Tigers, Sugar Gliders, and Other Bizarre Pets, Oh My! 🐅 The Vet Life | Animal Planet

We're concerned about our safety as well as her well-being. It's a delicate balance. I'm about to see some of the cutest little creatures in the world. Sugar gliders. Sugar gliders are small members of the possum family. They're native to the Australian forest where they mostly live in canopies. They have really thin gliding membranes that help them glide from tree to tree. Hey, how's it going there Mr. Cook? How you doing Dr. Russell? Doing well. Our client Brett just lost one of his sugar gliders to an infection. So he's bringing in his other eight sugar gliders to make sure they're healthy. I've lost a few and once they start showing signs of problems, you've got to move pretty quick on them. It might be a little bit regressive. How am I going to get out of here? There you go. Oh, come here you little chipmunk. I wasn't expecting that. This ain't your first rodeo, right? Don't you poop on me. As long as you're nice. She looks healthy. So this is one. I would just stick her back in here for the time. Well, yeah, that's the males. Have you heard this noise before? Nope, never heard that noise. Man, when I get excited, it's like a bag of sugar gliders. Ready to rumble. I don't know if I want to see them. They sound like they're healthy. Just get a quick listen. Perfect. So we have two males you're looking at? OK, yeah. Now these are more aggressive. So the eyes look really good. I don't see any discharge coming from there. My kids would love this. Here. I'm going to have to beg my wife to see if she'll let me get a pair. Well, that would be fantastic. All right. What are you going to do? I'm not scared of you. No, you're not sick with those big old eyes. No discharge from the ear. Ah! You're a nibbler. We're going to call it a nibble. Make this quick, because you bite. All right. They look all healthy. Do they? Oh, yeah. Their teeth are doing good. I'm going to go invest in me some band-aids, some vet wrap. If you have any questions or if you need anything, I'm always here for you. OK. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, doctor. All right. I have peanut, a two-month-old male kinky-chew here for you. Hello. Hi. How are you? How are you doing? I'm Dr. Ross. Collette. This is Peanut. Peanut. How long have you had Peanut? I've had him for two weeks. What made you get a kinky-chew? Look at him. He's adorable. Kinky-chews are from Central and South America. They are really good pets. You know, they love their owners. They love to play. They're high energy. So vaccines-wise, we recommend them at eight weeks. They start their vaccines. We recommend distemper if you're going to be around dogs. Do you have any dogs or cats? I have four dogs. When you have kinky-chews housed with dogs, you have to worry about canine distemper. It's a virus that they can develop. You're cute. What are you feeding? Majority apples, grapes, bananas, pears. 90% of kinky-chews diet consists of fruit. The other 10% consists of insects, leaves, and flowers. You know, it tickles. Peanut, you got to let me do my exam. I can't work like this. Where you at? These guys, they are prone to periodontal disease because they constantly eat fruit. I would recommend giving them papaya because the texture and the acidic in papaya helps with tartar buildup. They can get what's called their terrible tooths. When they get up in age, two years of age, they can start becoming aggressive, territorial. But the more you handle them right now, the better it's going to be for me and everybody else in the long run. Because the more they have that human interaction, that human contact, they relax, they learn how to bite softly instead of biting out of aggression. Yaya's going to hold, and I'm going to vaccinate. They're so long. You did a good job. You don't want any more? He said, this is my friend. He didn't do it. Just email me if you have any questions. OK, thanks. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hi. This is Bambi. I called. My name is Pam. Hey, Miss Linda, our emergency is here. Something happened to my goat's leg. Let me go ahead and take her to the treatment area and just get vitals and have Dr. Blue look at her. OK. Thank you. We got a call from Pam that she's rushing in her pet goat because it has a twisted leg. Hold it up. I don't want to put any pressure on it. I'm just concerned with these metacarpal bones here. If it's twisted like this, it's got to be fractured. Oh, sorry, baby. All right, I want to give her something to sedate her real quick. OK. Bambi can do more damage to her leg if she thrashes around. A light sedative will relieve her pain and anxiety. Our sedative should be kicking in. She looks like she's going down pretty good. I want to go ahead and shoot x-rays and keep that leg as straight as possible. I don't want it to have too much flexion on it. OK. Bambi's leg is bad, and I can't waste any time. I want to shoot a couple of x-rays before I go talk to the owners. Oh, yikes. This bone is completely fractured and displaced. On this side, if you compare the two, it actually should be rotated completely around to attach to this portion here. That's a bad break. What I'm seeing here is a serious break, and it makes me concerned. So I think I just better take a moment to kind of think about my next steps here. Oh, boy. This is tough. What has happened in Bambi is what we call an oblique fracture, which is like an angle. So you see where the bone is twisted here, and there's a bone going straight down? I just fluttered not to be in pain. We did give Bambi some pain medication for sedation and also some anti-inflammatories. OK. Though I've done bone surgery before, my recommendation for something