First I befriend them...

Yesterday, as we were driving to Santiago's house, in the Berlin Zone about three hours outside of the city, to do a couple surgeries on the local dogs, we stopped to pick up some bricks that we saw lying along the "road." How else would we elevate our new portable plastic surgery table, also used to serve over a hundred students pizza last Wednesday at the vet school. As we gathered blocks for boosting our very "sterile" surgery fields, I chuckled at the idea that a year ago I was working for Banfield, two years ago I was working for an AAHA practice, and now I'm collecting equipment along the road on the way to surgery.

For those of you unfamiliar with Banfield and AAHA, let's just say they both would have balked at taking dirty bricks into the surgical suite, let alone operating outside. Oh, how life has changed...

Ironically, it has also changed quite a bit for my patients. Some of you may remember the photos on the left from September '09, when we last stopped by this farm. In a fitting turn of events, this year I had the lovely opportunity to neuter two of the dogs (recognize them pictured right?) that I met last year on our visit. I hope they're as excited to see me next time.

Overall, we castrated five dogs, four bull calves, and a sheep; a very successful trip out to the campo I'd say. Not to mention all the fun we had with the kids of the local villages in our clown costumes, with games, balloon animals, bubbles and puppet shows!