Together again: Amy Trow and Si Si. Photo: Melody Ko

Lucky Dog

Amy Trow, V04, a first-year resident at the Foster Hospital for Small Animals, spent long hours in the Emergency and Critical Care Unit and was used to receiving urgent pages heralding the arrival of gravely injured animals. But one day last January, Trow’s clinical cool was put to the test when a page informed her that the hospital’s next emergency patient—a sleek, tan mixed-breed who had bounded into the path of an oncoming car—was her own dog, Siler. Trow had rescued Si Si, as she calls him, from an animal shelter in North Carolina a year before, and the prospect of losing the companion who loved carrying toys in his mouth and wore a fleece jacket on cold winter days was devastating. The rescue from the pound wasn’t Si Si’s last deliverance, though. His accident unfolded in a way that would make Lassie, the canine queen of close shaves, howl in disbelief.

Si Si was lying on North Street in Grafton, Massachusetts, his head cradled by the driver of the car, when who should happen to be out walking her coonhound but April Paul, a resident in emergency and critical care at TuftsVETS emergency clinic in Walpole. Paul immediately recognized Si Si as Trow’s. As she examined his injuries, another passerby—none other than Paula McCarthy, a former veterinary nurse and the wife of Dr. Robert McCarthy, V83, clinical associate professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine—stopped to help. The two women lifted the injured dog into McCarthy’s car and called the emergency room at the nearby Foster Hospital for Small Animals to alert them that Si Si was coming and would need a chest tube.

A team of vets—including Armelle de Laforcade, V97, assistant professor of clinical sciences at Cummings, three residents, and several students—intubated the dog to relieve his breathing, inserted a urinary catheter, placed a central line in his neck to receive blood, took chest X-rays, and brought him into the intensive care unit (ICU) to stabilize him. One of Si Si’s peers even joined the rescue effort; Paul’s coonhound, Savannah, donated blood.

Trow managed to step back and let her co-workers take the lead. “I was incredibly upset that he had life-threatening injuries. Because he’s my own pet, I had to distance myself from what was happening,” she said. “I visited him in the ICU during his stay, but I made a significant effort not to spend too much time there, since I also had to make sure to take good care of all my own patients.”

Siler’s luck continued throughout his ordeal: his wounds turned out to be moderate, and to his owner’s relief, he went home to recuperate after just three days in the ICU. Si Si may think twice before bolting into the street again. But should his curiosity get the better of him, hopefully his uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time will hold. Who needs Timmy when your best pals are Tufts vets?