Pet project: Tale of one animal in 1,000 illustrates ‘Spay Day’ effort

Published Sunday, March 15, 2009, in The Davis Enterprise. Reprinted by permission.

- Editor’s note: The Sacramento Area Animal Coalition held its 10th-annual “Spay Day Sacramento” spay-neuter effort recently, with veterinarians and volunteers at clinics and shelters across the region altering about 1,000 dogs and cats, all in hopes of stemming the tide of unwanted animals. To tell the story of the teamwork needed to change the life of just one of those animals, The Enterprise followed one dog from Davis through surgery at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. There, about 150 volunteers took part on Feb. 21-22.

By Cory Golden, Enterprise staff writer

Julie Bilik never had a dog of her own before Rocky.

There was a dog a boyfriend owned to which she grew attached. But the boyfriend became an ex-boyfriend, and man and his dog moved off to Oregon.

Julie didn’t miss the guy. 

“It was hard for me not having a dog,” she says.

Julie’s mom urged her to adopt a puppy. They found an 8-week-old black lab-mix in the care of a Missouri rescue group.

In the 10 months since, the 19-year-old UC Davis sophomore has planned her days around Rocky’s walks, his feeding, his time romping at Toad Hollow Dog Park or destroying still another tennis ball. She’s taking a companion animal class.

Rocky’s smile looks a little like a snarl, but he’s all tongue- and tail-wagging charmer.

“He’s really, really crazy. He’s one of the friendliest dogs I’ve ever met. He jumps up on people, but he’d never attack anyone. He just wants to play with everybody and say ‘hi’ to everybody.

“He’s just the most loving thing in the world. He’s always there, basically, and he doesn’t talk back.”

Getting Rocky neutered wouldn’t be cheap, ordinarily. The surgery can run $300 — no small expense when you work at a video rental place and the campus bookstore.

Luckily, Julie found information about Spay Day, through which families earning less than $35,000 a year could receive about $250 in services for $15 per cat, $20 per dog.

“This is very, very helpful,” she says.

Tomorrow, 65 dogs are scheduled to be spayed or neutered here at the Gourley Clinical Teaching Center at UCD.

Right now, on a Saturday afternoon, their owners are dropping them off one by one. Most are lab mixes, pit bull mixes or German shepherds. Each is handed over to a student guardian who will accompany the dog throughout the process.

Sitting outside, Julie admits that having her dog castrated feels wrong to her on some level. Like maybe she’s taking something from him. Or that maybe he’ll be different.

“But, ultimately, I know this is best for him and the dog population in general.”

Julie’s never left Rocky in a kennel before. When others go out, she often stays home with him in the Davis apartment she shares with three roommates.

Today, she brought along a friend, Cristine Cunningham, for moral support. Yet Julie is holding it together just barely, like a parent on the first day of school.

From here, she’s going to see her boyfriend, Jon.

“He said he wouldn’t let me cry.”

Having worked through a checklist about the dog’s history, third-year vet student Danielle Dito slips a leash around Rocky’s neck and leads him inside.

***

It’s a short step up onto the scale’s metal surface, but Rocky, eyes darting now, nose working overtime, is not having it.

With some coaxing, Danielle finally gets a reading: 22.9 kilograms, or 50.5 pounds.

Then it’s down to a station where Rocky’s scanned for a microchip, which he doesn’t have, and on to an examining room.

Here, third-year internal medicine resident Todd Cohen gives Rocky a quick once-over. Kneeling down, he checks eyes, then ears.

“Oh, those are great teeth,” Todd says. “That’s a good boy.”

He runs his hands down Rocky’s sides; Danielle holds him still.

“What’s he doing?” she asks Rocky.

“Just a little belly massage,” Todd says. The dog squirms. “I know, I know, I know, it’s nerve-racking.”

He tries listening to the dog’s lungs through a stethoscope. Rocky’s panting is fast, and getting faster.

Then Todd prepares to take Rocky’s temperature. “104.2,” he guesses.

