Was it a just a snip, or painful surgery performed without anesthesia on a puppy?
A judge ruled in favor of surgery Friday, upholding the guilty verdict of an area veterinarian who was convicted of cruelty to animals for cutting off a dog's dangling tail last year.
"He acted unreasonably, and was utterly indifferent" to the dog's pain or the risk of infection, Lancaster County Judge Howard F. Knisely said, in making his ruling.
Dr. Tom Stevenson, of Twin Valley Veterinary Clinic in Honey Brook, had testified he merely was offering first aid to the dog, which he said did not react when he used a pair of sewing scissors to cut a small piece of skin that anchored the dog's dangling tail.
But an undercover humane police officer who said she witnessed the act said Stevenson held the dog under steaming water and cut away at its tail while it yelped in pain during her visit to a New Providence kennel last March.
In December, District Judge Stuart Mylin found Stevenson guilty of one summary count of cruelty to animals and fined him $750. Friday's hearing was an appeal of that decision.
The state Board of Veterinary Medicine had temporarily suspended Stevenson's license but later restored it. It has not made a final decision about his license.
Stevenson declined comment afterward, but his attorney, Jeff Conrad, said the veterinarian was disappointed in the judge's decision. Stevenson could appeal the decision to the state Superior Court, but has not decided if he will, Conrad said.
Stevenson fought the conviction, Conrad said, because, "It hurts professionally."
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Christine Wilson, said Stevenson acted inappropriately when he treated the dog.
The verdict followed a sometimes contentious hearing — during which Knisely banged on his bench and angrily yelled at Conrad, saying, "Knock off the dramatization, Jeffrey."
During testimony, Tara Loller said she witnessed the incident in March 2009, when she went to Samuel King's kennel in New Providence to purchase a dog while working undercover for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She chose a white, poodle-mix puppy with a tail injury.
King told Loller he accidentally had injured the dog the day before while grooming it, Loller said.
In her presence, Loller said, King handed the dog to Stevenson, who was at the kennel that day to do an inspection. The veterinarian turned on a sink at the kennel and let the water run until it was visibly steaming, Loller said.
Stevenson held the dog's tail under the running water and began "picking pieces off the tail," Loller said.
"She was yelping," Loller said of he dog.
Stevenson then grabbed a pair of scissors and, without washing the dog or his hands or the scissors, made six cuts to the dog's tail, rubbing the remaining stub with some kind of ointment, she said.
Stevenson gave a different description of what happened that day.
He said did not bring a medical bag to perform procedures when he arrived at the kennel to do inspections. But while there, King asked him to take a look at the injured puppy.
Stevenson said he held the dog's tail area under running water and started cleaning away "goo" so he could see it better. He saw the tail was hanging by a piece of tissue, and he told King the only way to treat the tail would be to snip off the dangling piece.
He said he scrubbed the dog's tail area with a disinfectant soap and then snipped it and rubbed some antibiotic ointment on it. Loller was not in the room when he did it, Stevenson said.
The dog did not react or make a sound, he said.
"I did what I did because I believed it was in the best interest of the puppy," Stevenson said.
The dog had a wound that could have gotten infected if it was not treated. Also, the puppy would have been more stressed if it was taken from its littermates and mothers to a clinic to be treated and possibly held overnight.
"The snipping was less than two seconds," he said.
"I was the veterinarian there," he said. "I made the best decision based on the situation I was presented with."
But in other testimony, Dr. Rachel Lee, medical director of the PSPCA, said the dog would have suffered pain when Stevenson snipped the tail. In her opinion, she said, the procedure should have been done under anesthesia, with proper sterilization and pain medication.
Conrad said the hearing was important to Stevenson, saying he argued "passionately" for him because the veterinarian is known for his honesty and professional behavior.
But Conrad's passion appeared to irk Knisely who yelled loudly at the defense attorney during a sidebar discussion in front of his bench, saying, "Let's get to the point of a lack of dramatization."
A few minutes later, Knisely exploded again, banging his hand on his bench and yelling, "This is not a game."