In Grand Rapids, a pet terrier performs life-saving toe surgery

Dogs that bite are not ordinarily lavished with praise, but Jerry Douthett's little dog Kiko is being hailed as a lifesaver.

Kiko apparently sensed an infection festering in his master's right big toe -- and chewed most of it off after Douthett passed out in a drunken stupor.

A trip to the hospital confirmed Douthett's digit required amputation, and Kiko is being heralded by his owner for helping him realize he has been suffering from Type 2 diabetes. Douthett had a dangerously high blood-sugar level of 560 when admitted -- many times the recommended 80 to 120.

"Jerry had had all these Margaritas, so I just let him sleep," said his wife, Rosee, a registered nurse. "But then I heard these screams coming from the bedroom, and he was yelling, 'My toe's gone, my toe's gone!'"

The Rockford man's strange odyssey began several months ago when he started picking at what he thought was a small sliver on the bottom of his toe. He used a knife to cut skin away from the affected area, but it worsened, swelling so much he had to eschew shoes and resort to loose-fitting sandals.

"I was hiding it from people, Rosee included," said Douthett, 48, who is a musician and a well-known wheeler-dealer in Rockford, where he was born and raised.

"It smelled, and I look back now and realize every time we'd visit someone with a dog, their dog would be sniffing all over my foot."

Doctors removed the rest of Jerry Douthett's big toe after his dog, Kiko, chewed it off and ate it. But Douthett is grateful to his terrier, Kiko, because treating the wound led to a crucial diagnosis of diabetes for the owner.

Things escalated several weeks ago. "One day I was lying down working on a car and Rosee saw my foot, and she looked as though she'd seen a ghost," he said. "We've got to go to the hospital," he remembers her insisting.

Rosee suspected her husband was a diabetes candidate and urged him many times to be checked. He resisted, however, fearing the diagnosis. His brother died some years back from complications of diabetes.

Douthett finally decided two Fridays ago to consult medical help, but not before embarking on an outing to muster up some liquid courage.

That afternoon he downed "four or five beers" at a Rockford restaurant, then walked to a second site and quaffed two giant "golden" margaritas. Rosee drove him to their home less than a mile away, where he passed out on their bed.

Next thing the woozy Douthett realized, the couple's year-old Jack Russell terrier was beside him on the bed. A pool of blood lay where Douthett used to have a toe.

"The toe was gone," said Douthett. "He ate it. I mean, he must have eaten it, because we couldn't find it anywhere else in the house. I look down, there's blood all over, and my toe is gone."

Rosee, 40, rushed her husband to the hospital where she's a gerontology nurse -- Spectrum Health's Blodgett Campus. Kiko had gnawed to a point below the nail-line. When tests revealed an infection to the bone, doctors amputated what was left of the toe.