A donkey, a ride in a Honda Pilot, and the veterinary team that saved her life
Courtney Pierce, a small animal veterinarian with nearly 20 years of experience, was driving home after dropping her children off at school when she received a text from her husband: Come home immediately.
She called him back. "And he said, 'Dolly is very hurt. I think she's dying,'" she said.
Dolly, a 7-month-old jenny miniature donkey, had gotten her head caught in a section of fence on a December morning when temperatures hovered around 20 degrees.
Later that day, the team at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine's Veterinary Teaching Hospital received her, hypothermic, dehydrated and barely responsive.
Over the next two weeks, clinicians in the Equine Medicine Service navigated kidney damage, a dangerous drop in blood cells, an immune system attacking its own platelets, and a string of complications that defied a single diagnosis. During this time, Dolly became the teaching hospital's Christmas patient, and the team that treated her became something like a second family.
Making room for Dolly in the SUV
Pierce’s husband, Whit, a lawyer by training, is the one who found Dolly that morning. He is not a veterinarian, but Pierce said he may be more connected to animals than she is. The donkeys, she said, are his refuge from a demanding career.
When Pierce got home, he was lying on top of the small donkey in the barn, trying to keep her warm.
“I was quite certain she was taking her final breaths,” Pierce said. “Some of it is a blur, but I was very, very worried.”
Her car was already parked next to the barn. Pierce looked at Dolly, looked at the Honda Pilot, and her clinical training took over. The donkey was cold and likely hypoglycemic. She needed warmth, and she needed sugar. Pierce folded the seats down, cranked the heat, and laid out blankets. Her husband lifted Dolly, roughly 100 pounds, into the back of the SUV. Pierce put honey on the donkey’s gums for glucose.
“In my head, I was an emergency clinician,” she said. “I said, " What does she need? She needs warmth, and she needs glucose.”
Then the phone calls began. Pierce called their regular equine veterinarian, who was on the other side of the state and could not get there. She reached a local equine vet, who came out and assessed Dolly in the back of the SUV, gave her an anti-inflammatory, and confirmed what Pierce already suspected: this was beyond what field care could manage.
She called her friend and colleague at Zoetis, Megan Graham DVM '20, who also owns donkeys.
Graham’s advice was direct. “She said, you got to get her to Tech,” Pierce said.
By then, the warmth had started to work. Dolly was picking her head up. Pierce piled her with blankets, called the large animal department of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital to say she was on her way, and drove.
The family lives about an hour and 45 minutes from Virginia Tech. During the drive, Pierce checked the rearview mirror to see if Dolly was still moving. “I just needed that reassurance as I was flying to Tech that she was still with me,” she said.
When they arrived, the large animal emergency team was waiting. Clinicians and students surrounded Dolly, placed a central line, and started warm intravenous fluids. Katherine Wilson, clinical associate professor of large animal internal medicine and equine section chief, led the initial response.
The team responds
Pierce, a veterinarian herself but not in equine medicine, said being allowed to stay in the treatment area while the team stabilized Dolly was a comfort she had not expected. She could see the central line going in, could watch the fluids start, and even without expertise in this species, she recognized the level of care.
“It was really reassuring to be able to be at least near her,” she said. “But still terrifying.”
The donkey was nonresponsive, hypothermic, and dehydrated, with elevated kidney values likely worsened by the dose of anti-inflammatory medication she had received before arrival. Radiographs ruled out fractures or major trauma from the fence entanglement. For the first week, under Wilson’s direction, treatment focused on warming, fluids, pain management, and monitoring kidney function.
Ana Rangel, assistant professor of large animal internal medicine, took over Dolly’s care at the start of the second week. The kidney values had responded well to treatment. “They were pretty much back to normal,” Rangel said. “And everything happened in a week.”
Then the case turned. Just as the team was preparing to send Dolly home, her red blood cell count began to drop. A packed cell volume that should sit between 30 and 40 percent had fallen to the low 20s at admission. Now it plummeted to 14 percent.
For Pierce, the news felt surreal. “I thought, well, we got her through this trauma. She’s alive. Great,” she said. “And then her body started to attack her red blood cells.”
