Here’s How a Diamond Turned Into a Pet Rock

Everything was going fine until the Dalmatian and the diamond ring met on the carpet--and then things went very bad very quickly.

What followed was a veterinary medicine marvel that is everyday stuff at the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe.

It all began when Kenneth Pohl, window and door salesman and dutiful husband, bought his wife, Rosemary, a beautiful diamond ring with a thick gold band for her birthday.

Everybody was happy: Kenneth, Rosemary and even their 9-month-old female Dalmatian named Calie. Then the ring found its way to the carpet. Suddenly--slurp, slurp--it was inside Calie.

The Pohls let a day pass hoping the ring also would pass. It did not. A veterinarian near the Pohls’ home in Rancho Penasquitos administered an emetic but it failed to produce the ring.

The neighborhood vet then sent Calie to the Woodward center, which runs a referral hospital for specialty cases. After all, this is the place that once retrieved an intact pistachio nut from the stomach of a dog and a valuable piece of jade from the inside of a cat.

“You’d be surprised the kinds of things that wind up inside dogs and cats,” said Steve Sacks, director of animal services and education at the Woodward center. “They’re worse than babies. Everything goes right into the mouth.”

Rather than cut Calie open, Dr. Keith Richter anesthetized the pup and slipped an endoscope--a long, black, flexible tube with a miniature video camera at its end--down her throat, past the esophagus and digestive tract into the stomach.

The ring was spotted on the full-color, high-resolution monitor hooked up to the camera. Down through the tube went special grasping forceps. On a second attempt, Richter, a board-certified veterinary internist, maneuvered the ring gently up and out of the dozing dog.

Four hours after the operation, Calie was up and barking and on her way home.

High-Style Finale

It all ends at midnight Friday, but flight attendants at Pacific Southwest Airlines are going out in style--the flashy, fleshy, slightly outrageous style that characterized San Diego-based PSA in happier days.

As the merger with USAir looms, attendants are wearing the miniskirt and hot-pants uniforms that were de rigeur in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Once the shock settles in, reaction from passengers has reportedly been good.

“I had forgotten how short the miniskirt really was,” laughed Nancy Price, a PSA attendant for 18 years who still fits into her hot-red mini with orange and pink trim. “Wearing the micro-minis is a good way to get our minds away from what happens on Friday when we lose our identity. I have only one thing to say: damn deregulation that PSA wasn’t able to stay independent.”

No Bum Steer Here

Getting back to celebrity animals, Mr. Steak is home on the ranch and may or may not need to meet the Art Jury.

Mr. Steak, a Holstein steer that measures more than 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weighs more than 2,000 pounds, has been staying in a pen in Leucadia, unable to join his owner, antique dealer Jane Sobol, at her new 2.5-acre spread in Rancho Santa Fe.

Mr. Steak was shipped in October from Sobol’s ranch in Colorado but has been kept at bay by Rancho Santa Fe’s strict rules on the number of animals permitted per acre, the kind of fencing required for cattle, and the need for constant supervision.

Since she already has three horses and a goat (a variance was needed for the third horse), the best Sobol could do for Mr. Steak was to board him with a 4-H family in Leucadia. A vacant lot across the street was not acceptable under RSF rules because it was not supervised.

Just as Sobol was preparing to appeal to the Art Jury, which serves as the ranch’s planning commission and defender of good taste, a neighbor down the road said he needed help clearing the grass and weeds from his lot. Enter Mr. Steak, hungry and willing to accommodate.

“He’s much happier now,” said Sobol, who befriended Mr. Steak 6 years ago when he was just 6 months old and recovering from an attack by range dogs. “He can move around and act up with the horses--he makes my horse look more like a Shetland pony. He likes having munching privileges.”

Regardless of the future, Sobol plans to stick with Mr. Steak. As a pet, that is.

“He’s very intelligent and gentle,” she said. “We just think of him as a big St. Bernard, a very big St. Bernard.”