The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way veterinarians operate. Vets are not offering elective procedures like spay and neuter, and pet owners are often asked to wait outside the clinic while their animals are examined. But for Dr. Wendy McCulloch, there is no clinic. She only makes house calls.
Dr. Wendy was already 45 when she graduated from vet school in 2004.
“I just had an epiphany one night that I was going to go back to vet school. I did say to somebody at the time, 'Am I crazy?' and they're like, well you’re gonna be 45 anyway—you may as well be a vet,” Dr. Wendy recalled.
Before that, she’d been organizing catering on big rock and roll tours. That’s how she ended up moving here from New Zealand. Her first gig was Tina Turner. Later, the Rolling Stones. They even helped her pay her way through vet school. “My first year was financed by the Bridges to Babylon tour,” Dr. Wendy said.
Listen to Amy Pearl talk to Dr. Wendy McCulloch on WNYC:
So many people rushed to adopt animals in recent weeks, so Dr. Wendy has been seeing a lot of first-time pet owners. One recent morning, she guided her Chevy Tahoe over the Triborough bridge to see a brand new dog with a behavior problem.
Before that, it was a kitten with rampant diarrhea, another new pet. “It’s Cat 101,” Dr. Wendy said.
Because of the pandemic, before she arrives, Dr. Wendy has the pet owner open the window to air out the apartment chanting: “Dilution is the solution to pollution!”
She wears an N95 mask, gloves, and booties, and carries just the minimum amount of equipment—a tackle box loaded with syringes, a shaver, thermometer, blood tubes, swabs—and lays that down on a “wee wee pad” to minimize cross contamination “It’s not a sterile field but it’s as good as we can get,” Dr. Wendy said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the risk of pets passing coronavirus to humans is very small and Dr. Wendy is mainly focused on keeping herself and the pet owners separate, but sometimes it can be a challenge in a small New York City apartment to keep 6 feet apart. Also, Dr. Wendy pointed out that “if somebody’s crying into their pet’s fur, their fur is a surface, you know, and so that could certainly be a fomite for COVID."
She added, "How many times have we all cried into our pet’s fur? That’s what they’re there for!”
But when asked if people can catch the virus from their pets, Dr. Wendy explained that the concern is about giving it to pets, rather than pets giving it to us.
Besides new pet visits and puppy and kitten vaccinations, Dr. Wendy has been performing a lot of euthanasia calls. Julia, who didn’t want to give her last name, called Dr. Wendy when she made the decision to put her 16-year-old dog Spencer to sleep recently.
“He had a Benji face,” Julia said. Spencer suffered from kidney disease and his regular vet was closed because someone on staff had tested positive for COVID-19.
Dr. Wendy normally allows people to hold their pet during the process but, now, she admitted, “We can’t really do that in order to do the social distancing.” So instead, she gives the pet an initial sedative and then leaves the room to allow the pet’s owner to spend time with the animal.
“Once I’ve given that," Dr. Wendy said, “I leave the room so that owners can come in and sit with their pet and hold them while they go to sleep. You know the whole countenance changes, the face relaxes, the muscles. It’s so much better to see their pet relaxed and comfortable at that point and then they'll step out and I’ll administer just an overdose of an anesthetic.”
Spencer’s owners said it was especially difficult losing her pet during lockdown, “You’re listening for sounds that aren’t there anymore, it’s like losing your left arm. Like I have this blanket that smells of him I need those things around me right now, that sort of presence, especially now.”
Dr. Wendy thinks New Yorkers are a special case. “I mean I think in New York City, especially, animals are so important, because a lot of people come here from somewhere else, so their family is their pet, something that loves us unconditionally,” she said.
Dr. Wendy sent an update about a recent emergency call. An orange tabby named Murray had gotten a toy stuck around his waist, like a green plastic hula skirt. Wendy cut through the plastic and freed the cat.
Poor Murray
Then she was on to her next patient.
