State treasurer's golden retriever stays on call 24/7
BILL LUCKETT Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - The Maxfield family got the call last February from Avenues Pet Clinic.
"Can you have Winston come in in the next half hour? We have a real need for the blood."
In the waiting room, Winston's owners ran into the people who owned the dog that was to receive a blood transfusion from the golden retriever.
"When they found out it was our dog, they were just so grateful and just so touched by it," said Winston's owner, State Treasurer Max Maxfield.
Maxfield said Winston has been a canine blood donor for about the past two years. He gives blood regularly about three or four times a year, and he's also on call around the clock in case of an emergency.
"We're on a 24-hour call list, so if a dog gets hit by a car or has emergency surgery in the middle of the night, we'll be there," Maxfield said.
Maxfield said he learned about the canine blood donor program when the people at Avenues Pet Clinic asked if they could test his two golden retrievers. Winston's blood type makes him an ideal donor.
Michelle Hartleben, a technician at Avenues, said canine blood donor programs are common at larger veterinary clinics, although she thinks her clinic has the only program in Cheyenne.
Avenues has 10 donor dogs, plus another four that only donate plasma. The clinic takes 500 milliliters of blood from dogs once a month, and the blood is good for about 35 days. The plasma, however, can be separated from the blood, frozen, and kept for five years.
Hartleben said that in order to qualify as a donor, a dog must weigh at least 50 pounds.
The blood is drawn through a large needle that's stuck in the dog's jugular vein, but it's not too painful, she said, and the procedure doesn't take terribly long.
"If we have a good dog that sits still through the whole thing, we can fill a bag in about 10 minutes," she said.
Much like a human who gives blood is given a cookie or a cup of orange juice for nutrition after the procedure is done, canine blood donors get a jar of baby food, Hartleben said.
Whether it's the baby food or just simply knowing he could be saving a fellow pooch's life, Winston doesn't mind visiting the clinic to give blood, according to Maxfield.
In fact, he said, "He loves to go."
Winston, who turns 5 in June, only has a couple more years left of donating blood before he has to retire, because Avenues doesn't take blood from dogs over age 7.
Maxfield said Winston will probably not be the last canine blood donor in the family.
"Future dogs that we have, one of the things that we're going to do is see if they qualify for this program, because I think it's fantastic," he said. "There's no reason not to do it."
Hartleben said the clinic has only done three blood transfusions so far this year, but it did many more in 2004. The most recent one was for a dog that had gotten into rat poisoning, and the donated blood helped rejuvenate the dog's red blood cells that had been affected by the poison, she said.
She said the program has helped prolong the lives of many dogs in Cheyenne.
"It's a great service to have if the clinic is big enough to have it," Hartleben said. "It does a lot of good. … It saves lives."
Capital bureau reporter Bill Luckett can be reached at (307) 632-1244 or at bill.luckett@casperstartribune.net.