Jars of Fetuses

I forgot to say the other day... So combis are the minivan things that we ride to get around. There is a driver and a guy who collects the money and calls out where the combi is going to, chupacachupacachupaca. We were on our way to work and at one point, the money guy got out for what we thought would be a minute, no one knows why, and then he didnt come back. the driver blared his horn for like five minutes straight, drove a block, waited again, and finally just left without the guy. People sitting in the front of the bus took turns calling out the destination, opening the door, and collecting money for people. It was pretty funny. Next thing for a combi guy to do - fall out the door, we are just waiting for that because they always practically hang out of the door looking for people as the combi is driving along.
I won´t get to go the jungle this weekend because not enough people wanted to go and things didnt work out for it, I´m not really sure, so that kind of sucks, I wanted to go back to the jungle after Ecuador. Next time I´m in South America, I guess. This coming weekend is already my last weekend with Carisma Peru - next weekend will be Machu Picchu and Nazca lines on our own, and then it´s time to go home and be off to school already. Time flies. Anyway, instead, we are going to go horseback riding in a valley this weekend and visit small towns and eat trout fresh from a river. Well, potatoes for me!
In other news... I´ve switched from volunteering at a human clinic to an animal clinic. Got kind of bored there and sick of not being able to do anything to help. So yesterday I went around with the volunteer coordinators and they asked for me and we found a clinic a really short walk from the house that I can volunteer at. So I´ve been there yesterday and today.
First thing I see when I walk in - jars filled with preserved animal fetuses. Baby food jars, jam jars, jars with labels pulled off, each filled with a few fetuses. A very strange sight. The clinic is obviously very different than in the US. There´s pretty pathetic sterility, though that was to be expected. I´m surprised by the way they use gloves - even to just do a basic exam, they put on gloves, but they reuse these gloves between each patient. Doesn´t that defeat the point? It´s a really dusty, dirty place that we clean each morning but gets disgusting within a few minutes again. Mm, dirt inside the bodies during surgery. Luckily they change needles between each patient, at least. Instead of kennels in the wall like in the US, the floor in the waiting room is covered with the kennels that you can carry around, and that is where animals stay overnight or when they are waiting to be looked at or have surgery. There are a few glass cases with scattered collars and dog tags, toys, shampoo, toothbrushes, and some strange anti-parasite medicine. Inside the office, a lot of the medicines are the same brands as we use in the US, but there really arent very many meds at the hospital. For most things, including xrays and bloodwork, the doctor has to write an rx and the clients go to a human clinic to get whatever it is taken care of.
Yesterday there were quite a few interesting cases. But my body didn´t have a very fun time with them combined with the altitude. When I first got there, I helped with the surgery of a dog who had eaten a plastic bag. Churro, an adorable cocker spaniel, had completely white gums and was barely there when we started the surgery. The doctor tied sutures into the stomach and had me hold up the stomach for him to cut into, and then I fainted. It wasn´t even bloody. I blame the altitude. Luckily I managed not to fall face first into the stomach, though, but rested in another room until I was better. The dog didn´t survive the surgery. :( Hmm who else was there... a surgery on a dog who had the most disgusting ear I´d ever seen. He had been in a dog fight and was a really aggresive dog, so we had to knock him out before even putting the catheter in. Shaved his ear using a gilette razor held in a blade holder, very different and soooo much harder than the nice electric shaver that we get to use back in the US.
They also docked two tails yesterday, grrrr! Why do they dock tails here when money is an issue and the dogs arent even castrated? The doctor took me out to lunch at a veggie restaurant and I was asking him about the system and he doesnt do anything at all for any of the street dogs and rarely castrates any of the animals, even though its only about 20 bucks US to neuter a male and about 60 to spay a female. I might pay to have Bobby, the dog at the house I´m staying at, neutered, cause the dogs here are completely out of control and no one, not even the veterinarians, do anything about it. Most people seem to have pets, and I´ve been really surprised to see a lot of cats come into the clinic because you never see cats on the street, only dogs, but the cats actually seem pretty well taken care of. There are two completely separate classes of animals here - the dogs who live on the streets and those who are loved pets. All of them eat table scraps and dig in the garbage for food and are pretty friendly with people (which they definitely werent in Africa, where no one had pets)... Here there is a more positive attitude towards dogs because pèople do keep them as pets, but street dogs are street dogs and there are just too many for anyone to bother doing anything about it, it´s really sad.
Today at the clinic almost nothing happened, there was a cat in renal failure who came in (who the vet diganosed solely on symptoms without doing any tests at all), and a cat with crazy owners who got mad and stomped out when the vet told them the cat had fluid in his lungs. Besides that, I sat around, cleaned a bunch, and attempted to read part of a vet textbook in Spanish. All of this is happening in Spanish, no one here really knows English, so some of the time they don´t realize I´m not fluent and they talk really really fast. I catch bits and pieces and just smile and nod. But most of the time, I´m able to get the main gist of what´s going on, and it´s really interesting to see all the differences.