Fifty Years in the Doghouse

by Lloyd Alexander

  "Kid," said Ryan, "you may be an officer, but I don't care if you're General Grant. If you want me to let this bull loose, here and now, I'll do it.

  "Just put your orders in writing and sign your name." The young executive sniffed. "I'm not afraid of responsibility." On a sheet from Ryan's notebook, he jotted down his instructions to release the bull and added his name with a flourish. "There," he said. "Are you satisfied?"

  "Yep," Ryan said, "and I hope you will be." He opened the ambulance. The bull shot out with all the determination and single-mindedness of a clerk at five o'clock. "Hey," shouted the junior executive, "he's going into the offices."

  "Well," Ryan reminded him, "you said he belonged here."

  "But," the young man sputtered and made swimming movements with his arms. "You can't let him do that ..." The sound of smashing glass from inside the office building suggested to Ryan that whatever the bull planned to do was already done. Running through the shattered door, Ryan found the reception desk overturned and the receptionist, shrieking at the top of her voice, perched on a filing cabinet. Farther down the hall, two employees had taken refuge in a public telephone booth. The bull in passing had casually, and almost as an afterthought, tossed the phone booth on its side. The employees decided it was safer to stay where they were. All along the corridor, doors slammed and terrified clerks raced up the stairs. A blizzard of correspondence, bills and other papers filled the air. With Ryan at his heels, the bull galloped the entire length of the hall and out into the courtyard again. On the far side of the court, Ryan caught sight of a procession of cows heading for the pens. "Hey, boy!" Ryan whistled and waved his hands. The bull turned to the attack and came charging down on the ASPCA agent. "In there!" Ryan shouted. "In there!" The bull hesitated.

  He ogled the cows for a moment. "Go on, boy," Ryan urged. "That's your fan club." The bull decided that cows were more interesting than ASPCA agents. He joined the troop. Ryan thought he glimpsed a look of happy anticipation in his eye. The ASPCA agent made his way back to the wreckage of the office. The young executive was nowhere in sight. The two employees had just begun to ease themselves out of the phone booth, like sailors climbing gratefully from a stoved-in boat. Near the overthrown reception table, a stout man in shirt sleeves surveyed the wreckage. "Look at this ruin!" he cried as soon as Ryan appeared. "Nobody's going to work here for a week!"

  "That's the company's problem," said Ryan. "You're right," the man wailed. "It's my problem. I own the company! What do you want?" he went on. "Are you trying to put me out of business? Before you turn loose a bull like that, you should have your head examined!" Ryan pulled out the sheet of paper. "I don't need my head examined, but your vice-president does." The man read the authorization, then nodded sorrowfully. "I apologize," he said. "I should have known."

  "Where'd you ever get a kid like that for a vice-president?" Ryan asked. "Where did I get him?" cried the man. "You should only know where I got him. That no-good! He's my son," he added ruefully. "My son, the bullfighter."

  10 - Hospital With a Heart

  If Noah's Ark had a sick bay, its patients couldn't have been much more widely, or wildly, assorted than the ones the Society treats through its medical-surgical services. At one time or another, the ASPCA hospital has been a maternity ward for a lioness; a stopping-point for flying deer; a nursery for a black leopard and her adopted litter of puppies. Admission records cover practically the whole animal alphabet and there has even been a theological cat. Miss Agnes Riddell, Chief Hospital Clerk who took a two week temporary job with the Society and recently retired after staying on for 37 years, recalls being briefed about the cat by the housekeeper of St. Patrick's Rectory. Until his illness, the pet spent much of the day sunning himself on the rectory steps. Passers-by would often stop to admire him, which was all right with the cat as long as they did it from a distance. When they tried to stroke him, he hissed, bushed his tail and smacked them indignantly. He changed his behavior for one group: clergymen. If a priest wearing a Roman collar offered to pat him, the cat would beam happily, purr and roll with delight. "They're the only ones who can touch him," said the house keeper. "So tell the vets to be careful. I'm not saying he really knows the difference between Catholics and Protestants. I think it's the collar that does it. He'd swat the archbishop himself if he didn't have one on!"

