One of the most annoying things about being on a shoot is the variety of workload in your day. At one moment you can be worked like a dog and the next you are sitting around waiting for something to happen, twiddling your thumbs like a bum in central park. There is no middle road – it is all to the extremes. And today was a case in point as we spent the morning waiting to see if an owner of sick dog would turn up. Eventually he did and then it was all go as we stormed in to film what Marc (the producer) said would be “a quick operation” after the long day of filming yesterday (we visited a place called the Butterfly Farm and it was absolutely brilliant – I fulfilled one of my life dreams to touch a sloth. It was so cute and reminded me of why they are such amazing creatures: a species that has evolved to sleep). This “quick operation” wasn’t anything of the sort and turned into a six-hour epic. Yes, six hours! Luke and Annie (an Australian vet volunteering for WVS) worked like troopers removing eight tumours from a female dog. And as I write this the two of them are still laboring away at the Amazon CARES’ clinic performing a surgery on a cat with a bad eye. They are both wonders to behold.