Two Dogs and a Wrestler

More Vet Stories From the Early Days

I gradually became more confident as I continued to face challenges that presented themselves regularly. The heart-thumping ones, in whatever form, are the ones I remember most clearly.

Dr. W had opened a second clinic right around the time I graduated, and it was that location where I worked most often. It was new enough that the entire staff was comprised of one assistant and me, and we spent lots of time waiting for clients to arrive. We were able to mark off ample time for surgeries since the demand for appointments was still low.

One day I was in the middle of a spay while Fran was busy with something at the reception desk. Standard of care back then didn’t require a technician monitoring anesthesia continuously. The building was small, so I was able to hear the front door fly open and a frantic owner screaming, “He’s choking!” Fran ran the dog and his young male owner back to the room adjacent to the surgery suite and hollered for me to come now! I tore off my surgical gloves, covered the open abdomen with a sterile drape, and came face to face with a German shepherd I’d seen just the week before. My memory of him was clear because he’d been so aggressive that we had to have the owner muzzle him and help with restraint for me to even do a cursory physical exam. He never stopped growling and snarling, even through the muzzle. Now, the owner was shaking with fear, the dog was in a wide-eyed panic, hacking slightly around the ball lodged in his pharynx. He couldn’t take a deep enough breath to cough it out himself, so it was up to me to try to dislodge it in time. In recent years, someone’s developed a very slick technique for handling this not uncommon scenario, but back then, all I could do was try to get my hand down this dog’s throat and somehow jimmy the slippery ball out, while Fran strained to hold his jaws open. I tried repeatedly, failed repeatedly, and watched the dog turn blue and slide onto the floor. While I was interally panicking, my small fingers finally got enough purchase around the back of the ball and I was able to launch it out. The dog took a huge deep breath, his pink color returned immediately, and the owner’s eyes welled up with tears. In the meantime, my surgery patient, with her belly open, was un-monitored on the surgery table, so I had to instantly turn around, re-scrub and re-glove and get back to business. Fran took care of the owner and the dog, and the spay ended uneventfully. Some time the next week the owner brought his dog back just to say thank you. I was pleased to see them but kept my distance from this dog who had previously tried to visciously remove the very fingers that saved his life. Initially I was suspicious when his posture suggested a relaxed and happy dog and then absolutely stupefied when he approached me wagging his tail and jumped up on me to lick my face. Dogs understand more than we know.

Along the way, I learned early that owners are as unpredictable as their pets. You expect a wide variety of reactions to the news that their best friend has a terminal condition or to the simple sight of their cat or dog, still groggy from a surgical procedure. You mentally prepare for whatever may be coming - but other times, it’s just a plain ol’ shock.

I had a client who was a professional wrestler. Let’s call him Jacques LePierre, because to use his real name might besmirch his memory. He was a Canadian gentleman who I frequently saw jogging in front of the clinic. The guy was a colossal human being with a thick dark neatly trimmed beard and usually donned in chartreuse or purple tights, a tee-shirt, and bandana around his forehead. One day he came into the clinic while Fran was out at lunch and asked if I could have a look at his gorgeous black and tan doberman. She was lethargic and had a swelling on the side of her chest. I’d never seen Angel before, but she lived up to her name so I was able to do my physical exam with no help from anyone but her owner. The diagnosis was simple. She had a massive abscess (source unknown) about the size of a canteloupe on the left side of her chest. I asked him to leave Angel until my assistant came back so we could drain and flush the abscess, but he insisted that he didn’t want to leave his little girl and that he’d be happy to help with whatever she needed. He was tough, he assured me, and used to seeing all manner of injuries in the ring. I was still young and naive, so I agreed.

The practice was housed in a simple brick building that had been repurposed from a deli into a veterinary clinic. The treatment area also served as the pharmacy. There was a stainless steel table in the middle of the small room and some free-standing metal shelving against a wall parallel to the table that housed all the oral and injectable medications. Mr. LePierre was able to scoop up his 75 pound dobie onto the treatment table with ease and stood on her right side, between the table and the pharmacy shelves. His mass was imposing, but his vibe was as sweet as Angel’s. Feeling very secure, I stood on the other side of the table with the enormous abscess near my face level. His dog was a perfect patient, stood stock still as I injected the local anesthetic to the bottom of the abscess where I would allow gravity to help relieve the pressure that the pus had built up over the days prior to her coming in. Angel’s devoted owner continually uttered dulcet French words of encouragement to his girl, and she was 100% cooperative as I made my stab incision and the stinking pus began pouring out of her side and onto the table where I’d placed a small pile of towels to absorb the inevitable slop.

I first noticed that it had become quiet on the other side of the table, but I continued my procedure until I noticed the gargantuan figure opposite me begin to stagger backwards, then back into the metal shelving, and eventually slide down to the floor, bringing the entire pharmacy down on top of him. I had no choice but to stop what I was doing, once again pull off my gloves, and try to attend to the other patient now lying unconscious on the floor under a mountain of multi-colored capsules, tablets, and broken bottles. The dog was extraordinarily well trained, so my command to, “Stay!” was effective, and the pus just continued to spill out while I tried to figure out what to do with a passed out 300 pound lump of human sprawled on the clinic floor. They didn’t teach us about this in vet school, so I did what I’d seen in the movies and began gently slapping at his face repeating, “Mr. LePierre! Mr LePierre! Mr. LePierre!” Luckily he began to come around and Fran returned in time to call his wife and explain the situation, all the while I was attending to the human patient and hoping my canine patient wouldn’t change her mind and come to the aid of her person and spew pus all over him and the pharmaceuticals that now adorned his massive body. By the time his wife arrived, he’d come around enough that we were able to help him up together, while Fran monitored the incredibly well-behaved dog still dripping pus. Mrs. LePierre ushered her embarassed husband out to the waiting car, made arrangements to pick up Angel later in the day, and explained with a sly smile on her face, “ You know, he can handle anything in the ring, he’s so tough. He even once broke ‘The King’s’ leg during a match, but oh boy, anything happens to that baby girl of his…” From that day on, I never saw Jacques LePierre jog in front of our building, and Mrs. LePierre was always the one who brought Angel in if she needed care.