My first day at Lanta Animal Welfare.

Barley on the beach

I arrived at LAW at about 11am, two hours early, (yes, I was early for once in my life!), I met some of the other volunteers and got the key to my room.  After a walk to the local 7/11 and a quick shower I met Matt, the centre manager for my induction.  I was shown around and introduced to everybody, human and animal.  I wondered how the hell I was going to remember everybody's names.  The rest of the working day went by pretty quickly, I walked a couple of dogs on the beach, was show how to move dogs safely around the centre, how to make feeds up and clean out cat cages.  We had 2 cats brought in for sterilizing, Hal the vet said he needed a 'vet nurse' to help, I stuck my hand up and was in surgery before anyone else had the chance!  My plan is to train as a vet nurse when I get home, it's a career that I have been interested in for a long time, but I've just never gotten round to doing anything about it.  There was one female and one male cat, I have seen a male castration before but this was the first chance I got to observe a female spaying.  The thing that stands out from that experience is how little equipment they have here, they don't have a pair of clippers so Hal had to pluck the hairs out from around the cats balls before he could begin! And he had to shave the hair off of the females stomach with a razor blade, tense times!

After work I went to Time for Lime with some of the other volunteers, the food was good and the beer was cold... All in all a good night, although I think I'm still suffering from the Koh Phangan blues!