The best laid plans... we haven't set up the satellite so I didn't get to watch the MacWorld speech of Steve Jobs after all.

We were parked in a beautiful spot but we were all day at the vet clinic and then exhausted and asleep. What an experience! Mimi has done a lot of these clinics but this was my first time working at one and it wiped me out. My back, my joints, my knees.. my whole damn body was screaming at me.

Xcalak is a very small village, isolated on the tip of a peninsula down near the Belize border. There is no vet closer than Mahahual and usually none closer than Chetumal. That's a 3 or 4 hour trip and expensive in gas if you have a vehicle, the bus will not allow dogs. The people there are poor, so there is nothing they can do for the dogs and cats. Most of them will develop erlichea from ticks and mange from the heat and humidity.

The first day of the clinic we lost 2 dogs in recovery. Mimi and I were not there yet but it devastated the vets and the volunteers. Both dogs were in bad shape before the surgery and when they have erlichea they bleed profusely.

It was a hard start but these are some great people and they came back the next day determined for it not to happen again. Because of that, they turned down some dogs that were in such bad shape they felt they would not survive. It's a difficult decision, the females especially will probably die if they have another litter. So, they took females that were very marginal but turned away the really bad males. This is one that was turned away. He is in very bad shape. They vaccinated him, gave him a shot for the mange and for worms.
This is his sister, in surgery, who was in the same shape. She scared us a few times but she did survive the surgery and post-op. Some of the vets checked on her the next day and she was ok but then we had to leave.

There were quite a few dogs that were in better shape, and they had owners who clearly cared for them. It's amusing to see all of these dogs standing around with numbers in duct tape on their foreheads.

This is Mimi in the post-op recovery room.

One of the men whose dog died the first day, brought in her 2 puppies the 2nd day. That was a show of faith in the vets and really effected them.

His father came with him because he didn't want his son to be there alone if something happened to the puppies. He was an old man and he stood in the sun almost the whole day, just being there.

This was the first clinic Kelly had organized in this area, she has done a wonderful job of involving the local government up in area around Akumal. The municipality (which is similar to a county in the US) there donates medicines and surgical supplies as well as sending a vet who not only works the clinics but functions as a liaison to the government.

Down here in the south she didn't have the same connections but she invited them to participate. They sent a vet and some other employees to observe. At first they were clear that they would be coming back soon to destroy as many strays as they could and they didn't seem very interested in any other solution.

They got friendlier though by the second day and they were tattooing the ears of the dogs that were fixed and vaccinated. By the end of the 2nd day the vet offered to go to Chetumal on the off day and get supplies we were running short of for the clinic in Mahahual. It was a really important first step in establishing the same kind of relationship here.

Over 90 dogs and 2 cats were seen, around 50 were spayed or neutered and the rest were vaccinated and treated for worms. This is in an isolated town of about 300 to 400 people.

I'm attaching some more photos from the clinic in Xcalak.