Solstice usually arrived early in the mornings, and Saturdays were no exception. She put on pots of coffee and tea in the shop and took sheet pans of scones and pastries from the refrigerator and put the sheet pans into the oven. The weekend usually brought window shoppers who preferred to linger in the casual seating area of the shop, drinking tea and nibbling on scones.
Once the first sheets of pastries were in the oven, she headed to the back to start to feed the animals that were left in her care for healing. She was to have a new part time worker starting today. Solstice left the back door to the shop open so Fallon could get in before the shop actually opened for the day.
Solstice had re-designed the large warehouse space in the back of the shop to function as a barn/animal clinic. There were stalls for larger animals and spaces for cages for the smaller animals. She had a room for procedures, a room for storing equipment, and a room for storing food and hay and other supplies.
She preferred to tend to each animal one at a time, treating each one as if it were her own. Her first patient of the day was a rather persnickety hippogriff, who had injured a wing. This morning he seemed to be extra testy, and Solstice was guessing it was because he was hungry. She wanted to have time to exercise the hippogriff today. He needed walking, and, if he would tolerate it, a little bit of flying.