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JOAQUIN AND LUNA
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Every animal of every clinic is special, but every clinic also seems to bring to us someone who is especially memorable. Our first week of the October clinics was spent in Tulum, where we set up shop at Karen Jenkins’ place. Two of our helpers were a young man named Joaquin and his mother. Each day they would arrive with cats and dogs from their neighborhood. They were so wonderful and compassionate. On the last day Joaquin showed up with his very ill dog named Luna asking us if we would please take a look at her. A couple of weeks before we arrived, Joaquin had taken Luna to a local veterinarian in a nearby town, to be spayed. By the time we saw her, Luna was feverish, had not eaten in several days, and had a very painful abdomen. We determined that she needed an exploratory. She received intravenous fluids, antibiotics, pain treatments and surgery. What had been done previously was never really determined, but whatever it was, it was not a spay. Our surgeon discovered that parts of the reproductive tract were missing but some were still there, and Luna had peritonitis – a belly full of infection. We were amazed that she had even made it to the clinic – she surely would have been dead within days.
With a couple of days of continued treatment, Luna was up and about again and back to her sweet self. But the real gift turned out to be Joaquin. In Mexico, we often have to work very hard at communicating and convincing people how important it is to spay and neuter their pets. But here was someone who already understood the importance and had sought the treatment on his own. In the tradition of no-good-deed-will-go-unpunished, Joaquin had paid $80 for the surgery, which clearly had been botched! An $80 fee for a spay is not out of line in some areas of the United States, but for Mexico it is practically a king’s ransom! Luna’s treatment obviously did not fall into our $25 per animal average; her treatment was worth approximately $600. As with all of our clinics, Joaquin was not charged a single cent. It is because of the generous giving of our donors that we can afford to treat animals like Luna as well as the more “routine” cases. The value of Luna’s treatment however, was not lost on Joaquin. He showed up every day for the rest of our clinic (two weeks, in several different towns) and worked like a dog (J) helping us admit animals, monitor recovering animals, and clean up. He got to observe proper surgical techniques and other procedures, and by the end of it had decided that he wants to go to vet school himself!
We expect to see Joaquin and Luna at future clinics, and we hope he does follow through with veterinary school – Mexico needs him!
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