I recently went on another Canadian Animal Assistance Team trip, this time to Nadleh Whut’en near Fraser Lake in northern BC. As always it was an amazing time filled with great people, animals, and incredible experiences.
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CAAT
Tsaxana
[One of my fellow technicians monitors a dog undergoing surgery while a second surgery is performed in the background at our gymnasium field hospital.]
The Tsaxana CAAT trip was a success with twenty-four animals sterilized/vaccinated/microchipped and fifteen animals examined and vaccinated! As always I had an incredible time working with an amazing team who came together and in less than 24 hours were working like we’d always known each other. I can’t wait for the next trip!
CAAT And The Countdown To Gold River
[The 350k route from Victoria to Gold River and our first spay/neuter trip of 2018! Not pictured: the longer routes for team members coming all the way from Ontario to lend their skills :)]
I’ve written about the Canadian Animal Assistance Team before and I know I certainly will again! It’s a charity that’s near and dear to my heart and I am so proud to have been a member for the past four years. Founded in 2005 in response to the desperate need for volunteer veterinary care in the US following Hurricane Katrina, CAAT now focuses on providing veterinary services to rural and under-served communities in Canada and abroad. There are many communities with little or no access to veterinary services and CAAT is able to provide them with temporary clinics which focus on spaying, neutering, and vaccination in order to improve both the health of the community’s animals but also the health of the community as a whole.
This year, our first trip is to the Tsaxana reserve in Gold River, Vancouver Island, BC. We will be convoying up from Victoria (picking up more team members in Nanaimo) on Friday, setting up our temporary clinic in the Wah-meesh Gymnasium, and generally preparing ourselves for the flurry of spays and neuters on Saturday and Sunday before we head home Monday morning.
I’ll be the designated blogger for this trip, so please follow the CAAT Blog and/or CAAT’s official Facebook page for updates, stories, profiles of our amazing volunteers, and of course, tons and tons of photos! And please consider supporting CAAT in your own life, whether through donation, volunteering, or simply spreading the word! Their official website is http://www.caat-canada.org and membership is just $50CAD annually!
And of course, in the immortal words of Bob Barker, please…spay and neuter your pets!
Shake The North
[The end of the trip and the entirety of our equipment packed away, leaving nothing more than an empty firehouse with a few disused sets of equipment on the wall where hours ago had been 50+ dogs, three surgery tables, two prep tables, a recovery area, a pharmacy, a makeshift reception table, and a crowd of people.]
In 2015, I went on a trip with the Canadian Animal Assistance Team to two small communities in northern British Columbia (Fort St. James and Hazelton). With 11 team members during the first round and 12 during the second, we sterilized and vaccinated two hundred and eighty two animals, along with performing an additional one hundred and forty one vaccination/wellness exams. The time will always stay in my mind as an example not only of the amazing camaraderie in the volunteering veterinary community, but also the incredible generosity of the communities which hosted, housed, and fed us along with bringing us their animals. To see so many people come together from so many different walks of life and unite in the common goal of improving animal welfare was inspiring. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” Our last day in Hazelton made that clear for me.
The First Three Days (And Three Hours)
[A birds-eye view of our recovery corner showcasing the classic Africanis dog; form, function, and tanned!]
In the spring of 2017 I spent six weeks in Botswana volunteering as part of a joint project between the Canadian Animal Assistance Team and the Maun Animal Welfare Society. It was an incredible experience that touched me deeply and it is not an exaggeration to say that I think of it every day, counting down the days until I can return (and hopefully one day on a more permanent basis). MAWS does an unbelievable job of offering sterilization and veterinary services not only to their home city of Maun, but also to uncountable villages up and down the Panhandle. Their resources are few but they have truly learned how to make the best of whatever they have! Working their definitely made me a better technician, able to problem-solve (and often by the seat of my pants), MacGuyver equipment, and monitor and maintain anesthetic on complex surgeries with nothing but my stethoscope and a syringe of thiopental.
“The First Three Days (And Three Hours)” is pretty self-explanatory, detailing my first experiences at the MAWS clinic and the lessons I had to learn quickly!