  In for treatment after losing her litter, a black leopard seemed so lonely and forlorn that Society veterinarians judged she would welcome almost any kind of young. They cautiously presented her with a litter of puppies, which she nursed and fondled lovingly. She recovered and went back to her job with an animal act before she began wondering why the little balls of fur barked instead of mewed. The lioness, also in show business, produced three rambunctious cubs during her stay in the Society's hospital. Her trainer later sold one of the cubs to Florenz Ziegfeld, who kept it in his office. The cub soon proved too spectacular even for the great Ziegfeld and the producer eventually, with much relief, presented it to the zoo. To promote the movie The Yearling, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer rounded up a herd of deer for distribution to childcare’s zoos here and abroad. This was in per-Animal port days and the Society offered to lodge the deer in its hospital stables until the animals found plane accommodations. The leggy, liquid-eyed deer were quiet and well behaved throughout their stay with the Society. The only hitch in the deer-lift came when one pilot made a forced landing in Britain and began unloading his cargo onto the airstrip. The British have strict quarantine laws concerning animal immigrants and the unexpected, uncertified arrivals threw field officials into confusion. Since the deer had already landed, nothing could be done to make them un-land. The indomitable customs men collected all the disinfectant and bug spray they could lay hands on and began saturating the area, which they continued to do long after the deer had been trucked away. The hospital's work is as varied as its patients. Recently, a blind couple appealed to the Society to help their seeing-eye dog when the animal began to lose her own sight. Society veterinarians performed an intricate eye operation to restore the dog's vision. In another case cortisone, plus heat treatment with the hospital's new diathermy equipment, helped relieve a German shepherd's arthritis.

  Open-heart surgery is an extremely delicate procedure even in human hospitals; but not long ago, the ASPCA veterinarians performed the hospital's first open-heart operation. The patient, a dog, recovered completely. ASPCA researchers are now doing some of the most exciting and promising work in the veterinary field, trying to discover ways to save animals suffering from malignant lymphoma, an incurable form of cancer. The Society's hospital has been setting the pace for veterinary medical centers for more than fifty years. Bergh had planned an animal hospital, although he never lived to see it finished, and the hospital which the Society opened in 1912 was the humane movement's first full-scale medical-surgical institution. The hospital kept its original location at Avenue A and 24th Street until I 950, when the Society consolidated it with the new shelter and headquarters at 92nd and York. The Society has always made it a principle-and point of pride to have the most advanced veterinary facilities available. A major portion of the million-dollar building expense went toward outfitting the hospital, which has recently completed a new $60,000 expansion program. The hospital treated 19,000 animals during its first full year of operation at 92nd and York. This figure has jumped 60 percent since then, and Society veterinarians now see about 31,000 patients a year. "We hope this increase is due to improvement of the level of care," says Hospital and Clinic Director Dr. John E. Whitehead. "And," he adds, "the level of care is directly proportional to more adequately trained scientific personnel, as well as the use of new and proper equipment and drugs." Another service which has been increasing in importance over the past few years is the hospital's handling of referrals from private veterinarians.

  The Society has never taken the position of competing with veterinarians in private practice and, in fact, encourages owners to take their animals to local doctors. However, a
s a professional courtesy to New York veterinarians, the hospital will accept patients on a referral basis. In their own offices, many private veterinarians don't have the exotic equipment the Society makes available-nuclear devices such as the hospital's new beta-ray applicator for treating certain eye cases and ulcerative conditions. Just as in any large-volume human hospital, Society veterinarians routinely perform a lot of operations which are relatively rare in private practice. Two, with an animal needing such specialized care, the private veterinarian is welcome to refer the case to the ASPCA hospital, and the veterinarian receives a complete report, with all supporting laboratory data, as an aid in developing his own diagnosis and continuing treatment. The ethics of human medicine apply at the Society's hospital; there is no charge to the veterinarian and, after treatment, the patients return to their own doctor. As a further help, the Society encourages its veterinarians to publish technical articles in state and national journals, as a means of sharing knowledge with the veterinary profession. Dr. Whitehead is a youngish, athletically built ex-Air Force man, handsome enough to have his own Television doctor show. More significantly, he has done much important clinical work in diseases of small animals and is particularly interested in radiography, pathology and diseases of the eye. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, Whitehead interned at the Angel Memorial Animal Hospital in Boston, then went into private practice in Hartford, Connecticut. With a frank smile and a set of steady nerves, Whitehead usually stays unruffled, which is the way a hospital director should be; but he makes no attempt to hide his enthusiasm for the hospital's new equipment.

