On arrival in Kiev, we were met at the airport by Tamara, who was the founder and charity co-ordinator for SPA SOS. She took us to a hotel in the city where we met the rest of the team. We were two vets, myself and Sue, a nurse, Lauren and four new graduates from Bristol Uni, Su, Steph, Jo and Becki. The aim of the trip was to help the new grads to develop their surgical technique, whilst at the same time helping with the mammoth task of neutering the thousands of street dogs in Kiev.
After we had all checked in and found our rooms, we decided to go up to the hotel restaurant for dinner and to get acquainted. It was getting quite late and the waiter was obviously keen to go home, and after taking orders from two of us from the menu he decided to insist that the only thing on the menu was pork, chicken or beef. Luckily nobody was vegetarian, so we all ordered but we were slightly worried that communication issues may arise over the course of our stay!
The next morning Tamara came to meet us and took us to the shelter in a minibus. Our first impressions were that the facilities were fairly basic but all the dogs appeared happy and well looked after. They tended to follow Natasha, the kennel manager, everywhere. She was very good with them and looked a bit like the pied piper with her constant followers!
After we had unpacked the supplies we had brought with us, which included wormers, flea spot-ons, nsaids, antibiotics, iv catheters, needles, drapes, surgical kits, buster collars, suture material and various other odds and sods, we acquainted ourselves with our surroundings and checked everything was ready to start surgery. Since the Ukranian vet was not there that day to demonstrate how to use the autoclave and let us know which durgs were which (as none of us could read Ukranian) we deicded to start applying the spot-ons we had brought.
Our first task was to tackle the cats. The cat house was seperate from the rest of the shelter, with double doors to prevent any escapes, and it was suprisingly calm there. The cats were all very clean, with a designated dirt area and comfortable looking sofa, bed and shelves where they were all very content. They were all very keen to have a fuss until the Profender came out! We noticed that a lot of the cats had runny eyes and quite a few had microphthalmia, and we suspected Chlamydia and herpesvirus were likely to be endemic in the population.
After we had finished with the cats, we started to apply Pro Meris to as many dogs as possible, but with over a thousand dogs in the shelter, we were never going to get on top of any flea problem. It was very hot and the dogs were very friendly, although highly suspicious of what we were doing.
We left the shelter early on the first day and after showering and changing we met Tamara for a walking tour of the cirt. She showed us how to get into the town centre and pointed out a couple of good places to eat, which is always useful to know. Kiev is quite an interesting city, very busy with a lot of designer shops and very glamarous looking girls around, although there is evidence around every corner of their previous occupation by Russia.
After an early night, we woke feeling refreshed and ready to spay everything in sight! On arrival at the shelter we met Julia, the Ukranian vet. Although there was quite a language barrier, we managed to communicate enough to get started. She spayed the first heavily pregnant bitch, then each of the students had a turn.
Each patient was given a quick check over and an iv catheter was placed. Anaesthesia was induced with Xylazine and Ketamine in a 50/50 mixture at a rate of approx 1ml per 10kg. This gave a fairly reliable anaesthesia, although close monitoring of respiratory and heart rates was required to ensure top-ups were given before the patient became too light. Each patient was given carprofen and penicillin also.
The first bitch was in season, which meant that everything was a little more fragile than usual, but Steph coped very well under pressure and all the relevant pieces were removed and all bleeding controlled without too much of a problem. Next it was Jo’s turn and she coped very well with a medium sized mature and fairly deep chested bitch. Su was next and drew the short straw with her first op. Bleeding was noticed during the op, so exploration was required to find the source and ligate the necessary vessel. We suspected that rickettsial disease and/or D.filaria or A.vasorum may well have played a part in the fragility and tendency to bleed of all the dogs, as we noticed far more generalised bleeding during most of the ops over the two weeks.
The following day, after checking our previous patients, we got back to work again with the first op of the day on a bitch who had recently whelped and was lactating. We also had a couple of very young bitches to do. They looked less than six months old, but as they were street dogs, the shelter prefers to do them as young as possible. They were nice and straight forward after the mature females in various stages of oestrus, pregnancy or lactation.
Each day more dogs were waiting to be operated on when we arrived. We developed a good routine and were working well together, with Lauren recording everything meticulously. The new grads started to gain more confidence, and were doing really well. Considering the difficulties they were faced with they all coped brilliantly. Over the course of the trip we spayed 23 bitches, 7 of which were pregnant. We also castrated 3 dogs and spayed 6 cats. We all had a fantastic time and had a real sense of achievement, although we barely touched the tip of the iceberg. We were all very tempted to take a lot of the dogs home with us, as they all had a lovely nature. We were slightly disappointed that our working days wasn’t as long as it could have been, but as it was we ran out of Ketamine. Unfortunately this meant that we had no work to do on the last two days of the trip, but it did give us the chance to see a bit more of the city and enjoy the lovely weather.
I would recommend this trip to anybody who wants to go to a less frequently visited part of Europe. Tamara and all the staff at the shelter do an incredible job despite the fact that they are faced with no end of problems on a daily basis, and they are very appreciate of the help that we can offer them.
