At WSU, the animal doctors are in

A puppy injured in a house fire, a horse born with a rare facial deformity, a celebrity hawk with an injured foot – they’ve all been patients at Washington State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

Some 20,000 animals, even reptiles and raptors, come to the hospital in Pullman, Washington, each year, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, though the hospital draws patients from nearly every state.

They come for routine care of beloved pets, but also for WSU’s wide range of specialty services, said Raelynn Farnsworth, a veterinarian and the hospital’s chief medical officer. Those include oncology, cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, ophthalmology, and pathology. Surgeons perform rare procedures using state-of-the-art equipment.

There’s a blood bank, the first of its kind in the nation when it opened in 1989, which now saves 100 patient lives each year. There’s also a sports medicine program for dogs who compete in agility trials, and reproductive medicine and surgery.

Some animals are brought in by good Samaritans after being injured, and they’re treated, too, thanks to a donor fund.

“We obviously have a passion,” Farnsworth said. “And because we’re a teaching hospital with a lot of research going on, we’re trying new things to move the veterinary profession forward.”

So, for instance, Calvin the Doberman’s cancer was treated by removing his shoulder blade instead of his leg, leaving him able to walk. Carter, a tiny Maltese puppy, and Wolfie, an adult shepherd-lab mix, both overcame life-threatening conditions through minimally invasive surgeries using technology that’s only available at a handful of veterinary hospitals nationwide.

Oro Negro, a Friesian stallion, lived to dance another day in charro competitions after undergoing two surgeries at WSU. And Hypatia, a calf that’s among a small number of Heritage Milking Shorthorns remaining worldwide, received round-the-clock care for a shattered leg.

As for the celebrity hawk? That’s Taima, who leads the Seattle Seahawks football team onto the field for every home game. Marcie Logsdon, a wild and exotic animal veterinarian at the WSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital, removed a jellybean-sized mass from the hawk’s foot in 2023, clearing him for takeoff.