CREATURE FEATURE : Doggie Donors

Cooing “O.K. pumpkin” as she wields her pink razor, Kim Applebaum shaves a one-inch square on both sides of the white-thatched neck of Konager, a 75-pound male Belgian sheepdog. Konager remains calm even after some swabs with alcohol and a pair of syringe plunges. A few minutes later, the canine blood pool is two bags fuller. Konager hasn’t budged.

It’s another dog-day afternoon at San Diego’s Canine Blood Bank, which supplies blood to more than 200 veterinarians. One of a handful of such ventures in California, it started in 1985 with four donors and now has four dozen volunteer dogs spilling two pints four times a year for their less-fortunate brethren.

“There was Buck, a black shepherd who was playing fetch when she was impaled on a stick; that took five pints,” says nurse Applebaum. “Or the dogs injured by coyote or snake attacks or car accidents. That doesn’t even scratch medical conditions and elective surgery. We can’t keep up with the demand; we need more donors.”

The need for canine transfusions is on the rise partly because “people will go to greater lengths today to save their dog,” says Paul Cervone, administrator of the Emergency Animal Hospital, one of the blood bank’s financial backers. “Pets are our 1990s family. Plus we’re doing more sophisticated surgery than 10 years ago, from hip replacement to cataract surgery.”

Donor dogs must have A-negative blood (the only one of the 11 canine blood types that’s universal), weigh 50 pounds or more, be 2 to 7 years old, in good health and calm. Very calm.

“When I’m opening up the jugular vein to take blood for five minutes,” says Applebaum, “and I’m nose to nose with a dog, I want to know she’s obedient and isn’t going to bite.”