After a long weekend I went back to the shelter today. Lauren had me switch from doing the cat room to the puppy rooms and shadowing Dianne.

The puppy adopt room was easy enough, just change newspapers and water. When we move animals from a holding arean in Puppy Adopt we spray it down with a bleach solution after cleaning. This is different than with cats. The Puppy Isolation is the holding room for puppies. They haven't yet been temperment tested and may carry diseases requiring extreme caution such as Parvo Virus. They also haven't been treated with the kennel cough preventative that we give every dog before he goes to the adoption room.

There was a dog in Puppy Iso who had diarrhea. We perform stool sample tests on all irregular stool. Dianne showed me how to use the kit. We take samples with a cotton swab from all the stool in the holding so we don't miss anything. We put the samples in a canister and add a liquid, Dianne called stool salt mixture. A smaller grated peice separates large fecal samples but still allows the parasites to float to the top. Then we fill the canister the rest of the way with the salt solution so that it makes a convex bubble on top. Then we lay a coverslip on the solution and let it sit.
After several minutes we put the coverslip on a slide and view under a light microscope. There is a poster on the wall with pictures taken of the parasites to help identify organisms. Today we found round worms. We'll be treating the entire room for the parasites.

We're continueing the lysine treatments on all the cats to prevent Upper Respiratory Infection but today two cats, including a calico mother, who is kenneled with her kitten, and another cat had to be euthanized because of URI. It is extremely important to remove any cases from the kenneled population because of the contageous nature of the disease in close quarters.

We moved in two orange tabby kitten in their place. One of the kittens had fleas so in addition to the routine treatments the cats get before going to Kitten Adopt we gave them both a dose of flea pill.

Today I was promoted to Dog Washer. I washed a jack-russel terrier, two black labs, and a beautiful doberman who were going to be spayed or nuetered before going to their new home.
I'm starting to do more!

We temperment tested several dogs today and found a rottweiler mix to be resource agressive. Bill made the comment that it was the rotty in her. I'm beginning to learn more about the breed characteristics and what's true and not true about breed temperments.

The people I work with have been doing their jobs here for a long time and have had related jobs before this one. I'm amazed by all they know and they've developed an instinct when dealing with the animals that can only come from experience.