`Animal Hospital' Profiles A Very Charismatic Place

Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston has often been dubbed the Mayo Clinic of/for animals. This one-stop shopping center caters to approximately 45,000 ailing animals annually.

From the homeless to the affluent, Angell's veterinarians see everyone. And you'll meet many of these characters - practitioners and clients alike - in Steven Sawicki's compelling and heart-warming "Animal Hospital" (Chicago Review Press, $22).

It's about drama in the waiting, examination and operating rooms, oozing with commitment, love and drama. Something we pet columnists tend to label the human-animal bond.

Plenty of expertise

The hospital has an on-staff oncologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist and neurologist. On any given day, you're apt to find surgery ranging from hip to brain. Its ER never closes.

Sawicki, who writes for People magazine, spent a year (1992) shadowing Angell staffers, documenting their moods, successes and occasional shortcomings and three years of chronicling the "adventure."

"It was a year I'll never forget," he says. "It certainly gave me a greater appreciation for the veterinary profession and opened up my eyes about the public's love affair with its animals."

If you're a fan of NBC's popular "ER," this furry version will capture you, too. There's bizarre interaction between staffers, interns and uncontrollable owners. Plus, occasional friction with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which operates the hospital.

To get a feel for the place, Sawicki took his own dog, Abbey, a golden retriever, in for treatment in 1989 - and still does. "The waiting room is a cross-section of Boston," he says. "You see just about every type of owner and pet imaginable."

After his first Angell experience, Sawicki was smitten. "I decided I wanted to write about it, but the next year a Boston writer wrote a story for an area magazine. When I saw that I was momentarily dejected. But then I thought, why not a book."

Sawicki put his tail (pun intended) in motion, received access clearance from hospital executives to observe virtually everything, except department-head meetings, and proceeded to write a volume you're gonna love.

Throughout his year at Angell, he remained an outsider, gradually building a trust among most of the staffers. "Overall, the cooperation was excellent," he says.

From its inception, Sawicki treated this work like a baby. "I nurtured it and developed its character. My heart was totally in it." And it shows.

The pulse of "Animal Hospital" is the riveting case histories and character studies.

Matteo, a 100-pound Rottweiler, is one of the most memorable. He was brought in wrapped in the muscular arms of his owner, Anthony Bonacorso. The two were best friends and went almost everywhere together.

A day earlier, Matteo joined his owner at a Super Bowl party held at Bonacorso's construction company. But the next day the sturdy dog was at death's door - vomiting and urinating all over. Matteo was groping to recollect what the dog might have ingested. Voila! He suspected antifreeze.

When ethylene glycol is in the system too long - a day can be an eternity - the animal's survival chances are a longshot. Kidney and liver damage is rapid and substantial, usually resulting in an agonizingly slow death.

Bonacorso told an intern treating the dog to do anything necessary, money was no concern. After more than a week of heroic efforts - plus consideration of putting the dog on a kidney dialysis machine, flying it to a university elsewhere that was experimenting on canine kidney transplants or Bonacorso purchasing a used dialysis unit for $20,000 - and an emotional roller-coaster ride for everyone involved, Matteo's condition worsened and he was euthanized.

A few other little tidbits:

About 70 percent of the patients are dogs, 28 percent cats and 2 percent exotics. While most are local, many come long distances, including from foreign countries.

One client, who arrived on foot with a cat tucked under his arm, when asked for his address, replied, "Under the Fifth Street Bridge."

Another gentleman came in with his dog, which had been struck by a car. A leg was broken and air had escaped from the lungs into the animal's chest. The owner was inconsolable as the staff veterinarian attempted to explain the injuries in layman's terminology. "This may be of some help to you," the client said sobbing, "in real life, I do function as a surgeon."

A top priority

Yet another owner said, "That dog is more important to me than my daughter," and meant it, said the attending veterinarian.

Then there was the Mafia boss's Doberman pinscher with a note scrawled on its medical record, "Dog is pet. But has had attack training."

Dr. Jim Boulay: "It's a sad commentary on society when people have no friends and come to you and say, `If I lose this dog, I'll have no warm thing to touch.' "

The Angell internship, says Sawicki, provided a professional feast for young practitioners who emerged from veterinary school craving to learn more. Here, everything imaginable was at their doorstep.

It was the interns who handled the temperamental walk-ins. "With new victims perpetually rolling in, seldom did they have time to connect on any personal level," says Sawicki. "It didn't help that many clients dismissed the interns because of their youth."

One exchange was particularly memorable. An exasperated intern was, according to Sawicki, "all but pestering an owner to put his cancer-ridden pet out of its pain. `I lost my father today' the client finally snapped, `I just can't bring myself to lose my dog, too!' "

The interns, he emphasizes, had a "youthful exuberance and idealism that made them Angell's lifeblood." Yet, he adds, Emergency work frightened some of them, while others thought they knew more than they actually did. "Fueled by immaturity and ego, they plunged into their cases with the abandon of invasionary paratroopers."

Sawicki says, "There is in-fighting there just like in any big business. But the vast majority of employees are team players and pull together like an extended family. They see themselves as being on the front line of animal care."

Receptionist Paulette Vartabedian called staffers "Angellites." Then she went one better, "Once an Angellite, always an Angellite."

Special viewing

The Learning Channel will present two one-hour specials today, "A Dog's World," at 6 p.m., followed by, of course, "A Cat's World," at 7, which repeat, respectively, at 9 and 10 p.m.

Using innovative filming techniques, each program reveals what it's like to see, hear and sniff at a far greater acuity than human senses permit. You'll discover that many of behaviors exhibited by both, that we often dismiss as "cute," are, in fact, primitive survival instincts.

"A Dog's World" shows how this descendent of the wolf has become man's best friend, yet its radar senses of hearing and smell far outclass ours.

In "A Cat's World," video technology shows how the night world appears to felines, who can see in the dark five times better than us. Like dogs, cats also have an acute sense of hearing.

In addition to filming these creatures in their domestic habitats, the producers also consulted with animal behaviorists, pet psychologists and veterinary researchers for their interpretations of often misinterpreted behaviors.