Terry Lee Dew

RUSSELLVILLE — Dr. Terry Dew bends over a sedated pug stretched out on an operating table and explains how the dog’s deep facial folds irritate its corneas.

“It would be like if I took my beard and rubbed it in my eye all day long,” Dew says.

Given the length and breadth of his facial hair, the analogy is a vivid one.

But then much about Dew is vivid, from the tie-dyed scarf he wears on his head in the operating room to the Triumph Rocket motorcycle he rides, to the reputation he has garnered as a top animal surgeon sought out by pet owners and fellow veterinarians from around the state and region.

Little Rock vet Bob Hale remembers his first encounter with the hirsute surgeon. “Mr. ZZ Top just walked in the door,” he says. “You really don’t know how to take Terry. He’s kind of one of these intellectual guys and he’s got this beard.”

Hale had called Dew about a Dalmatian with a painful back leg. At the time, Dew was a traveling animal surgical specialist operating one day each week in Little Rock, Memphis and Springdale.

“I just could not figure out what was wrong with this dog,” Hale says. “Terry takes some X-rays with my Xray machine and saw the area where the pinched nerve was. I’m looking at it and I still couldn’t see it.

“He says he’s going to do this surgery. I’m shaking my head thinking this is not going to work. I’ve never seen this out in the field. This is something you’d see at [Louisiana State University] veterinary school. He does this surgery and the next day this dog was walking pain-free. Ever since then, any time I’ve got anything orthopedic, I’m calling Terry Dew.”

‘THEY WOULD ACCEPT ANYBODY’

Dew, 57, grew up outside Milwaukee in southeastern Wisconsin. His mother was an operating room nurse, his father an avid hunter. When it came to game, he said, “We didn’t just clean it. We dissected it. Our basement was a kind of mortuary.”

Still, Dew didn’t figure on a career as a veterinarian. In high school, “I did all shop.”

Childhood buddy Lloyd McIndoe confirms that school wasn’t a priority for either of them, although he says Dew was always a voracious reader. McIndoe describes Dew’s mother as an “Energizer Bunny” who “busted her butt” raising five children after Dew’s father died in an accident when Dew was 12.

The two friends fished and hunted together, bought and fixed up old clunkers, and on the day of Dew’s high school graduation, headed off on a cross-country motorcycle trip that only ended when the engine of McIndoe’s bike blew.

“You look at this guy coming out of high school and you think he’s never going to amount to anything,” McIndoe says.

Not that he was idle. Dew worked as a tool-and-die journeyman, trained dogs, managed a 17,000-acre hunting preserve, catered pig roasts and started a construction company with his brother. After he was injured in a fall from a scaffold, a doctor told him he better find a way to use his head or he’d wind up in a wheelchair.

Dew enrolled in the University of Arizona at Tucson — “They would accept anybody,” he says — then transferred to the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, majoring in biology and chemistry. He was part of the first veterinary class at the university’s flagship campus in Madison.

Dew did his internship at a surgical practice in West Hartford, Conn., then completed his residency at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Va.

“Because of years with tool and die, surgery always came really easy to me,” he says.

He spent four years as chief of the surgical staff for a practice in Hartford. In 1995, Dew and his wife, from whom he is now divorced, decided to move to Arkansas, thinking it would be a better place to raise a family. Dew started out as a traveling surgical specialist.

“I probably have done surgery in about 80 percent of the practices in Arkansas,” he says. “It was a great way for a Yankee to get to know people.”

It also led to some long days. On some of them Dew rose at 4 a.m. in Russellville, saw cases in Little Rock from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., then drove to Memphis. He performed five to 11 surgeries a day.

“It was probably the most lucrative way to run a practice, but probably not the best family model to work under,” Dew said.

In 2009, he opened a clinic in Russellville, Azzore Veterinary Specialists, and animal owners started taking their pets to him.

Cheree Miller, who manages the practice, remembers the day well. Dew arrived in a chauffeured 1939 Nash, stepped out wearing shades and proceeded to play air guitar with a band hired for the occasion. “He’s very much a free spirit,” Miller said.

‘YOU CAN’T RESTRAIN A POLAR BEAR’

Dew once set a broken femur on a mature female polar bear in the Memphis Zoo. “This bear was almost 700 pounds,” he says. “You can’t restrain a polar bear. It’s even worse than doing a horse.” He’s also operated on a cheetah, a macaw and a penguin.

But the vast majority of animals he sees these days are dogs — a lot of them.

Dew works quickly, without seeming to, examining the dogs and reassuring their owners at the same time. “Hey there, buddy, it’s OK,” he says as he feels around the neck of an English Springer Spaniel named Harley on whom he has recently performed surgery. He tells Harley’s owner, Mitch Forrest of Cabot, that he’s prescribing a steroid. “That's a really low dose but I bet he’ll be 100 percent different.”

Dew had operated on Harley once before. “He’s actually torn his ACL before,” Forrest says. “That was four years ago. We’re pretty crazy about our dog.”

In the next room is Mia, the pug with the facial folds that Dew will operate on shortly. Dew recommends “a little face-lift” to Jake Smith, who has brought the 3-year-old dog from Little Rock. Smith says his regular veterinarian “wasn’t comfortable doing the surgery and recommended Dr. Dew. We just want to give her the best care we can.”

“You’ll hear from me when she’s awake,” Dew tells Smith.

In another room, Dew examines Bailey, a 13-year-old Shih Tzu who has a double hernia. Bailey’s owner, Dennis Walker of Bryant, says his regular vet “strongly recommended” he take the dog here. “He said there is only one vet in the state that could do the job.”