  "This is an auto-technician," Whitehead says, affectionately patting a big, circular device of glass and metal. "We can process a piece of tissue in twelve to fourteen hours with this. Done by hand, it would take about five days." The auto-technician, a memorial gift from a friend of the Society, is particularly important now, since the $60,000 expansion program centers mainly around the Pathology Department. "We have a lot more room, and a lot more efficient working conditions, for clinical pathology," says Whitehead. "We can do blood counts, blood chemistry, urinalyses, fecal examinations, bacteriological studies-all the standard lab tests, as well as some of the more specialized ones." The other half of the Pathology Department is devoted to histology, or tissue pathology, a means of determining the nature of the disease process by examination of tissues removed from surgical patients or deceased animals. "This is a brand-new operation for us," Whitehead says, "and it demands some of the most intricate processes in medical research." The Society expects the Pathology Department to be especially helpful in the cancer research the hospital does in cooperation with the famous Sloan-Kettering Institute, St. Luke's Hospital, New York Hospital at Cornell, and allied institutions. In addition to supervising the research program, Whitehead rides herd on the program of laboratory inspections the Society inaugurated to protect animals requisitioned under the controversial Metcalf-Hatch Law. The law requires the Society, as an institution receiving public funds, to supply unwanted animals for medical research. "Actually," says Whitehead, "the number of animals requisitioned is relatively small. The total in a year is less than one percent of all animals coming into our shelters." Although the Metcalf-Hatch Law has ignored the question of animal welfare in experimental laboratories and made no provision for inspection, the Society's attitude is that experimental animals are entitled to protection under already existing anti-cruelty laws.

  No hospital or laboratory has complained about the Society's stand. Instead, they are eager to cooperate and the New York State Society for Medical Research backs the ASPCA program whole heartedly. Whitehead strongly favors the Society's policy of laboratory inspections carried out by trained veterinarians rather than laymen. "A veterinarian is better equipped to recognize substandard conditions in animal wards," Whitehead says. Also, a veterinarian's special training lets him deal with hospital personnel on a professional basis. Whitehead's veterinary staff checked 277,698 laboratory animals last year--dogs, cats, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, ducks, turkeys, pigeons, sheep, goats, horses and even some turtles. As Whitehead points out, 99 percent of these did not come from the Society. They benefit from the inspection program nevertheless and the Society has made the laboratories themselves aware of the need for first-class conditions in the animal wards. Most of the violations Whitehead's staff turns up involve such complaints as poor ventilation, soiled cages and feeding dishes-and canine manicures, a very important detail. Unintentionally, some labs forget that a dog's nails need trimming, just as a human's. Overlong nails can be painful when the dog walks--or scratches himself, as dogs have been doing since time immemorial. Since the inspection program, most labs have gone all out to set up clean, well-run animal wards. One Brooklyn institution, Whitehead mentions, has put in a new type of plastic dog cage with an aluminum door, and an automatic flush system that cleans the floor every two hours. Each dog also has its own self-operating drinking fountain.

