Today was the first surgery day in our clinic! I wanted to share a few quick highlights of our great day…

Here's our suite before it saw its first surgery this morning

The calm before the excitement begins

Cutest surgery patients EVER! A litter of 3 Golden mixes and a litter of 3 Chis

Pre surgery check ups

Puppies on pre meds... much mellower :)

Jessi & Charlotte helping out while waiting for the day to get rolling

Sprite the Chi, our first surgery

We had quite a crowd this morning to help celebrate our clinic's first day. We've been waiting years to see this happen!

Eager onlookers

Dr H spaying Sprite

Sprite thinking about waking up

Sprite's brother Buffalo getting his turn

Gotta love WHS volunteers! Autumn stopped by to say hi and ended up working with Jenny on data entry... Autumn showed Jenny PetPoint and Jenny showed Autumn the clinic software.

We did 9 surgeries today and have many more scheduled for this week. It is great having Humane Alliance’s staff here with us as we settle into our groove and figure out the details of our clinic.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

In about 12 hours we will be doing our first surgeries in our spay/neuter clinic! Most of our clinic team assembled today to finish organizing our supplies, put away orders that arrived while we were gone, and to catch up on making appointments.

Happily, we got confirmation that Dr Eure and Melissa from Humane Alliance made it in from North Carolina and found their way to Salem this afternoon. We’re thrilled to have them with us for our first two weeks!

Now it’s off to bed to hopefully catch up from my lingering jet lag to be ready for tomorrow’s fun.

After a relatively uneventful day of travel we made it back to rainy Oregon late last night. Our flight leaving Asheville was delayed about an hour and a half, which ended up working out well. Originally our layover in Chicago was going to be about three hours. So we still weren’t in danger of missing our connecting flight and got to hang out at the Asheville airport longer, which was more comfortable and had free wifi.

It was still extremely cold in Asheville yesterday. When I got up it was only 12 degrees and -5 with the wind chill. Since we were on a semi small plane between Asheville and Chicago we had to walk outside to get into the terminal. I thought it was funny that Chicago felt warm compared to what we had been used to.

While trekking to the other terminal for our connecting flight, we got to go through the rainbow tunnel again.

Lots of colorful lights!

Finally on the last leg of our trip home.

Almost home!

After getting to Salem after midnight, we all dispersed from the shelter’s parking lot to go home and adjust back to this time zone before we meet back up on Sunday morning to put the finishing touches on our clinic. Just two days until we do our first surgeries in our clinic!

Trent picked me up in Salem last night and greeted me with flowers… awww! But even more impressive was that he cleaned the house for me :) I’m glad to be home!

Since we were done working so early yesterday we were able to go play in the afternoon. One of the big sights to see around Asheville is the Biltmore House, the 250 room country retreat built by George Vanderbilt.

The enormous Biltmore House

After my first two pictures here, my camera battery decided it had worked enough on this trip. Thanks to Jenny for sharing her pictures with me so I could use them here!

One of my favorite parts of the house was the huge staircase. When inside, looking down from the fourth floor was dizzying!

Main entrance and exterior of the grand staircase. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

The house has 4 acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. There was also a basement that had a swimming pool, gymnasium, changing rooms, bowling alley, servants’ quarters, and kitchens.

There were lots of gargoyles. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

Taken from the garden at the side of the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

There were statues scattered around this garden and the ponds at the front of the house.

One of the statues surrounding the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

The ponds lining the length of the final drive leading to the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

The entire driveway to the house was over 3 miles long and wound through the amazing land surrounding the house.

Even in the dead of winter, the views from the estate were amazing.

Views of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

I would love to see this place in spring or fall. We got to drive through the gardens, which were huge but pretty brown since it’s winter. It would be amazing to see them in full bloom. There were some nice pics on their website though.

One of the lions at the main entrance to the house. Photo courtesy Jenny Forbes

After touring the house and the nearby grounds, we drove through the gardens on our way to the winery. We took their mini tour and browsed the gift shop before heading into Biltmore Village for an early dinner.

If I lived around here, it would be fun to get a yearly pass to to Biltmore Estate to be able to come back to see the different seasons and explore the property more.

I can’t believe our training is over already. It went by incredibly fast but still managed to fit in an amazing amount of information and the time for each of us to build our skills.

The weather again abbreviated our surgery day. Snow was supposed to arrive this afternoon and go throughout the night, so many people didn’t bring their animals in for their appointment today since they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to pick them up in the morning. And many transports again canceled since they are in the mountainy areas that already have snow.

Even though the surgery day was short, we still got a bunch done. Jenny and I got to help with the second part of check in. On previous days we had done the paperwork with the owners at drop off, but today we got to help with the next step of taking the animals back and assisting with their vet checks, pre-medding and getting them settled in cages.

