POND INLET PROJECT continued
Tuesday morning – we’ve had an amazing last two days (although I guess you could say that about every day). Sunday was an interesting day of surgeries (4 in total); we started off with two spays, which we later found out were mother and daughter. When our scheduled neuter came in, Kayou, we found out he was the father of the mother, and with her the father of the daughter. He seems to be the one responsible for all of the collie crosses in town. As the owner said, anyone with a white crest is his (and we’ve seen quite a few already).
We had scheduled the day well, and things hadn’t been as busy as the first couple days. Everyone dropped by after our first radio announcements when we got into town, and there is also a search and rescue effort going on for a missing person, so most of the town is off doing that. That being said, we thought we could get back to the house for dinner at a decent time, but our neuter, Kayou, was taking a long time to come off his anesthesia. A couple of us stayed at the clinic/arena for a long time while the rest went back to the house to prepare for Debbie, our host’s birthday. As it turned out, Kayou had to join us as well for a couple of hours at the house so we could keep an eye on him as he recovered.
It was a wonderful evening of food and celebration, with two cakes, one of which we are still eating! We managed to surprise Debbie, and made a card and banner. She has been an amazing hostess, always full of advice and encouragement, and has introduced us to so many others here in Pond Inlet.
The Monday only consisted of 3 surgeries, but again we had to take two of them home! It seems as though our house has become an extension of the clinic. Earlier on the trip we had met Patty, the doctor in town (Pond Inlet is one of the few communities with a doctor, and their new health center is amazing – the Arctic College also offers a B.Sc. in Arctic Nursing in connection with Dalhousie University). Patty had scrubbed in once with Ashley, and we saw her again today, and discussed going out on the water. We had had high hopes of going sea kayaking with Polar Sea Adventures, but Dave who runs the company was in California for the week (which we found out after several days of trying to track him down). Luckily Patty and her husband Mike had a boat, and they generously offered to take us out on the water. Since we had two dogs at the house, we had to take shifts, which turned out well as the boat could take 3 at a time, so Ainslie got to come out with us as well. It was a breathtaking ride that made all the hard work worth it. We were taken out to an iceberg, and then to the remaining ice and were able to walk out on it. The fresh sea air gave us such a boost that when we were all back at the house we were still up for hours, mostly organizing pictures. We were finally able to catch up on our sleep, as we designated Tuesday a bit of a ‘day off’, but we do have the bite prevention talk to give to the kids!