Trying to Deliver a Goat and Haitian Dogs

Monday, as we were walking home from the last day of CHW surveying in Do Dique, we noticed a goat who had just given birth.  We had actually recently had an in depth talk about how many pregnant goats we saw each day, and that our chances for seeing one give birth while we were in Haiti were probably high—and I was very excited by this prospect as I’ve still never seen any sort of live birth in person.  I first noticed the goat because she was right alongside the road, and I could see afterbirth membrane hanging out of her.  Then we saw her two goat kids; one who was still wet/bloody from the birth (and TINY), and one who was dry and more normal sized.  We thought it was very curious that she still looked very pregnant.  We ended up checking on her several more times that afternoon assuming we’d find a third kid at some point.  However, after about 3 hours of monitoring her, we got worried that maybe her labor had stopped, or that the third kid was malpositioned and unable to come out on its own.  So, we went back to Matana, fired up our Wi-Fi and looked up how goats give birth.  After reading that usually there is only a 30 minute delay between kids, we started getting really worried.  Abbey, being an ob-gyn resident was willing to try and reposition the kid if it was in fact breeched and help her deliver it.  We set back out with water, crackers, and gloves, to see what we could do to help this poor mama.  She guzzled down almost 2-liters of water and ate a half-sleeve of Ritz, but she shimmied away from Abbey’s gloved touch each time she tried to reach inside.  I, of course, volunteered to try holding her, but we were all sufficiently freaked out at her shrieking screams when I grasped hold of her horns… and we decided we would need her to lie down for us to be able to do anything.  Throughout this time we noticed that the babies were also not getting anything from her teats when they would latch on, and after nearly 2 hours of our discouraging attempts to help her, we were feeling especially glum. 

               Eventually, two Haitian farmers strolled by on the road, and inquired what we were doing (they definitely thought we were crazy).  They actually knew the owner of the goat who ended up sending his two sons up to where we were. They picked up the new baby kids and carried them (by their front legs) over to a more open area.  The mama waddled and shrieked down the road after them.  We finally got Guirliene, one of the CHWs at the compound who understands a little bit of English to come back with us to the area they moved her.  The farmer and her had a quick discussion and she told us that the goat was done having kids.  We stood arguing with her for several minutes, but in the end there was nothing else we could do, since it wasn’t our goat.  We left the situation very sad, and fear that the babies, the mama, and the unborn kid(s) will probably all die.  I wish I had a happier ending to report for that story. 

               This story does bring up the interesting point that there are virtually no veterinarians in Haiti.  Abbey has been really interested in getting my sister, Sophie, who is in her 3^rd year of vet school to come down here and work on a dog neutering program—where it could eventually become a sort of vet tech training program.  The number of malnourished, diseased, maimed, and injured dogs you see each day around here is astounding, and we think this type of a neutering program could help remedy this.  Ultimately, the dogs end up competing with people for food, and most of them are totally untamed and on the vicious side.  See Abbey’s last blog post where she writes about this idea in a little more detail.  www.abbeymerryman.blogspot.com.

Below are some pictures of puppies we’ve seen, and the last picture is of Rascal (or Rascella) the dog at the Mission that I am very tempted to try and bring home with me.