Dew describes the surgery he’ll perform on Bailey and tells Walker, “It works really well and the vast majority are fine.”

Next, Dew sees Bo, a Labrador retriever mix whose leg he operated on two weeks earlier. Bo’s owner, Karen Barnett of Sherwood, says his recovery has gone well, maybe too well since he has already jumped on the couch, in violation of doctor’s orders.

“His personality has completely changed,” Barnett says. “You can tell he feels better. We’re going to have to get used to the happy Lab.”

‘ALWAYS INVESTING IN

PEOPLE’

Dew is the only small animal surgeon in Arkansas certified by the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. He was an early adopter of total hip replacement and other surgical procedures for animals, has patents pending on surgical instruments and implants, and has scores of research projects, publications and scientific presentations to his credit. In 2003 he was named the state’s veterinarian of the year by the Arkansas Veterinary Medical Association.

He sees animals from all over Arkansas, every state that touches it and a couple more besides. McIndoe regularly transports rescue dogs all the way from Wisconsin for treatment, sticking around to visit his old friend. McIndoe admires the way Dew has raised his sons, Giffory, 14, and Parker, 20. He calls Dew’s woodsy property overlooking the Arkansas River outside Knoxville “a mirror image of what Wisconsin’s like.

“What he took from here and all the things we did as kids, his kids are now doing. A lot of hunting, a lot of fishing.”

McIndoe describes the animal surgeon as someone who “draws his own road” and “is not the norm.”

“He could never be in, like, a structured system. You couldn’t put him as a lead surgeon in an extremely large surgical center. That ain’t him. Never work.

“Well, it might work, but he wouldn’t be happy doing it.”

That said, McIndoe added, “He’s a very simple guy. Get a campfire and a couple bottles of Leinenkugel and he’s as normal as anybody you’d want to meet.”

Miller, who used to work for a larger surgical clinic in her native California, calls her boss “the fastest, best surgeon I’ve ever worked for. He can do a surgery in half the time” it takes other surgeons.

The speed has a purpose, according to Miller. It helps keep the clinic’s infection rate almost non-existent.

He’s forward-thinking, she says — whether it’s acquiring the latest technology or embracing social media. The clinic regularly posts updates about patients on its Facebook page and website.

“We love it. Our clients love it,” Miller says.

Dew’s most famous patient to date has been Joey the Garden Cat, from the KTHV-TV, Channel 11, Weather Garden. He removed a bone tumor from Joey’s leg in an operation followed by thousands of the cat’s fans via TV and Facebook.

Hale, the vet who referred Joey to Dew, marveled at the surgeon’s ability to save the cat’s leg from amputation.

“You wouldn’t believe how many vets called me” after that, Hale says.

Dew’s partner in the clinic, Dr. Mario Hodgson, said that despite sometimes appearing flamboyant, Dew is actually “really quiet. But he’s a generous, warm person. He is always investing in people in a way that most employers don’t.”

As for his surgical skills, Hodgson said it’s no accident that Dew is invited to speak to veterinarians around the world.

“He’s asked to talk because he’s done the most surgeries,” Hodgson says.

‘DR. DEW DOES PLASTIC

SURGERY’

Dew’s skills are on display as he operates on Mia, the pug with the copious folds. He gently lifts the dog’s head as a technician shaves its muzzle, then props it on a towel. With a scalpel, Dew cuts along the top and bottom of the fold causing the problem.

“This is where the art comes in more than the science,” he says. “You’re trying to come out with good symmetry.”

He eventually removes a piece of skin about 3 inches long by a half-inch wide, cauterizes the area to seal off bleeding, then sutures the skin closed.

“Dr. Dew does plastic surgery,” he says from under his operating mask.

Dew acknowledges that there are questions surrounding the breeding and treatment of many of the dogs he sees. Dogs bred for certain physical traits may suffer medically as a result. And spending thousands of dollars on medical care for an animal strikes some people as excessive.

On the first issue, he says, “Just about every pure breed of dog has issues. I don’t think it is right or wrong.”

Of the cost of care, he says critics don’t understand the ties between some animal owners and their pets.

“Probably what’s become more and more apparent to me is that, especially with older people, the animals are really the only reason they have for waking up in the morning.”

Dew tells the story of a man who brought a young Labrador retriever to his clinic with a tumor on its ribs. The required treatment was extreme — removing a section of its chest wall.

“This guy was pretty insistent” that Dew perform the surgery, so he did.

About six months later, the man’s daughter came to the clinic to tell him that the man and dog had both died, but not before the man had accomplished his last goal in life — buying a farm and watching the dog retrieve a duck from its pond.

“How would you put a value on that?” Dew says.

SELF PORTRAIT

Terry Lee Dew

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Oct. 1, 1955, Milwaukee. FAMILY Sons Parker, 20, and Giffory, 14. BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED: “If you’re going to do something, do it right,” from my Uncle Paul. FIRST PET A hamster. IF I WASN’T A VETERINARIAN I’D BE I always joke that I just want to run a bait shop. Biggest dilemma during a day would be “One dozen or two?” MY FAVORITE MOVIE IS One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. PLACE I’D MOST LIKE TO VISIT New Zealand. MY IDEA OF A PERFECT DAY IS On my boat with my sons Parker and Giffory, swimming, skiing, having a couple of “cool ones,” then coming in at the end of the day, cooking something on the grill and having dinner with friends. I DRIVE A Triumph Rocket, Ford van and Nissan Cube, but also love my boat and tractor! GUESTS AT MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Dolly Parton, Winston Churchill. ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME Unique.