When Aloka the Peace Dog needed surgery, veterinary college alums were ready

Patti Sura DVM ’02, got to work on a Monday morning in January and learned she had about an hour to prepare for surgery. 

Her patient was Aloka, a rescue dog from India who had captured the country’s attention as the companion of Buddhist monks on a 2,300-mile Walk for Peace from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. He had a torn ligament in his right knee. He needed surgery, and millions of people were watching.  

Sura, a board-certified veterinary surgeon at Charleston Veterinary Referral Center in South Carolina, had performed thousands of these procedures. The surgery wasn’t what made her nervous. The spotlight was. 

“You know how the internet is,” she said. “Suddenly, you go from being somebody who helped an animal to the worst surgeon on earth.”  

She needn’t have worried. The one-hour operation went smoothly. 

Sura, who completed both her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and a rotating internship at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, turned out to be just the first in a quiet chain of Hokies who helped Aloka along his journey. Two more alumni of the veterinary college at Virginia Tech, working independently and often unaware of each other, provided care for the same dog as the walk moved north.  

None of them had planned it. All of them volunteered.

A fracture to fix a ligament tear 

Sura had been following the Walk for Peace since it began in October 2025. An avid backpacker, she felt drawn to the idea of walking thousands of miles for a cause. Then there was the dog. 

“Oh, by the way, there’s a dog with them,” she said. “And I’m like, ooh, I love a dog. So I was always watching Aloka, maybe more than the monks.”  

Aloka is believed to be a Pariah dog who was living as a stray when he encountered the monks during an earlier pilgrimage across India. He started following them and never stopped. They adopted him and brought him to the United States, where the distinctive heart-shaped marking on his forehead made him instantly recognizable. 

When the walk reached South Carolina, Aloka’s right hind leg was clearly bothering him. A small clinic with ties to Charleston Veterinary Referral Center examined him first and recommended he be seen by Sura’s team.  

What she found was a torn cranial cruciate ligament, similar to an anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, tear in humans and one of the most common orthopedic injuries in dogs. Despite online reports suggesting multiple prior surgeries, Sura saw no evidence of previous operations. His kneecap had begun riding on the medial ridge of his femur, which explained the hopping gait that had alarmed fans following his journey. 

The repair required a tibial plateau leveling osteotomy, or TPLO. Sura explains it using a hill and a parked car.  

“The cruciate is like that emergency brake, and when it ruptures, the bottom bone of the leg slides forward,” she said. “We make a cut in the bone, and then we take that hill, and we level it out. So now if your car is sitting on that hill, it’s not going to move.” 

The procedure involves intentionally creating a fracture, then stabilizing it with a plate and screws. Sura acknowledged the paradox.  

“It is very unnerving to know that you’re creating a fracture that can be catastrophic to fix this ligament injury,” she said, “but it works so well, and dogs do so well, as long as the post-operative instructions are carefully followed.” 

Following directions was exactly what worried her about a dog traveling with a group walking 20 miles a day.

But Aloka’s fitness worked in his favor. By the second day after surgery, he was walking as if nothing had happened. 

“He was such a beautiful, athletic specimen,” Sura said. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do surgery on an animal that’s in such incredible shape again.”  

That athleticism was both reassuring and nerve-wracking. “We have to remind everybody his leg’s broken,” she said. “Even though he looks good, he’s nowhere near healed.” 

A mobile practice meets a moving mission  

About 400 miles up the road, Erin O’Leary ’92, DVM ’04, was watching the same story unfold. 

O’Leary runs a mobile veterinary practice specializing in laser therapy. The treatment uses infrared light to accelerate healing and reduce pain. She compares it to photosynthesis: the sun is absorbed by plants and used to make food; infrared light is absorbed by cells and used to make energy that the body directs toward damaged tissue.  

When she learned Aloka had undergone surgery and that the monks would be passing through her area, she picked up the phone. 

“I have a mobile practice, so I go to people’s houses,” O’Leary said. “So I just reached out to them. I said, if you’re coming through here, I’m happy to laser him post-op.”  

She performed the treatments in Aloka’s recreational vehicle. He settled in quickly. 

