Dr Nanderandi smiled as he casually talked me through the flank bitch spay technique today – 7 minutes later he lay down his instruments. Well, 7 minutes and 17 seconds to be precise but who’s counting 17 seconds. For those at all interested the anaesthetic was 2mg/kg xylazine IM, 0.02mg/kg atropine s/c then 5minutes later one handed catheterisation 10m/kg ketamine I/v and on a drip. No tops up needed (except for my slow coach 16minute effort which needed an extra jab) but these are a 50:50mix of 20mg/ml xylazine and 100mg/ml ketamine and given at 0.5ml/10kg. Every animal gets meloxicam and la antibiotic – one suture of silk horizontal mattress and this is removed after 5 days. They look perfect. So today I had the master class in spaying and I have loved it. This morning was an epic removal of a buffalo horn with a fracture and then this afternoon spaying. Apparently the vet working with us tomorrow is even faster. I’m out of my league with these guys.

It has been another scorcher but the monsoon is apparently on its way so we’ll see how that goes. Avian medicine isn’t a hot topic with me at the moment – a little bird I operated on died and I’m really sad about it – it just hated captivity and I think the biggest lesson I learned there was that wild birds belong free and the issue of hospitalisation is a factor I didn’t consider enough. Really disappointed and it was doing so well for the last couple of days!

The crew is all in the zone, Adam just said he feels relaxed and chilled, Bruce is feeling less melancholy and not so full of angst, Marc is apparently zooper – whatever that means.

Bring on the donkeys tomorrow!