Please Do Not Feed Us That Morning

2 April 2024, Cité La Chaux

Before the day, we made a poster of the dogs we were hoping to sterilise, with one request for everyone who fed them: please don't feed us that morning. Dogs need an empty stomach before an anaesthetic, so just this once, breakfast had to wait.

It was our first sterilisation day in Cité La Chaux with our vet Isabelle. We didn't have a clinic, so we made one: folding tables for the operations, and flattened cardboard boxes laid out on the floor as recovery beds. As each dog came out of surgery, it joined the row on the cardboard to sleep it off.

Sean spent most of the day down on the floor with them, lying beside the dogs to keep them calm as they came round. It worked, but he paid for it: by the end of the day he had rolled around with so many street dogs that he went home with a fair share of their ticks.

We still laugh about the photo. There they all are, stretched out on the cardboard, and the one in the purple shirt is the only one we didn't sterilise.

Two years on, sterilisation days in Cité La Chaux are a regular part of what we do. Here's one of the most recent.