AMERICAN FORK -- As surgeries go, it was a mild one.
A root canal to correct a broken front tooth that was infected.Cory Smith had been there when his friend suffered the injury during a freak accident a few days earlier. And he was there with his friend during the operation.
"He was doing real well," Smith recalls. "Then, something kicked in and it just didn't go well. It was a quick thing. He just shut down. His lips turned blue -- he started turning blue. I just left the room. I lost it."
Marco died on that operating table while under anesthesia.
Smith, a 31-year-old American Fork police officer, lost a canine partner who excelled at sniffing out illicit drugs, a partner who lived with him, an affectionate partner who was "Mr. Social" to his human colleagues.
To honor Marco, American Fork Police are holding a memorial for him Friday in front of the department's headquarters. Before his death, the 4-year-old Belgian Malinois-breed dog -- an import from the Netherlands -- had the distinction of being the only dog working for a city police force in Utah County. During his 10-month tenure with police, Marco worked 40 hours a week and assisted in more than 90 narcotics cases.
Total annual cost of the 68-pound canine's employment to the city: about $900, the bulk of it spent on dog food.
Smith remembers playing with Marco less than a week ago. The two had just completed a series of training exercises. To reward his partner for a job well done, Smith grabbed a rolled-up jute toy and played tug of war with Marco, a game that was routine for the pair. Somehow Marco's neck was accidently yanked in an awkward fashion while ripping at the jute, chipping away part of his tooth. By Tuesday evening, Marco had an abscess in his mouth, so Smith took him to a veterinarian for X-rays, which showed the need for emergency surgery.
Results of an autopsy performed on Marco were unavailable Thursday. Substantially "less than 1 percent" of all dogs die while under anesthesia, said Peter Heller, associate professor of anesthesiology for the Veterinarian School at Colorado State University, but the risk of death to pets under the influence of the procedure's tranquilizers, painkillers or sedatives is higher than for humans.
Heller said symptoms for those who die because of adverse reactions to anesthesia are "you'll turn blueish or blueish white . . . on the gums or the side of the lips."
American Fork police said they are "devastated" by Marco's sudden death, none of them more than Smith.
"Some people will say it was just a dog," he said. "But he wasn't. He was family. He was an officer just like I was."