  Many labs now have their own staff veterinarians to supervise the animals and living quarters; or call in local veterinarians as consultants. The laboratory inspections and the research programs are carried out as additional functions of the hospital's main work: helping sick and injured animals. The hospital at 92nd and York is as busy as any metropolitan medical center for humans. The Society's sleek ambulances, equipped with two-way radios, portable spotlights, first-aid kits and stretchers, race to about 86,000 emergency calls every year. Fractures, poisoning, suffocation, scalding-everything that can happen to a human being can usually happen to an animal, too. To handle the accidents, as well as the thousands of cases of illnesses and ailments, the hospital follows a pattern similar to its human counterparts. It even has interns-as part of a program, started in I 960, to give young veterinarians post graduate training. Treating over 31,000 animals a year poses a massive problem in administration, organization and treatment, and the three main departments, medicine, surgery and pathology, have now been set up as separate, but coordinated, areas of activity. Whitehead relies on a hospital administrator, an office manager, six office workers, a foreman, and a night supervisor for the non medical side of the hospital. Eight attendants, lab and X-ray technicians and a night nurse fill out the medical staff which now includes I 4 veterinarians. Keeping the hospital in supplies annually demands, among other items on the shopping list, about 5,000 yards of bandages, 9,000 prescription bottles, 1,800 X-ray films. At one time, the Society had to buy meat, fish and vegetables and spend hours preparing animal food. Today, it's possible to get scientifically prepared, special-formula diets for the hospital patients-pregnant mothers, growing puppies, animals with vaccinations, intestinal complaints, kidney diseases; even a reducing diet for overweight animals.

  Medicines in the hospital pharmacy are surprisingly close to those found in a human medical center: almost all of the antibiotics, serums, drugs. The hospital has also had some excellent results with the new tranquilizers, originally developed for human consumption. In treatment, the Society's hospital has perhaps even more problems than a comparable human-oriented institution. Animals don't bore each other with details about their operations; they can't even tell the doctor where it hurts. Hospitalized animals are able to do a lot less for themselves than hospitalized humans. Even on the way to recovery, a dog, cat or other four-legged patient requires continual attention. Each of the 14 veterinarians makes daily, 45-minute ward rounds, personally checking the progress of patients under his care. Attendants see that drinking water in the individual, temperature-controlled cages is changed three times a day. Human patients do better if they can be up and around as soon as possible and the same often holds true with animals. Dogs get their exercise, if their condition permits, every morning and afternoon in the hospital's rooftop runs. There, subsurface heating pipes keep the paving warm and free of snow. If taking care of a hospitalized animal is a complex job, the human with a pet in hospital is, himself, usually under a s
train. People worry about their pets and are anxious to know how they're doing. To make things easier on the humans, the Society sets aside two hours each afternoon between two and four, to receive telephone calls from owners and to advise them about the patients' progress. The veterinarians, too, have their own daily telephone hour, and owners may talk directly with the doctor on the case. Famous owners are an old story to the Society. Agnes Riddell remembers reassuring one daily visitor, the late Gertrude Lawrence, about her dog's condition. Singer Jane Froman visited the hospital every day to look in on her convalescent dog.

  And when the Winter Garden Theater's cat had to be admitted for treatment, his most faithful visitor was comedienne Beatrice Lillie. The theater people all missed the cat, Miss Lillie explained. He lived backstage and spent his days among the properties, or perched on the scenery. His favorite spot was the middle of the stage itself. During performances, the cat watched the show from the wings; but as soon as the curtain came down he would stroll out again and supervise the work of the stagehands. The cat always returned to the wings before the next act began and seemed to know that the actors would not have appreciated his presence in the middle of a scene. Everyone was delighted when the cat recovered and Miss Lillie took him back to the Winter Garden. He was probably the only theatrical cat that didn't try to hog the spotlight.

  The Society's records show a yearly total of more than 43,000 days of hospitalization, but out-patients still account for the major share of the hospital's work. For a small extra fee, owners may make advance appointments and see a particular veterinarian at a specified time. Otherwise, veterinarians examine the animals in order of arrival, although emergencies always have priority. Sometimes it's hard to tell who's having the emergency. One woman brought her cat in for minor treatment, to which the animal submitted without fuss, while the owner fainted dead away. The hospital was also the setting for a non medical complication. A man and his wife took turns visiting their convalescent dog and everything was fine until the schedule got mixed up and the couple arrived at the same time one afternoon. This circumstance might ordinarily have provided cause for a happy domestic reunion. The husband, however, was escorting a female companion. The trio stepped outside to settle their differences, which must have been considerable. Next day, the wife returned to collect the dog. There was no sign of the husband. This might have been just as well. The Society is better equipped to deal with animal, rather than human, casualties.