The cause was elusive, and the medical literature offered little guidance. While miniature donkeys fall under the equine umbrella, their physiology differs in ways that complicate diagnosis and treatment.
“In donkeys, and especially mini donkeys, there’s not a lot of papers, or case reports that you can follow,” Rangel said. “They still have significant differences.”
Tests for Anaplasma, a tick-borne infection common in Virginia but unusual in December, came back negative. Screening for equine infectious anemia was also negative. Other blood cell lines appeared normal, suggesting that a bone marrow problem was unlikely.
What remained was immune-mediated thrombocytopenia, a condition in which the body’s own immune system destroys its platelets.
Dolly responded well to dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, but she needed blood. And she needed it from a compatible donor.
A sister becomes a lifeline
Donkeys are social animals. They do not do well alone. When it became clear that Dolly’s stay would extend beyond a few days, Pierce and her husband trailered Dolly’s half-sister, a mini donkey named June, to the hospital as a companion.
That decision may have saved Dolly’s life. The hospital had plasma on hand, but when Dolly needed whole blood, June was already there as a potential donor. The team determined that the small donkey, initially brought for emotional support, was indeed a viable donor.
After the transfusion and steroids, Dolly’s blood levels stabilized. But complications continued. Her phosphorus dropped dangerously low, requiring intravenous supplementation. She developed intermittent diarrhea. An abdominal ultrasound revealed an unusual structure that initially appeared to be an abscess but seemed to shrink as Dolly improved, leading Rangel to suspect inflammation rather than infection. One of the residents suggested doing an ultrasound on June as a comparison. The healthy donkey showed no similar structure, further supporting the idea that whatever the team was seeing was linked to Dolly’s illness.
Then, just as Dolly again seemed ready for discharge around Christmas, she began spiking fevers. Screens for salmonella and clostridium came back negative. Through it all, the donkey remained bright, eating and active. “You couldn’t tell she was ill unless you took her temperature and ran blood work,” Rangel said.
For Pierce, the experience of being on the owner’s side of a medical crisis involving a species outside her expertise shifted her understanding of what her own clients go through.
“The lack of control was very unsettling,” she said, “and it really put me in the shoes of what pet owners feel when they’re in these situations.”
She said the Virginia Tech team's collaborative approach made the distance bearable. Rangel walked her through each development, involved her in decisions, and treated her as a colleague.
“It was a partnership more than a directive,” Pierce said. “She involved me in the decision-making process, and I got the sense that it would have been the case if I were a veterinarian or a layperson pet owner.”
But Pierce was also carrying a second weight. An hour and 45 minutes from Blacksburg, unable to visit, she worried about more than the donkey. “
My husband will never recover from this if she doesn’t come home,” she said. “It was the dual concern of, I love this creature, but I also love my husband very much, and worry about how he will process this grief if the worst happens.”
Coming home
While Dolly was at the hospital, Pierce’s husband, Whit, channeled his anxiety into a project. For 12 to 14 hours a day, from the morning Dolly left to the day she returned, he rebuilt the donkeys’ stall. What had been an open-sided barn with two basic stalls became a fully enclosed, custom wood structure fitted with cameras at every angle.
“It was his way of keeping his mind occupied while we waited for Dolly to come home,” Pierce said.
After about two weeks, Dolly came home, still running intermittent fevers but eating well and clinically strong. Together, the team decided to let her recover in her home environment, with a local equine veterinarian on call and a trailer ready if she needed to return.
Graham brought her trailer and helped transport Dolly and June home. Whit met them at the barn. “I have this beautiful picture of him stepping in the trailer and hugging Dolly,” Pierce said.
Months later, Dolly has fully recovered. She is thriving, according to her owner.
“She got a blood transfusion from June, and now she’s like twice the donkey she was,” Pierce said. “She’s truly back to normal, if not better. She’s really just a delight.”
Pierce and her husband still take their coffee down to what they call the donkey chair, a plastic seat they keep by the barn and hose off as needed. They sit in the field, and the donkeys come up to visit.
"I hope she knows how much joy and peace she brings to our lives," Pierce said. "The world is stressful right now, and being able to sit in the field with her is just such a gift."