One of the things I love about this clinic and their staff is how genuinely happy everyone is to see the individual animals coming in. Everyone has a kind word or a compliment about the patients, connecting with the pet’s owner as they do the pet-pass-off. Seeing this many animals day in and day out and still being able to ooh and aah over the amazing cuteness of these critters is heartwarming.

Today I also got to spend time watching other surgery teams who weren’t working with a training group to see their flow. One of these groups had a pretty Great Dane to spay. Of course that made me think of my Romeo (which is of course an excuse to put another picture of my big baby in here).

Yep, he's big

He’s a lot bigger than this girl was, especially his head, but she had the beautiful merle markings. She was very sweet and cooperative, but after her pre-meds, it took two people to walk her down to surgery, one with the leash and one nudging along behind, since all she wanted to do was nap.

But the team from Michigan won the prize for cutest dogs of the day, purely based on the number they had – every single dog I saw of theirs was beyond adorable. They had a litter of six cute fuzzy puppies and some incredibly cute teenage and young adult mutts. Here is this team at the end of training, ready to head back to Ann Arbor.

It was great to meet you, Chelsea, Luke and Dr Mary. Come visit us if you're ever in Oregon!

Today we got to learn how to wrap packs, which is one of my favorite things ever! I loved their method of testing to see if you wrapped the pack tight enough – you throw it against the wall and if it doesn’t come undone, you succeeded.

Marissa and Dawn talking over the instruments with Holly in preparation for pack wrapping

Since our team was done with surgery early, we had our final classroom session before it was even lunchtime and reviewed things we learned over the week. We officially got welcomed into the high volume, high quality spay/neuter family and received our medallions to prove it.

Then it was time for our final lunch at the clinic. This was one of my favorite parts of this trip. Every day we had a great lunch homemade by Diane. Today was corn chowder and cornbread day – yum! Thanks Diane for the great food this week!!

Diane checking our delicious lunch one more time

After this we made our rounds to say goodbye to all the wonderful people we met here.

Thanks again to Dr Brestle, Joey and Melissa for all the help this week. Y'all were wonderful to work with! We couldn't have asked for better teachers.

I hope I make it back to this area someday and can come visit again!

On our last day of training, Beth and Dawn showed off their prepping groove…

As we wound down our classroom session for the day, we tried to decide on dinner plans so all of us trainees could go out together. A vet from Florida and a group from Michigan are here this week too.

Dr Saxton recommended an outing to Jack of the Wood for yummy pub food and live music. On Wednesday nights a group of folks get together and play old time mountain music.

It turned out to be a great place with yummy food and fun music. Here’s a snippet of the music (I’m not sure how to share the yumminess of the food)

And yes, that’s a little girl on the left playing her tiny banjo!

Another day flew by in a flash! Even though our team only had 14 surgeries today (the snowy weather struck again in outlying areas and hardly any transport animals came in again), we had plenty to keep us busy.

I got to work on budgeting with Quita… Jenny worked in surgery and got to go on a transport trip with Jeff to help pick up animals… Beth and I got to learn about managing our inventory and keeping clients happy from Daniela… Dr Holt keeps getting faster… Dawn got to intubate her first dog – I missed the photo : (… We all had training in emergency procedures with Dr Saxton…

Here are some more highlights:

Dr Holt and Dr H with the amazing Dr Brestle

This is Humane Alliance's transport dog room - all the dogs who arrive from their transport program are housed in here. This is a huge space and very busy room when it is full.

Jenny got to do recovery today

This puppy was the winner of my Cutest Critter of the Day prize. Not hard to see why, is it?

Me saving this poor dog's life with my newly acquired doggy CPR skills. I was too short to manage this while standing on the floor like everyone else did and had to hop up on the table.

I can’t believe tomorrow’s our last day with these great people. If I’m ever in this area again, I know where I’m coming to visit!

Marissa and Melissa demonstrate induction and intubation.

This is actually from yesterday, but I’m just getting around to posting it.

Another day of surgery is winding down.  We’ll begin anesthesia class soon, but I wanted to get today’s pics up…

The calm before the storm. This is where our team is training with Dr Brestle, Joey and Melissa. And yes, our surgery suite is the one the public can view!

Catheter 101

This is the way we thread the needle...

Today was big red dog day. I think our team ended up with all of them! This one was particularly cute.

I loved his lips and wrinkles

That was a lot of lip to hold up for intubation!

Classroom time with Jenny, learning our software.

Marissa intubated her first dog!! Yeah Marissa!!!

Dr Holt ready and excited for her next surgery

Both vets hard at work

Humane Alliance's cute courtyard. It's obviously still VERY cold here. It's 23 degrees at the moment!

Off to class!