Rockford, MI: A diabetic Michigan man with a love of liquor owes his life to his furry, four-legged friend.
This past weekend, William “Bubba” Jones got snockered at a party celebrating his wife Juanita’s newly awarded U.S. citizenship. After one too many moonshine margaritas, Jones passed out in his favorite La-Z-Boy, only to wake
up a couple hours later to find Kiko, his Jack Russell Terrier, licking his foot. Or—rather—what was left of his foot.
“My big toe was done gone!” Jones recalled the surprise and shock he felt upon looking at the bloody stump of his toe. “And Kiko—he had blood comin’ outta his mouth. I called in Juanita and told ‘er that I thought the little sucker done chewed off my big toe!”
Kiko did, in fact, chew off Jones’ big toe, but not without a reason to do so.
Kiko had wanted to be a surgeon ever since he was but a pup in his mother’s cardboard box. Despite straight A’s in all of his obedience classes, Harvard Medical School had repeatedly turned down his application due to the fact that he is a dog.
But Juanita’s party and Jones’ resulting drunkenness provided Kiko with the opportunity to prove to Harvard that—despite his species—he does have what it takes to be a top notch surgeon.
Kiko had apparently known for weeks that Jones was suffering from diabetes. Despite the dog’s many attempts to steal Jones’ Krispy Kreme donuts and other sugary treats from the table, Jones never got Kiko’s urgent medical message. By then, Jones had unknowingly developed a deadly infection in his big toe due to the undiagnosed illness. Kiko knew that he had to act fast in order to save his owner’s life.
“Kiko watched carefully the night of Juanita’s party,” said Max Keenan, Kiko’s attorney. “He knew that he could never get his paws on proper anesthesia, so he waited until Jones knocked himself out on moonshine. He then set to work.”
Kiko first cleaned the area thoroughly with his tongue. Due to a lack of thumbs, he was unable to hold a scalpel and so used the only cutting instrument he had available to him—his teeth. It took him approximately three hours to gnaw off the infected toe—all while carefully monitoring Jones in his moonshine-induced coma.
Jones awoke before Kiko could clean up and close the incision with cat whiskers harvested from the neighbor’s new tabby. Juanita then rushed Jones to the hospital where human doctors finished what Kiko had started.
“I owe that dog! He gonna get an extra Milkbone when I gets outta this hospital!” said Jones.
Others, however, aren’t so happy about Kiko’s life-saving maneuvers. The Michigan Board of Medicine is taking Kiko to court for practicing medicine without a license.
“It’s a shame that they feel the need to slander this dog’s good name,” said Keenan. “It’s not his fault that Harvard discriminates against his species.”
When asked to comment on the charges against him, Kiko replied with a single “Woof.”