A normal temperature would be 100 to 102 degrees. “I don’t think I’ve had a dog all day less than 104 because they’re all nervous and wound-up,” Todd says.
The digital thermometer goes someplace wholly uncomfortable, but not for long. Danielle has to right Rocky when he topples over while trying to wriggle away.

“Kiss him in the face,” she urges the dog.

“He wants to bite me in the face,” Todd says.

At last, the deed is done.

“Oh, you so lose,” Todd announces. “104.9.”

Exam complete, Danielle leads Rocky, paws slipping on the tile floor, down to the kennel: boys in one room, girls in another. Danielle checks him in with second-year student Mandy Predmore, who holds a clipboard.

The $16.4 million Gourley Center, opened in 2002, is normally where third- and fourth-year veterinary students learn to perform surgery and anesthesia. It’s an ideal location for big dogs to be altered during Spay Day because of its size. At 30,000 square feet, it includes 131 kennels and a surgery suite roomy enough for 28 tables.

Rocky sits down in a ceiling-high kennel that measures maybe 3 feet across and 10 feet deep. He looks out through the bars.

His neighbors include Stout, a boxer, Angus, a pit bull, and Baron, a German shepherd. Each dog has a metal water dish, but no food, to keep them from vomiting while under anesthesia, come tomorrow morning.

There’s some whining from the dogs, here and down the hall, and the occasional bark.

***

It’s Sunday morning, about 9:30 a.m. Some volunteers have been here since 6.

Danielle greets Rocky, who gamely wags his tail. She slips on a lead and take him into a room down the hall.

Here, second-year student Robin Chadwin holds the black dog as Danielle injects him with a sedative, pain medication, and a drug to keep his heart and respiratory rate normal during surgery.

As the meds set in, Danielle takes Rocky through a side door and out into a fenced, grassy enclosure, to give him a last chance to relieve himself. Interstate traffic sounds fill the damp air.

Rocky does nothing more than sniff around, checking fence posts, then bushes, before Danielle takes him back inside.

The 23-year-old from Sunnyvale, who hopes to practice emergency medicine someday, sits down to wait. She keeps a picture on her iPhone of her golden retriever, Lilly, who died in December.

Danielle, who co-organized UCD’s Spay Day effort, says the reasons to spay or neuter animals are many, beginning with reducing pet overpopulation and unnecessary destruction of dogs and cats. It also reduces infectious diseases and passed-on genetic problems in the animal population.

Surgery doesn’t change a pet’s personality, she says, but it does have any number of benefits.

Spaying a female dog before her first heat can cut the risk of mammary cancer by more than half; for males, it eliminates the risk of testicular cancer, obviously, but also reduces prostate problems. Problem behavior like marking, aggression and roaming are reduced.

"Danielle says, “If you decrease roaming and behavior problems, you decrease the number of animals that end up in shelters. So not only are you decreasing the number of unwanted animals, you’re preventing animals from becoming unwanted. It’s kind of a full-circle thing.”

***

A half hour later, Danielle leans against a wall, Rocky sitting before her, outside the anesthesia room.

A second student waits with a smaller black dog. It whines steadily. A yellow puddle flows out from under it, onto the tile.

Someone rolls out a mop bucket. By then, the little dog is on its back, a few feet away, the student scratching its belly.

It’s Rocky’s turn, he enters a wide room with stations of anesthesia equipment on both walls. Women and some men in scrubs attend to perhaps a half-dozen dogs, some sedated and still, coming and going. There’s a Rottweiler, a beagle, a pit bill.

Now and then a dog rolls by on a gurney, headed to surgery.

Rocky holds his tail down, and he whimpers, but he’s cooperative enough. Anesthesia technician Jessica Parmenter and Danielle heft him onto the table.

They shave a patch on his front right leg, then insert a catheter, which Jessica tapes down. Fluids start flowing.

