Diary of a Fourth-Year Vet Student: No-Willy Willy

Sure, we vet students can succumb to the charms of cute puppies and lambs as much as the next person. But show us a truly broken little nugget and we can come to blows about who will hold that precious baby next.

Willy is an adult male chihuahua. He was found wandering in the desert, severely dehydrated, with his eyeballs hanging out of the sockets. Those were duly removed and the sockets sewn closed. He is mostly deaf. His jaw was broken some time in the past and the top and the bottom don't line up anymore. He's missing most of his teeth, so his tongue sticks out of his mouth all the time. He's got terrible allergies. And he had a mast cell tumor on his prepuce, so his prepuce and the distal part of his penis had to be removed. Our soft tissue surgery service did that procedure last week, i.e., they removed Willy's willy. He has a new pee hole a little farther back along his belly, closer to his anus. In short, Willy is a mess. But oh my, he is exactly the kind of mess that gets vet med people worked up.

Willy spent a couple of days in our regular wards for all of his pre-operative testing and imaging, and then a couple of days in ICU after his surgery to make sure he was recovering nicely. I wasn't kidding about people arguing who was going to hold him next. This dog never touched the ground except to pee or poop for four days. I repeatedly overhead people say "You've held him long enough. It's my turn."

I would take him without hesitation. I'd put him in a baby sling and carry him like that everywhere. One of the clinicians said "Cuddles CRI. That's what he needs. Cuddles CRI." Which has to be one of the funnier vet med jokes I've heard in a while. A continuous rate infusion or CRI is how we deliver certain drugs that get metabolized very quickly. With an IV catheter and pump, we can drip a continuous flow of these drugs, usually pain meds or sedatives, into an animal to keep them comfortable. Willy needed cuddles, stat.

I am utterly amazed and grateful that I go to school with and work with the kind of people that get emotional over dogs like Willy.