Dr. Alan Cunningham has treated both people and animals during his professional career, but if he had to choose one over the other he says he'd probably choose animals.
Which would explain the roommates. And the books. And the causes.
A lifelong bachelor, he shares his bed with four dogs he took in after saving their lives. He also has 18 cats, three more dogs, a wild turkey, four peacocks, chickens, doves and geese all crammed into his home and yard in an American Fork neighborhood.
"If something needs a home, I'll provide it," he says, adding, "It's not sitting too well with some of my neighbors."
If there was ever a guy whose heart turns to mush every time he sees an animal in pain, it's this guy. When his beloved dog Pug died last year, he wrote a book about it — "Sleeping with Angels." That generated an outpouring of stories from other people whose dogs had died, which led to a second book — "On Angels' Wings," a recently released collection of short stories from veterinarians and bereaved pet owners about their own experiences with the loss of an animal friend.
This is how passionate he was about the project: He spent more than $40,000 of his own money to publish, illustrate and distribute the books.
Cunningham wanted to be a veterinarian since he was a kid, so he went to vet school out of college and found he couldn't cut it. He became a respiratory therapist instead; meanwhile, shortly after his 30th birthday he gave vet school another chance, and this time he graduated. He has been a vet for a dozen years, currently working the night shift at an emergency clinic.
In his free time, he is trying to get recognition for war service dogs. He wrote to Gov. Mike Leavitt asking that service animals be honored; the governor agreed and declared that the recent Memorial Day "also be set aside to remember and honor our fallen service animal heroes in Utah."
Cunningham is also writing congressmen hoping to win approval for a postage stamp in honor of service animals, and to create a memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring Vietnam war dogs.
"More than 4,000 dogs served in Vietnam," he says. "Less than 200 came home. At the end of the war, they were considered equipment and were left behind or euthanized. A lot of the dog handlers wanted to bring them home — they owed their lives to the dogs. These dogs were used to smell out booby traps on the front line — they could hear the wind moving past the guide wires. The Viet Cong would go underwater and breathe through reeds to make a sneak attack; the dogs could smell their breath and alert our soldiers. And basically they were all euthanized."
Most of Cunningham's efforts in behalf of animals take place in the emergency room, where he treats victims of poisonings, fights, seizures, you name it. As you might guess, he is prone to getting attached to his patients. One of them was Aspen, a black lab who was left at the clinic to die — "another one where my heart melted," he says. "We amputated a leg. When she woke up, she looked at me and wagged her tail and I said, 'You're coming home with me.' "
Then there was Angel, a Shih Tzu pup who showed up at the clinic the day after Christmas, half blind and in chronic pain. The owners left her with the clinic. Cunningham took her home and gave her round-the-clock attention for spinal meningitis and nursed her back to health.
He sees plenty of sadness in his job; with the loss of a pet, he's seen owners cry, faint and even become suicidal.
"For some people, that's all they have are their pets," he says. "Other people don't understand them. They say, 'It's just an animal.' But these are their good friends. My heart breaks. People come in for euthanasia and they're bawling. I try to stay professional, then I leave and shut myself in my room for a while."
Cunningham recently became one of 20 veterinarians awarded a scholarship to (human) medical school as part of an international program using doctors with a background in animal diseases to treat human patients in third-world countries.
"I couldn't pass it up," he says. "I'll do both — I'll always be a vet."
E-MAIL: drob@desnews.com