At 10:07 a.m., Jessica’s thumb slowly presses down on an oversized syringe, administering a liquid anesthetic. Before the minute hand on the wall reaches 10:08, Rocky’s head goes heavy in Danielle’s hands.

Next, after checking the dog’s jaw for tension and eyes for blink reflex, Jessica inserts a tube into his throat which will carry anesthetic gas and oxygen to his lungs.

A 30-year-old Manhattan Beach native, Jessica has worked at UCD for nine years. She plans to apply to vet school.
Later, she’ll say it’s “humbling” to think about the number of animal lives saved on Spay Day. In her experience, vets and veterinary technicians all seem to find ways to donate time or money to animal causes.

There’s a reason for that, and for why, for example, vet techs choose work in a field where they make half as much as nurses tending to humans, she says.
“It’s the passion to help animals. That’s why we’re here.”

Onto his back now goes Rocky, who is playing dead rather too convincingly. A lubricant will keep his eyes from drying during surgery. Danielle uses clippers to remove the fur between his hinds legs, then swabs the area with anti-bacterial solution and alcohol.

Jessica, in headphones, listens to Rocky’s heart drum.

***

On a gurney, Rocky travels through double doors and into the surgery suite. He’s lifted onto a surgery table.

Here, everything — the walls, the scrubs of masked surgeons and students, the sterile draping over the motionless dogs — seems to be the same pale shade of blue. As many as a dozen surgeons are at work at one time, with staff and students assisting.

Near Rocky’s head is third-year student Sarah Woodworth, acting as anesthetist. To her left is third-year student Cecily Bonadio. To her right, second-year small-animal surgery resident Barbro Nordquist.

An incision is made between the dog’s penis and scrotum. One testicle is pushed forward, toward the incision.

The surgeon cuts through the tunic around the testicle and connective tissue, then the spermatic cord, with care taken to reduce bleeding. And, in fact, very little blood at all can be seen.

Barbro and Cecily then remove the second testicle. Soon they set to work closing the incision, suturing deep tissues, then working methodically up toward the surface. Sutures, which will dissolve, are weaved just under the skin so that the dog won’t lick or chew them.

The surgery lasts about 15 minutes.

In all, Barbro, 35, will perform five spays and two neuters today.

“(Spay Day has) got so many great aspects to it,” she says later. “As a resident, you work quite long hours, so you don’t usually have a chance to give back to the community. Students are exposed to different techniques. They learn a lot. And it’s just nice to see everybody on the same team, helping so many people in such a short time.”

On his way to recovery, while still sedated, Rocky receives a distemper, hepatitis, parainfluenza and parvovirus vaccine, a rabies vaccine and, between his front shoulder blades, a microchip identifying him in case he ever gets lost.

***

Rocky wakes between blankets on the floor of a makeshift recovery room.

Sitting with him, Danielle and third-year student Brynie Kaplan Dau have been monitoring his temperature, respiration rate and heart rate. All is going well.

They pet and talk to Rocky as he wakes, telling him what a good boy he is, keeping his attention on them rather than letting him become overwhelmed by the world spinning around him.

When he stands, he looks wobbly, so Danielle and Brynie lay him down again, his head on their laps. In five, maybe eight minutes, he stands again and is able to walk.

Danielle leads him back to the kennel. In the hall, Rocky, usually so twitchy with energy, pads along at a slow, steady pace, sometimes wandering toward doors on his left or right. He ignores students chatting alongside tables of food set out for the volunteers.

As Rocky settles back into his kennel, most of the surgeries have ended. The last will take place at 5 p.m.

***

In all, 56 of the scheduled 65 dogs arrived yesterday. Fifty-four were altered, with two others receiving vouchers for later procedures: one because it showed aggression, the other for health reasons.

A phone message is left for Julie, Rocky’s owner. It’s noon when her white Honda pulls up in the lot.

Danielle sits with her in the building’s lobby, going over what to keep an eye on in the coming days. The area of the incision may be red, but there shouldn’t be bleeding. It will likely swell. If it looks really painful, ice may help.