“He was just kind of a little bit like, what’s happening right now,” she said. “But he settled in really quickly, kind of just relaxed.”  

O’Leary’s path to veterinary medicine was anything but direct. A former kindergarten teacher, she had been told by a high school teacher that veterinary school probably wasn’t in her future. She applied to the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine three times. On her final application, she included letters from her kindergarten students explaining why she would make a good veterinarian. 

After graduating, she worked in general practice before discovering laser therapy at a dinner talk. She saw its potential for mobile work immediately: a way to bring treatment to arthritic animals that couldn’t get to the hospital, or to cats whose owners dreaded the carrier.  

“I was a good vet in general practice,” she said. “I’m a fantastic vet now.” 

A squeaky ball and a covert mission  

As the walk entered Virginia, Tosha Starke, DVM ’04, was ready. 

Starke, a veterinarian at Summit Veterinary Hospital in Bristow, had been following the monks since December. When one of her team members suggested reaching out to help with Aloka’s postsurgical care, Starke agreed. She had no idea what she was getting into.  

“It was almost like a covert mission,” Starke said. They were told to arrive at a certain time, given a password to get in, and informed of the location on the day of. When she and her team set out for the first treatment, crowds delayed them nearly two hours. Police eventually waved them through. 

“We were like, can we squeeze by? We’re going to treat the dog,” she said. “If you say that, they’ll let you go anywhere.”  

Starke treated Aloka twice, performing laser therapy, physical exams, and checking his surgical incision. She brought a welcome basket that included a squeaky ball from her clinic. A video of Aloka playing with it later drew more than 60,000 views on his Facebook page. 

“Of all the toys that he had access to,” Starke said, “that squeaky ball was just like — he’s still a puppy at heart.”  

On her second visit, the day before the final walk into Washington, Aloka’s handler mentioned that the dog smelled terrible. Starke confirmed he was far enough past surgery for a bath, then called a friend with a mobile grooming business. 

“I said, this is the most bizarre thing I’m going to ask you to do, but I need you to be at Marymount University tomorrow at 8 o’clock to wash a dog that’s walked from Texas,” she said.  

While her team worked, one of the monks, fresh off the trail, watched the laser therapy and turned to Starke. “Can I have some of that for my feet?” he asked. 

Every evening, Starke learned, the monks arrived at a location where a medical team was waiting: People giving massages and bandaging feet. “It was literally like a trauma center,” she said.  

The shared link

It wasn’t until after treating Aloka that O’Leary discovered the Virginia Tech connection. She recognized Sura’s name from news coverage of the surgery, then learned that Starke, her classmate, had treated Aloka in Virginia.  

“I love that this dog has brought so much kind of just unity and joy,” O’Leary said. “Good for our college kind of feeling.” 

The three alumni were hardly alone. Sura said veterinarians along the entire route had stepped forward to volunteer.  

“He’s had people bend over backward the entire route,” she said. “Do you need physical therapy today? Would you like some laser therapy? How about chiropractic? He definitely has somebody ready to help him at any moment.” 

Aloka completed the Walk for Peace on Feb. 10, 2026, walking the final steps into Washington with his handler at his side. O’Leary, who grew up in the D.C. area, happened to pass the monks on the road while driving to Virginia Tech to visit her nephew, now a student there.  

“I cried when I saw them walk by,” she said. “Seeing the number of people increase as they got closer and closer to D.C., that’s amazing. They’re doing nothing but walking, and this just brought together so many people.” 

Starke saw the same thing. “A street dog,” she said. “One that didn’t come from a breeder. Doesn’t have any history of being a champion in the ring. Has brought this many people together on so many levels. I just think that’s amazing.”  

Sura plans to travel to Fort Worth in the coming weeks to take follow-up X-rays. Donations inspired by the walk have flowed into Charleston Veterinary Referral Center, and she has already used some of those funds to help other animals. She still wears a bracelet the monks gave her. 

“I think about it every day,” Sura said. “Small changes can actually affect big change, which is, I think, what we’ve all forgotten about. We say the world is crazy, there’s nothing we can do about it. Well, the little things that you can do might very well create momentum for progress.”