At the beginning of summer, Lynne asked one of the vets at East Lake Animal Hospital in Watsonville if I could observe surgeries for a day. She was hoping that I could follow one of my own cats that I trapped through, so I could get a whole-picture view of the process. This day the timing worked out, so I was very excited. I love surgeries!
When Lynne dropped me off at the clinic, I could tell already that it was busy. It turned out that there were two emergencies- a young cat had been attacked by a dog, and a cocker spaniel had pneumonia. Both of those took up a lot of time, so the vet was very behind. I did get to see some neat stuff for the cocker spaniel, though, like the x-rays. The techs were all very concerned for the cocker spaniel, probably because it was so cute and sweet. When you spend most of your time working with feral cats and chihuahuas, a friendly and compliant animal is a refreshing break. (Nothing against chihuahuas, they're just notoriously difficult to work with at a vet.)
After the emergencies were done, everyone got started on the cat neuters. There were altogether eleven cats in for surgeries that day- four domestics, four Project Purr ferals (the three Lynne and I had trapped that morning, and my Lighthouse Field kitten from the night before), and the rest were ferals that had been trapped by members of the public. They started out with the two domestic cat neuters, because neuters are faster than spays, and domestics are easier to work with than ferals. With neuters, the prep done by the techs actually takes longer than the work done by the vet. The actual surgery takes less than five minutes (I could explain it in detail, but I know some people would not appreciate it.) The two female domestic spays were next, and took about fifteen minutes each. The vet was obviously well practiced, and I was very impressed with his skills. The last surgery I started to watch was the female feral we had caught that morning with the notch on her ear. I told the vet that we were not sure if she had already been spayed, and he looked for a spay scar and didn't find one. I had to leave right as he was opening her up, so I didn't get to see a full feral surgery.
There were some disappointing elements to my visit- I had seen one spay and one neuter a few years ago, so it wasn't as if this was all new to me. I had wanted to see a complete feral spay and feral neuter, complete with ear tip. I wanted to see how the techs were able to sedate the ferals, but they had already done that before I came. I also was not able to see the ferals getting vaccinations or flea meds, but that's not very new to me.
For the most part, though, it was a great visit. I learned a lot, and was able to spend a long time talking to the vet (while he was spaying cats) about becoming a vet, working at spay/neuter clinics, new technology, dissolvable stitches, and other things. I got to see a puppy being microchipped, and got to hold that same squirmy puppy as a tech attempted to vaccinate it. I got to see two two day-old Yorkie puppies with their mom.
I was very impressed with the efficiency of the clinic. There were a lot of techs (at least five, and two up front), and they knew what they were doing. They were fast and smart. I felt in the way sometimes because they would go whizzing by me all the time. They had the freedom not given to every tech to decide what to do on their own without asking the vet or manager. The vet was also very efficient, and surprisingly talkative and friendly (many vets don't want to talk during surgery). And boy was he fast at surgeries! I was also impressed with the technology. There was a flat screen TV in the main room with Pandora radio playing, so the mood was very calm and relaxed. The x-ray technology was amazing, allowing the vet to view the images on the computer, zoom in or out, change the contrast, and more. I felt like a country bumpkin in the midst of all this amazing technology!
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