Ambassador of Cuteness: Remembering Barley the Teaching Dog

The first year of veterinary medical school is filled with new challenges, and among the most difficult are courses in anatomy and neuroscience. Students taking on the intellectual rigors of these classes are grateful for any help they can get. And help can come in many shapes and sizes. Fortunately for the last 13 classes to pass through the UW School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM), they had it in the form of a big, lovable, yellow Labrador Retriever named Barley.

Barley first ventured into a SVM classroom in 2003 when he was five months old, shortly after senior lecturer Kim Plummer adopted him from a breeder to be her family’s canine companion. She introduced him to the Fundamental Principles of Anatomy course as a teaching assistant of sorts.

“The idea is that there’s no better way to learn about anatomy than to examine a living, breathing animal,” says Plummer, who has been an instructor at the SVM since 1997. “We would carry what we learned from studying cadavers and see how it applied to a live dog.”

Barley was part of a tradition of teaching dogs in the SVM’s anatomy course, which began with Norm Wilsman, a former faculty member in the Department of Comparative Biosciences who strongly advocated involving live animals. Over the years, the anatomy course has seen teaching dogs like Wilsman’s Sparky; Maddie, who belonged to former senior lecture Jean Bjorenson; Blockhead, a mix-breed owned by former senior instructional specialist Kalen Nichols; Lager, another yellow Lab Plummer would bring into classrooms about a decade before Barley’s arrival; and others owned by faculty and staff.

“At first, Barley was a whirling dervish,” says Plummer, “but he was always an ambassador of cuteness, and within two or three years, he became an exceptional teaching dog. He was big, but he was fit, lean, and calm, so he was easy to palpate and examine.”

Each December in the anatomy course, students gave presentations involving skits and props to teach the rest of the class about the cranial nerves, and they would often enlist a costumed and treat-bribed Barley to help out. Plummer eventually began bringing Barley to the Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology course, where he would serve as an example for learning normal neurologic function in a dog.

“He would really get into it and have a lot of fun with the students,” says Plummer.

Teaching Even through Distress

Throughout his 13 years of life, Barley encountered and overcame his fair share of health scares. His gastrointestinal tract was always troubled, and at one point he developed a serious condition called gastric dilation volvulus. Essentially, his stomach had expanded and twisted, cutting off the blood supply to his spleen. Fortunately for Barley, the SVM has experts equipped to handle these kinds of situations.

A team of radiologists, anesthesiologists, surgeons, certified veterinary technicians, and students took on Barley’s case. Led by Robb Hardie, clinical associate professor of surgical sciences, they removed a portion of the spleen and performed a gastropexy, tacking the stomach to the abdominal wall to keep it from twisting again.

“They saved his life,” says Plummer, “and they actually improved his life enormously.”

But 18 months later, Barley ended up in surgery again with a colonic torsion, or a twisted colon. John Stein, a radiology resident at the time, came to the clinic on a Sunday and worked with Julie Walker, a clinical assistant professor in emergency and critical care, and then-resident Susannah Sample to diagnose the issue. Jonathan McAnulty, a professor of surgical sciences, led an exploratory surgery, found the torsion, and removed the dead tissue. And Barley recovered from yet another major abdominal surgery.

“I was so impressed by the teamwork in the clinic, by the care and by the expertise,” says Plummer. “In the weeks after Barley’s surgery, technicians would stop me in the hall and ask about him. It blows you away.”

Barley ended up being an exceptional teaching opportunity even in his distress. Colonic torsion is rare in dogs, so the students involved witnessed a procedure that few get to see.

Later on in his life, Barley faced down laryngeal paralysis and soft tissue sarcoma on his paw, but he never stopped teaching. In fact, he also participated in clinical studies to help advance the school’s research mission. But as he entered his final years, he developed hind limb degeneration and osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.

“He had been through so much, we decided to just let him live out his days in peace,” says Plummer. “We fed him steak and scrambled eggs.”

After a beautiful run through a full life, Barley was euthanized on the last day of May 2016.

More than Just a Teaching Dog

Early on in his teaching tenure, Barley also began serving as a live-animal question for the anatomy lab practical exam. As students completed the test, he would hang out for hours. “And that’s where students really started to get to know and appreciate him,” says Plummer. “He helped relieve the stress that comes with exams.”

Course evaluations clearly showed how Barley’s presence bolstered learning. But students also mentioned the peace of mind he would bring and how he underscored their reason for becoming veterinarians in the first place—to help living creatures.

“It was always great when any of the professors brought in their pets, because they were a calming presence and a soothing balm in the otherwise perpetual anxiety machine that was veterinary school,” says Michael Hanhart, DVM’11. “[Barley] would come around and place his head in your lap, and you would feel that rush of warmth and love that only pets can give.”

“The transition through first year is challenging,” says Plummer. “Barley was a reminder of why they’re here. And he was even occasionally surrogate companion for those who had left a pet at home or were just homesick.”

Plummer recalls one particular incident when Barley rescued three students in academic peril. She was driving Barley to his primary care veterinarian, located on Monroe Street a couple of miles from the Veterinary Medicine Building, when three young women flagged her down.

“They were in quite a panic,” says Plummer.

Turns out they were veterinary medical students, and they had just missed the bus that would have taken them back to the Veterinary Medicine Building for an exam. Just when they thought they were doomed, they saw a familiar, furry yellow head poking out of the window of Plummer’s car, and hope returned as they dashed toward the vehicle. Plummer got them back to the school just in time for the test.

Barley was also a staple in the SVM’s outreach efforts, such as Grandparents University, a summer event where grandparents and their grandchildren explore a UW “major” through classroom and hands-on activities, and PEOPLE, a pre-college pipeline for students of color and low-income students. Through programs like these, he helped school-age kids learn all about canine anatomy by letting them interact with the real thing. And under their curious gazes and hands, he would just be himself—a quiet, calm, huggable dog, a licker of fingers and faces, an ambassador of cuteness, one who will be dearly missed and fondly remembered.

Nik Hawkins