Partners

The gift of sight Michelle Rafferty, a Duluth, Minn., police officer, comforts her beloved partner, Timber, after undergoing cateract surgery on both of his eyes. Newspaper readers were so touched by the story of Timber, who was blind, that they donated more than than $20,000

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Duluth cop is dog's best friend

Standing outside the operating room door, feeling helpless, Duluth police officer Michelle Rafferty fought tears Tuesday as her partner went under the knife.

He lay unconscious on a table at a clinic in Blaine, his tail tucked between his furry legs, his tongue flopped out the side of his narrow German shepherd muzzle.

Dr. Robert Larocca leaned over the police dog's motionless head, peered into a microscope at its clamped-open right eye, and began cutting.

The ventilator whooshed as it breathed for the dog, a new police recruit named Timber, like the wolf, whose career would be very short unless Larocca could restore his sight.

And losing her partner would devastate Rafferty.

"Lightning struck when I got that dog," she said. "I couldn't have a better one. He's like a kid or a best friend."

Timber has been with the Duluth Police Department for only five months.

He's a quick study, tough with bad guys, and has a good nose for marijuana and cocaine. Plus, he has something less common in police dogs: an amiable, almost sweet disposition. He makes friends wherever Rafferty takes him.

But not long after they were paired in May, Rafferty began noticing that something was wrong.

"He'd catch the end of tables and run into chairs," she said. He'd pause in doorways or on the edge of ditches, looking back at Rafferty as if to say, "You go first."

Timber, she learned, had cataracts, a clouding of the lenses in the eyes. In dogs, the problem is often inherited, a vet said, and he was probably born with them.

Seeing-eye cop

As word spread through the department, Rafferty, a 12-year veteran who just became a K-9 officer this year, took a lot of ribbing.

When they called Timber "Stevie Wonder" or "Ray Charles," she played along, allowing that she had become Timber's "seeing-eye human."

But inside, Rafferty was terrified that the department would send Timber back. In the short run, it might be less expensive to exchange Timber than to pay $2,500 to $3,000 for surgery to repair his eyes.

Rafferty, 36, had loved animals since childhood and had always dreamed of being a K-9 officer. Timber was her first dog partner. As the newest K-9 officer, she'd been given the oldest K-9 squad vehicle, and now, as fate would have it, a nearly blind dog.

But she didn't mind. From the moment they'd met on a freight dock at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and he'd fallen asleep with his head in her lap on the ride home, a bond had grown. They had been through K-9 school together, and he'd become part of her family at home. He'd proved his worth on the street, twice finding drugs in cars. She'd watched him struggle to search buildings, even though he couldn't see much.

She couldn't bear the thought of letting him go.

"He's an officer; he's one of us now," she said. "If I broke my ankle, the department would take care of me. In the same way, we should take care of him."

When Rafferty pleaded Timber's case, Chief Roger Waller listened, and he agreed that it might cost less to fix Timber's eyes than to train a new partner for Rafferty.

Plus, he could see how determined she was to keep her partner.

But with budget cuts looming, Waller didn't know how the department was going to come up with the money. Undaunted, Rafferty said she'd put it on her own credit card.

Timber's new lenses

That's how Timber ended up on an operating table Tuesday at Midwest Veterinary Specialty Group, unconscious, a mask of bare skin where the hair had been shaved from around his eyes.

Larocca, the surgeon, one of only three board-certified veterinary ophthalmologists in Minnesota, does eye surgery on everything from hamsters to horses to sea lions.

He assured an anxious Rafferty that the surgery to fix Timber's cataracts is routine and highly successful, with useful vision returning more than 90 percent of the time.

Ophthalmology technicians Jane Hoffman and Maria Crowley assisted, preparing Timber and monitoring his vital signs and the various instruments and machines. He needed a ventilator because Larocca used a drug to paralyze him to prevent even the slightest eye movement.

After making a small incision near the edge of the cornea, Larocca inserted a small, slender rod attached by tubes to a machine.

Through a technique called "phacofragmentation," he gradually cut the damaged lens inside Timber's eye into small fragments, which the instrument simultaneously vacuumed out.

He then enlarged the incision and slipped a new, clear plastic polymer lens inside.

Finally, he sewed the incision shut, using a thread that will dissolve in a few weeks.

The team then turned Timber over and followed the same procedure on his left eye.

Loving promise

Rafferty waited nervously during the 1½-hour operation, occasionally peeking through a window in the operating-room door. She was invited to watch but didn't think she could stand to see her dog's eyes being cut. Her father, Ron, drove over from Stillwater to wait with her.

"I go to accidents with injuries all the time and endure it," she said. "But this gets to me."

Afterward, she was at Timber's side again, stroking his neck and speaking softly as he came out of the anesthesia, a plastic cone around his head to keep him from scratching at his eyes.

He was groggy and whimpery and apparently unaware that the world around him was about to make a lot more sense.

Larocca said that the operation went very well and that Timber would be able to see normally within hours. He should be able to return to work in four to six weeks.

"They regain vision right away," he said, gently patting Timber's head. "It's real neat to see."

On a rug on the floor of the recovery room, Rafferty cradled Timber in her arms, hoping he somehow understood that his pain, which she seemed to feel as much as he did, meant that they could stay together.

"When this is over, we'll go home and watch football," she said into his ear.

Posted by floridacracker at November 16, 2004 11:14 PM