Puppies we picked up while block-walking for the Big Fix.
On Saturday, January 23 a small army of SNIPSA volunteers and staff successfully altered, vaccinated and microchipped 145 animals in a high-need area of town. I woke up at 5 am, was out the door by 6, and picked up Tere and her niece shortly thereafter. We headed to the church, where workers would work tirelessly for well over 12 hours. I was on-site from 6:30 am to 8:30 pm - that makes for a very long day indeed!
Approximately 70% of registered appointments showed up and checked in that morning. We had many walk-ups, and volunteers went out to canvas the neighborhood and bring dogs in. Any kinks in the system were worked out as quickly as possible with the processes going on that day. We were fed wonderful food and kept nourished all day long by a team in the church kitchen.
Speaking of teams, it takes several to pull off a Big Fix. There is an intake/discharge team; we are the "face" at the event. We check everyone in and then send everyone home. Then there is a large team of transporters. They take the animals back to the cages and then out to the owners at the end of the day. There is a prep team of vet techs, a team of vets, and a team who works in recovery. There is another team who cleans and re-packs surgery tools. There is a team in the kitchen who prepares food/watches the SNIPSA babies. There is a floating photographer. There is a lady or two manning the certificate table and all the paperwork between intake and discharge. And of course we all pitch in to set up and take down. There is months and weeks of planning leading up to the event as well. There are a few of us who get to see the process from the beginning to the end. It's a great process.
No Big Fix happens without some sort of heart-wrenching story. The vets had to euthanize a big black dog with inoperable cancer. They operated on a doberman with an enormous mammary tumor.
Fox news came out, so I gladly informed him that Adam is our resident veteran tv personality. As usual, Adam gave a fantastic interview. Unfortunately, I think it is the first tv interview of his that we missed. We were just too busy that day leading our respective teams, with Adam also having to run home mid-day to take care of our own pups.
We pulled of our biggest numbers at this event, and we look forward to the next event in March. We will do six Big Fix events in 2010. All of our hard work is progress towards the city's goal of a No-Kill 2012. After all, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".
