Under the clinic’s bright lights, the patient waits, a little nervous, as Dr. Ian Voelzel fills a syringe with sedative.

A technician inserts a catheter in the patient’s arm, and Voelzel inserts the needle and pushes the plunger, forcing a milky white liquid into the patient’s veins. Soon, he’s out like a light.

Lito, a 3-year-old pug, is about to be neutered.

After placing the dog on the operating table at Westlake Animal Hospital, Voelzel, 33, attaches instruments that monitor heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen levels. A small incision, two quick cuts and a few stitches later, the surgery is done, taking all of 10 minutes.

Lito’s tail, which is normally tightly curled, like all members of his breed, is much straighter.

“It happens sometimes when they’re under anesthesia,” a technician points out.

Lito was rescued by Pug Rescue of Austin. Westlake Animal Hospital has partnered with the organization to provide discounted care for more than 100 pugs they rescue every year.

As Voelzel leaves the operating room, he stops to check on another small dog, which is under sedation and getting its teeth cleaned. On a typical day, he’ll perform four surgeries and monitor four dental patients. This clinic is one of the largest non-emergency animal hospitals in the area, he says, with eight doctors on staff.

Technicians rush back and forth through the in-house pharmacy, lab and treatment rooms, but the atmosphere is controlled rather than chaotic at the practice, which has been in West Lake Hills for about 40 years.

After he’s done checking on his dental patient, Voelzel, who graduated from Westlake High in 1995, checks on Boolee, a 10-month-old Australian cattle dog mix. The puppy belongs to Jennifer Gotway, a technician at the clinic. She’s not sure how, but Boolee shredded the skin on her left front paw a few days ago. Voelzel delicately removes the bandages and checks the stitches.

“I never wanted to be anything else,” Voelzel explains later. “I always took care of the family pets.”

In high school, he went to work in the kennel at the clinic. During summers when he was at Texas A&M University, he would come back to the clinic to work as a technician.

“I got to see the real side of veterinary medicine then,” he said.

After that, he was hooked. He went on to veterinary school at Texas A&M and graduated in 2002. He taught at Washington State University for a year and eventually came back to Westlake Animal Hospital. He and several of the doctors there recently purchased the practice.

Even though he has to handle some of the business side of the clinic now, his real passion is still surgery, Voelzel says.

“It’s the variety of it,” he says. “You can go from checking out a skin infection to an emergency situation where you have to remove a spleen then back to a puppy that’s come in for its first appointment.”

There are parts that can be tough though. Euthanizing a suffering animal is never easy. Other times, the cases just don’t turn out right.

“You want everything to turn out great and right and perfect, but there’s a lot of gray area in medicine – you don’t always know what’s going to happen,” Voelzel says, adding that euthanasia is hard but necessary when they’re bad off. “We have that option, and we can relieve suffering in a humane way. It’s sad, but it’s peaceful.”

When emergency cases come in, maintaining calm is essential, he says.

“You have to be the calm in the storm,” he says. “It’s about not getting super excited, controlling that situation and keeping everyone focused.”

Not an easy thing to do when your patients can’t tell you where it hurts.

When he’s not caring for people’s furry family members, Voelzel loves to spend time outdoors, hunting and fishing, going to Aggie football games and listening to Texas country music. Despite a lack of free time to do those things very often, he’s still passionate about his work.

“You get a warm fuzzy feeling when you realize you’ve made a difference in the life of that pet and their family,” he says.