I am a veterinary technician at a small, family owned, animal hospital in my community. I’ve worked here for about three years and for the most part enjoyed it. The work is interesting and varied, the doctor is knowledgeable and always happy to teach, and the customers are mostly polite. But there are, of course, lows to accompany all the highs. For every pile of kittens that comes through the doors, there’s a cat that needs to be put down. For every miracle puppy that survives Parvo, three more succumb to it.
It can be really heartbreaking when you do your best to help an animal and then they pass regardless. Reminds you that life is unfair, ya know?
But I’m not writing this to philosophize about my career, I’m writing this because I need to get this out. Somewhere people will listen and maybe even believe me. I feel like I’m going insane keeping this in and no one in my hospital will talk about it. I saw something crazy two nights ago on the graveyard shift and I can barely comprehend it, let alone explain it.
It had been a pretty slow night, a couple dogs needed antibiotics for tooth root abscesses but it had mostly been nail trims and ear cleanings for the past two hours. I was on my break studying for one of my classes and chugging the second iced coffee of the night when it happened.
“Emergency!” the receptionist called from the front.
My body reacted almost on its own. I shot up and raced to the lobby.
There I saw what I thought was a dog. I mean I don’t know what else it could’ve been. A huge beast, covered in matted black fur and grime, stinking to high heaven. The poor thing was bleeding from somewhere and actively seizing, its teeth clacked as it bit at the air. I rush to its side.
“Get a gurney, we need a weight for a midazolam injection, and prep the O2 machine” I shouted.
The other tech, Sarah, rushes over. We slid the dog gently onto the stretched surface of the gurney and lifted together. All the strength we mustered to lift what we assumed to be nearly 200 lbs of dog sent the thing flying into the air like it weighed nothing. My jaw dropped as it literally hit the ceiling and dislodged a foam panel from above. Sarah and I stared at each other in disbelief as the dog landed askance on the gurney. The situation would’ve been almost comical if we hadn’t just rocketed a seizing patient into the buzzing fluorescent lightbulb above.
Sarah and I shook off the incident and continued to do our job. The dog had stopped seizing and was breathing heavily as it laid on our gurney, continuing to bleed from a still unseen wound. We gently slid it onto the scale and were shocked when it landed on 5 lbs 0 oz.
This massive lump of fur and gnashing teeth weighed 5 pounds?
At this point, I was beginning to feel a sinking feeling in my tummy, like all the blood was rushing from my head to my legs in case I needed to run, get the hell out of here. I ignored the feeling and noted the weight on the patient chart.
We rushed the dog back to the doctor who began to get vitals. She paused for a half second while listening with her stethoscope. A strange expression crossed her face.
“Listen to this for me” she said in my direction.
I scooted over and placed the stethoscope in my ears. I moved the chest piece around looking for a heartbeat. Instead of the typical wooshing thump, I heard what sounded like bubbling water sloshing around. I looked up at the doctor who was already on her calculator.
“0.5 ml IM midazolam if he has another seizure, put the bells on him.” She commanded, cool as a cucumber.
Sarah rushed to put the seizure bells around the dog’s neck in case he started convulsing again.
The doctor pulled me aside.
“Get a history from the owner. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but working theory is that there’s a very malnourished dog under all that matting. We need to get the fur off before we can evaluate further. Get consent to administer a Buprenorphine injection with a hub of Acepromazine to help with the pain while we do a shave down.” She whispered to me.
I nodded. I rushed back up to the lobby where a vet assistant was already speaking with the shell-shocked and blood soaked owner. I quickly went over the doctor’s treatment plan and the owner nodded numbly. A receptionist brought him a plastic cup of water and offered a towel to wipe the blood off with.
I told my coworkers to leave us alone for now while we talked.
“So what happened to your dog?” I asked gently, not wanting to shock this poor man even more than he already had been.
“I-its not my dog” he replied. “I was driving home from a party and well” he trailed off, eyes looking through me.
“Ok, so you hit it with your car?” I probed.
“No no, I didn’t hit it. It walked up to me”
I questioned him with my eyes.
“I was driving on a backroad. I stopped for a second to text my girlfriend with an ETA. I was looking down at my phone when it walked up to the car.”
“So he was walking when you found him?” I asked.
“No, he wasn’t just walking, he was walking. Like, on two legs. like a person. I-I can’t describe it, it looked like a guy in a Gilly Suit or something. I didn’t know what to do, so I let it in my car.”
There was a moment of silence. My typical history questions didn’t account for this. I tried to regain control of the situation.
“I- Um— what kind of food do you feed h-“
The man cut me off. “Once he got in the car he started acting like a normal dog. It was crazy, we went from some unnerving freak of nature to just a friendly pup. He sat like a dog would sit, panted like a dog would pant.” He paused a moment to take in a shaky breath.
“But something was wrong, it didn’t sound right. It sounded like a person pretending to pant like a dog. So I looked over at it. I looked over and I saw its teeth. Flat, like human teeth.”
We both sat in silence for a moment and I swear to God the lights flickered.
The man suddenly snaps back to reality, his eyes focused like he was finally seeing me for the first time.
“and its eyes.” he continued. “they were horrible. I could see the whites of them and it looked right at me.”
He grabbed my shoulders tight “It looked right at me and I swear to you, I swear to you it winked at me”
My eyes darted to the curtain separating the treatment area and the lobby. I felt his eyes piercing me still.
“Jackie!” I called. The receptionist came running over. She pried the man’s fingers away from my shoulders and I sprang up. He stared at me as I backed away past the curtain.
I was glad to be away from the owner but you know what they say, out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Ice ran through my veins at this point. It was all I could do to keep my composure as I knelt down by the dog once more. The bleeding had slowed and so had his breathing. The drugs were clearly taking effect and he lay still. I numbly prepped the shears for the shave down.
The doctor asked what the owner had said about the pet’s condition. I mumbled something like. “Found him, doesn’t know what happened.”
The hum of the clippers was drowned out by the beating of my heart in my own ears. I could feel the blood rush back to my face, flushing my cheeks. I steeled my nerves and began to shave the dog in front of me.
I honestly almost expected to find a zipper— find out that this was some sort of elaborate fursuit with a really fucked up guy inside.
I think what I found was worse.
I shaved away layer after layer of matting and dirt. The smell crescendoed till it almost made me puke. It was unbearable; like feces and rot.
The once intimidating beast was whittled away to almost nothing by the time I got down to the last layer. What used to look like a Newfoundland now looked more like a malnourished Greyhound.
My clippers pierced through the last layer of mats and instantly, pus sprayed out. About 5 lbs of liquid infection pumped out like I had severed an artery. My face was covered in the juices, some even got in my mouth.
When the last of the pus dribbled out, I emotionlessly peeled away the crusty fur like the shell off a hard boiled egg. Inside? Nothing. Wet, stinking fur in the shape of a dog, but inside was hollow.
When we went out to the lobby, jaws on the floor, dripping in fluids; the man was gone.
We closed early that night.
I drove home in silence, preparing to take a scalding shower and scrub the memory of tonight off my skin, when my headlights landed on something shambling out of the woods. On two feet. Like a person. I saw the thing flash pearly whites.
I stomped on the gas and didn’t look back.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to go about my life like this didn’t happen. Jackie and Sarah and even the doctor won’t speak of what happened. I know they remember though; their eyes flash with terror when I mention that night, but then they tell me they “don’t know what I’m talking about”.
So, does anyone have any advice? I’m at a bit of a loss here.
PS: the smell won’t wash off my scrubs either— any advice for that?