Danielle goes through advice on feeding and watering, then gives Julie a number to call if she has questions, information about Rocky’s microchip and lifetime registration, a certificate with the date of the procedure and immunizations.

Before she goes to retrieve the dog, Danielle assures Julie that her dog will still be himself.

For now, Julie waits. She didn’t sleep well. She moves her hands around inside the pouch of her UCD sweatshirt.

“I’ve been anxious all morning. I woke up at like 7. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to see my dog.’ I’ve had all my friends calling me — ‘Is he OK? Is he OK?’ — and I’m like, I don’t know yet.”

A door opens. Rocky pulls hard at his leash, tail wagging, Danielle trailing behind.

Julie crouches down, and Rocky sniffs and licks her face. He briefly investigates a man nearby, then returns. There’s that snarly-looking smile.

Danielle kneels down, scratching the dog’s rump, as his owner switches the slip lead for Rocky’s collar.

“He’s saying, ‘Take me home, take me home,’” Danielle says.

And Julie does, woman and dog walking out into the rain together.

Online: sacacnimal.org, yolospca.org, vetmed.ucdavis.edu

 

— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net or 747-8046. Comment on this story at www.davisenterprise.com.

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All about Spay Day

Enterprise staff

By the numbers
19: locations at which surgeries were provided.
5: Yolo locations: Acorn Vet Clinic (19 cats), South Davis Veterinary Center (80 cats), UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine (65 dogs), Woodland Veterinary Hospital (49 cats and dogs), Yolo County Animal Services (12 cats and dogs).
18: sponsors, including, from Yolo, Wag Hotels and the Yolo County SPCA.
300: volunteer veterinarians, shelter employees and animal advocates who took part.
$200,000: Value of veterinary services donated.
5,000: Number of animals altered in 10 years of Spay Day Sacramento, consistently the largest one-day spay/neuter event in the country.
370,000: Kittens two unaltered cats and their offspring can theoretically produce in seven year’s time.
67,000: Puppies two unaltered dogs and their offspring can produce in six years.
40,000: Approximate number of animals entering the three Sacramento County animals each year. About half are euthanized.
$1 billion: Annual cost to taxpayers and humanitarian agencies for capture, impoundment and destruction of unwanted animals.

Demand

About 1,600 phone calls were received requesting appointments for 1,000 available slots. Pet owners who did not get an appointment may be eligible for a voucher program, through which spay/neuter surgeries are subsidized at participating clinics.
A list of other low-cost programs is at http://sacanimal.org/spayneuter.html

“We get a lot of calls from people who’ve decided they can’t care for a litter of puppies. With litters of kittens, it’s the same thing. There are simply not enough homes for all these animals. So we do our part to make a difference.” — Kim Kinnee, executive director of the Yolo County SPCA executive director and chair of the 2009 Spay Day committee

Spaying a female animal will:
- Eliminate spotting during the heat period;
- Eliminate the annoying pacing and crying of female cats in heat;
- Eliminate the attraction of persistent males looking for a mate;
- Eliminate complications associated with mating, pregnancy and birth;
- Almost completely eliminate the risk of a life-threatening infection of the uterus called pyometra, which requires emergency surgery;
- Greatly reduce the risk of breast cancer, especially if she is spayed before her first heat;
- Eliminate the risk of uterine or ovarian cancer and provide several other health benefits;
- Reduce sexual frustration and stress.

Neutering a male animal will:
- Reduce or eliminate irritability, fighting with other males and annoying behavior like urine marking, spraying and mounting;
- Reduce the tendency for him to escape and roam in search of a mate, and the risk for injury that could occur;
- Greatly reduce the risk of prostate infections in male dogs and feline AIDS in male cats;
- Eliminate the risk of testicular cancer;
- Provide other heath benefits, like reduced risk of benign perianal tumors;
- Reduce sexual frustration and stress.

Sources: Sacramento Area Animal Coalition, Spay USA, American Veterinary Medical Association