At first glance the job description might not sound too appealing.

A 12-hour day is normal. You must be nice to grumpy clients. Get used to paperwork. And you can’t mind wiping up puppy “accidents.”

But all of that stuff is worth the most important part of a veterinarian’s job, said Mike McClenahan, a senior in veterinary medicine. The best aspect of being a vet, he said, is making sick animals feel better.

Before Iowa State vet students can get to the fun part, however, they go through “lots” of school. In addition to three or four undergraduate years, they must also apply and be accepted to the vet med program, which takes another four years to complete. McClenahan is at the end of his tenure at lowa State.

After getting out of vet school, graduates usually go through a residency program for three to five years or an internship. They must take national board exams, the National Clinical Competency Exam and maybe even a state board exam, depending on the state, to earn their certification.

Once they’re certified, vets have many options. They can work in clinics, teach, do research or even open up their own private practices. “Vets are everywhere,” McClenahan said.

Before any of those options open up, though, students at ISU’s vet med school get a chance for some hands-on experience on their own campus. Iowa State has a fully functional teaching hospital for both large animals (horses, cows, etc.) and for small ones (dogs, cats).

Vet students’ first three years are pretty ordinary, McClenahan said. They have classes, lectures and labs.

But for their senior year, students can choose to take a 26-week block of rotations that focus on either small animals, equine or a combination of both. These rotations are a few weeks of specialized study and observation, and they can range from clinical biology (the study of bacteria), to intensive care, to externships in faraway cities, to growth pathology (autopsies).

As a senior, McClenahan is on a rotation in neurology, which has to do with nerve problems and injuries to the spine or back. For a few weeks, he and some classmates are immersed in mostly referral cases, he said. Because many patients have been referred to Iowa State by other veterinarians, oftentimes the patients’ problem is unknown, and it’s up to ISU vets and students to figure out what’s wrong.

One recent case involved Maggie, a 4 1/2-year-old black daschund, who had ruptured a disc in her back about 18 months ago. Owners Patricia and Joe brought the dog in for a check-up with Dr. Karen Kline and several students.

After Maggie’s initial injury, Joe said, “They only gave her a 10 percent chance of walking. You see her getting around?” he asked, pointing to the little “wiener dog” toddling around the examination room floor. “When she puts her mind to it, she’s on a roll.”

But as McClenahan pointed out, recovery is a slow process. Surgery has helped Maggie heal enough to walk around, but she was having a little trouble getting her hind legs to follow her front legs because they have no feeling. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t jump into Joe’s lap when he sat near her.

But she settled for him scooping her up in his muscular arms and keeping warm by huddling near his chest. “She’s used to a lot of blankets,” Patricia said.

Dr. Kline gently picked Maggie up and set her on the examination table. With a clamp, she pinched the skin on Maggie’s back at certain intervals to gauge whether the dog’s nerves were responding. At about mid-back level, Maggie’s skin tightened. A pinch on her toe sparked a twitch.

Kline’s diagnosis was cautiously optimistic. Since Maggie was doing so well at home and was not in pain, Kline recommended some hard-core bed rest to let her body heal. If pain erupted again, she said, surgery was an option.

Once Maggie was tucked securely in Joe’s arms and the three were on their way, McClenahan and his classmates went to visit another patient: 18-year-old Blaze, a soft-furred black dog who had had a couple of strokes in the last few months.

The most recent stroke had left Blaze with her head tilted to the right; she was off-balance and had a hard time walking. For a dog, 18 years is almost ancient; that is equivalent to over 120 years for a person. Lisa, Blaze’s owner, had had the dog since she was a puppy.

For her age, Blaze was in pretty good shape, but she still had some problems. She had a heart murmur.

Two or three students gently poked and prodded Blaze to gauge her responses to certain stimuli while one took her temperature — gulp! — the hard way. Lisa, teary-eyed, explained that Blaze was still eating well and could get around the house, though she was becoming restless instead of sleeping soundly.

“We have trouble finding things we need, like our food and water,” Lisa said.

Lisa had brought along her “support group,” as she called two other dogs, Kelly, a black lab, and Shayla, a fluffy white mix. They kept each other occupied while their owner comforted Blaze, who was getting antsy with all of the attention and movement.

Watching Blaze struggle to walk around the examination table was wrenching. McClenahan said that sick animals and death are part of the job, as hard as that fact is to swallow.

He remembered a day back in May right after his last final exam, when he was working in ICU, and a dog that a couple had brought in had to be put to sleep. “I was almost as [upset] as the owners,” he said.

He also said that the clinician on duty with him that day told him that “veterinary medicine doesn’t get much worse than that, and that I should feel like crying. The day it doesn’t bother me is the day I quit.”

Lisa’s poor luck with animals in the past few weeks might have challenged any vet’s emotions. About a month ago, she had to put her 18-year-old cat to sleep. That very same day, doctors had to euthanize a kitten she brought in because it was having severe seizures.

Dr. Kline also came in to examine Blaze, and she decided to inspect the dog’s ears closely for infection. Blaze let out a yelp of pain when the doctor poked inside her right ear, indicating a likely inner-ear infection. That would help explain the balance problem and difficulty walking, since the inner ear controls equilibrium. Kline prescribed medicine for Blaze’s ear and said that she hoped this would help Blaze’s walking.

“I feel so relieved,” Lisa said after the doctor’s diagnosis. “Oh, I’m so happy.”

After Lisa and her entourage left, McClenahan went to visit a patient from earlier that day. Conan, a 73-pound German Shepherd who was trained as a guard dog, had had a myelogram earlier that day, during which he was injected with a dye of sorts around his spinal cord. Doctors were looking for an area of compression, which would have explained his difficulty walking.

Conan had had a seizure since McClenahan last saw him, most likely a reaction to the dye, and had to be sedated to keep him calm.

Once the dog was located, McClenahan knelt down next to him on the floor to comfort him. The dog’s tongue had been hanging out of his mouth, and Conan didn’t have enough muscle control at that point to retract it, so McClenahan pried the dry tongue off of the towel Conan was laying on and eased it back into the dog’s mouth. “I hate that dry tongue,” McClenahan said.

He decided that it would be best for Conan if he were moved into Intensive Care, where vet students are available for round-the clock surveillance, if need be. McClenahan led me into ICU, where he began filling out paperwork for Conan and introduced me to Miles, a baby Afghan with fur like Angora pompons and a urine-leaking problem.

Since Conan was a bit grumpy — or “just misunderstood,” in McClenahan’s terms — he moved him while he was still out of his wits. Mike also warned the students on duty in ICU about Conan’s, ahem, attitude.

And since the dog’s temperature was still a little low due to the anesthesia used earlier (it should be around 100 or 101 degrees, while Conan’s was hovering around 97), Mike laid a heating pad on top of the glaze-eyed dog. He also left instructions to monitor the dog’s temperature every hour, along with a request for seizure check.

Later that night, as it turned out, Conan had another seizure, and McClenahan went back to the hospital to check on him. That night, Conan snapped at Mike, but he still spent 20 minutes filling out paperwork for the dog and another 40 minutes comforting him.

McClenahan’s day ended after 12 hours, with both inspiration from little Maggie, cautious hope for Blaze, and sympathy for Conan. McClenahan said that the zig-zagging emotions that he goes through in a day are worth every minute he spends with a sick animal.

“Don’t ask me why I choose the long days and the roller coaster ride of joy and sadness,” he said. “In this life I am a healer.”