednesday, we went back to the shelter and I did another dog castrate. It was slightly cooler that day, and I found it less stressful. 

On Thursday, we had a cat day. These cats are caught from colonies nearby, and are completely feral. As a result, we don't know what ratio of males to females we're getting. There were quite a lot of boys, so I did 4 castrates and one spay. The spay was in a tiny little kitten, probably only around 10 weeks old, but she would soon be carrying kittens herself if we didn't spay her. The cat castrates were by far the easiest, but I still did not really enjoy them. I think I have quite good dexterity with my fingers from all my crafting hobbies, but tying yarn together feels nothing like tying the vas deferens to the testicular artery. 

Friday was a less than ideal end to the week. I had another dog spay, which are very difficult anyway, but I was feeling stressed and hot and I couldn't find the uterus for ages. When I finally did, and got to the point of ligating the pedicle, I almost tore open a very large blood vessel, and Wayne said I was millimeters away from killing the dog. That really shook me when I was already feeling bad, and Wayne pretty much had to finish the surgery for me while I cried. For the rest of the day, I monitored everyone elses' anaesthesias, and Wayne had to run out for an emergency, so I couldn't even thank him in person for being calm and nice about the situation.

In some ways it exceeded and fell short of my expectations. Having worked in a place where we monitor every possible thing, it was stressful for me to only have a pulse-ox and a breath counter, but I do appreciate that it's charity work and some things just have to make do. As someone who is interested in anaesthesia though, I was cringing. I was very impressed at how skilled a surgeon Wayne is, he was a very good teacher even to someone who really doesn't want to do surgery.

By far the best part of the week was swimming in the Mediterranian sea everyday after standing for 8+ hours. On the day I arrived, we went out to dinner to a mexican food place down the road which was delicious, then ate some ice cream on the beach. For the rest of the week, we would eat breakfast and dinner together, chat, play card games and generally hang out. On Thursday evening we went out for tapas which was delicious, and then on Friday, Rob came out for the weekend, and we went to our hotel in Málaga.