Spaying Dog

Spaying Dog (Chula)

                There are a number of veterinarians in Canatlan.  Jim had experience with some of them, but I have learned to discount his experiences as relevant.  Not speaking Spanish, he often gets things wrong. On the main thoroughfare that leads into the town there is a block of wide avenue.  The hospital is on one side, the other side is lined with shops of all variety.  There is diagonal parking, yet there is seldom an empty space.  This is where I struck up a friendship with CeCe, the nurse who runs the ‘Angel’ Pharmacy.

                I had been checking into the veterinary shop there for many weeks, hoping to find a brush for Dog’s fur.  The old man implied that his son the vet isn’t there; he might bring brushes with him.  So I learned that the vet is a younger man, who is not there often.  One day I was lucky enough to pass by when the doctor was in.  I chatted with him for a while, and in the end agreed to bring Dog in to be spayed. 

                We had a mix up about where the surgery would take place.  I waited at the corner near my apartment for half an hour, expecting him to pick me up.  I finally called him, and he said he was at his shop waiting for me.  We walked the few blocks in minutes, and the process began.

                He began the anesthetic immediately.  I held her until she was limp.  He was actually going to do the surgery right there in his shop, behind the counter! 

                As we talked I learned that he had worked for many years in San Miguel Allende.  He was impressed with what the foreign community had organized there.  On a monthly basis, all the vets and techs would assemble at one facility and in an assembly line, sterilize a hundred dogs in a day. 

                I thought that if he had that much experience, Dog was in good hands.  Let him operate wherever he wanted.

                I went back for her about an hour later, and carried her home.  She slept easily.  He had given me pain killers and antibiotics for her, but I did not use them.  The wound seemed clean.  Sure enough, as days passed, she was obviously pain and infection free.

                A week later Jhampa came to town.  He observed her wound, and agreed that this was a good doctor.  When his Shi Tzus were spayed, the wound was ugly red from sub cutaneous bleeding.

                It will be months before her belly hair grows back.  Until then, her big teats hang down for all to see.  Days later I ran into the vet again, and I asked him if he had left the uterus in.  I believed that, like humans, the uterus produced necessary hormones.  He informed me that the latest research shows that in fact, this is not the case with dogs.  Leaving the uterus in can result in cancer of the teats. 

                I asked the vet to estimate her age.  From the history that I had gleaned from Juan, I figured her to be around 5 years.  Juan had told me that she had had at least two rounds of pups a year apart, she had been living there in the countryside for maybe three years, and that she was not a pup when she arrived.  The vet did not narrow it down beyond a span of from 3 to 6 years.  I was a little surprised, because when I spent time at the ‘Pet Resource Center’ in Brandon, Florida, the age of the stray dogs were always written down, as if the vet could pin point it.  Now I understand that these posted ages were vague estimates.  At any rate, now she can live out whatever years remain without going through the trials of puppy birth and all that it entails.

          The cost was almost as high as in the States.