this advanced is going to be to have you go see an orthopedic specialist that has done this several times. And the reason I'm saying that is if we want her to have complete function of that limb again, the orthopedic specialist is going to be the best way to do that. I don't want you to feel as if this is something where she can't make it through. Bambi is still savable, and that's why we want to get this done properly. So can somebody see her right away? I can call the specialty center, and hopefully we can get Bambi into surgery soon. Give us a little bit of time here. OK, thank you. OK. I know some orthopedic surgeons at Texas A&M that can do what's best for Bambi. I have a goat here that just fractured his metacarpal bones. Oh, man. I would recommend some nice, big, padded bandage on. OK. Having them come tonight. All right, thank you so much, Doc. All right, thank you. Texas A&M is about 90 minutes away from our hospital. I want to wrap her leg up to stabilize it, just to make sure she's a little bit more comfortable as she travels across town. All right, Bambi, I know. You've seen better days, and you shall see more. I just was hoping it wasn't broke. I just was hoping it was somehow out of place. We did everything we could. So I mean, now it's just up to the doctors to do everything else they can. We're going to get you better, OK? All right. OK. Here's Bambi. I've got Texas A&M waiting your arrival. OK. I want you to go ahead and get her down there. The cast padding here, this is just to kind of keep the leg a little bit more stable. OK. And it'll also help prevent any impact on your way over there. OK. All right, OK. They'll take really good care of her. And I'll be rechecking with you all when you're done with the surgery over there and everything. I know the specialists will take great care of Bambi, and I'll follow up with the family throughout her treatment. You ladies have a good night, OK? Thank you so much. All right, see you all later. Sharon, Sharon. Hey, Doc. Hey, see y'all little. How's it going today? This is insane. I can't believe you picked her up in a neighborhood. Let's go. Dr. Levine and I are going to examine a dangerous animal. We're concerned about our safety as well as her well-being. It's a delicate balance. Oh, she's beautiful. She looks like she's about four or five months. Probably weighs about 100 pounds. Yeah, that sounds about right. She looks pretty good, though. I mean, it looks like somebody was taking care of her. I think she was someone's pet. I really do. I believe the tiger was kept in a small, confined area, and she wanted to get out and roam. With all the rain, with all the floods, the tiger could have jumped over the fence. We really don't know. It's very unfair for a tiger to be in a suburban area where it's not able to thrive. That's a wild animal. Who has a pet tiger? Want to get her out of the dock and start this exam? Yeah. Come on. Come on, mama. Come on. This way. Come on. Let's go. All right. That is all you. All right. Put her on the table. Want to just go ahead and sedate her? Yeah, we might need to. Cut that out. She's trying to fold laundry. Yeah, right now, Nala, she's young. She's kind of playful. But you never know when that play is going to escalate to aggression. So we definitely want to sedate her because we still don't really know how she's going to respond. Hold on, mama. I got it. She's good. She say, hey, you that boy that's just stuck me. Put her on the table. All right, get the back of you. Get the front. One, two, three. All right. She looks pretty good. Granted, she got out in that storm. All right. Ears look really good. No signs of bacteria. No otitis in there. She definitely have her claws. But good thing she's not using them. Got a strong femoral pulse. Perfect. Everything looks good. All right, you want to get her temp? Yeah, I get the thermometer. Ready? She's not going to like that. Good girl. Temperature's normal. 102. So I'm going to give her feline distemper. Feline distemper is a combination of viruses that cats could get. Cats are prone to different upper respiratory tract infections. We want to make sure that Nala is safe while she's staying with us here in the shelter. Oh. Regroup. Oh, she didn't like that at all. Hey. We got to get a rabies, doc. Oh, she's starting to wake up from the tranquilizer. I don't think I want to give her any more, though. We can just do this one on the floor. OK, perfect. All right, just a real one poke wipe. I'm going to come on that side of you. I got her. All right. That's how I should hit her. Perfect. I'm going to give her a clean bill of health. Do you think, you know, we dewormed her? We gave her all her vaccinations? You should get a fecal on her, though. What? We can wait till she volunteers a sample. I think we did all we can do today. Now I just got to find her a place to live. I think the best thing for us to go to an animal sanctuary. Definitely. I'll start making some calls. All right, let's get her back in her cage and rub it in Blue's face. Hey, hey, how's it going? I understand we got a llama that's not in pajamas. No, he is not. He needs pajamas. So what's his name? His name is Atticus Finch. Atticus Finch? Yep. Why Atticus Finch? Well, it's one of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird. And one of my favorite characters. OK. I thought it was a cool name. OK. It's kind of fancy for a llama, though. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, to have a llama is sort of fancy. It's well. So it's fitting. Are you just into llamas? Was it? Well, so when we moved here in 2006, the house came with three llamas. Wait, what? Yeah. So the previous owners had llamas. They're moving to Arizona. They didn't want to take them. And I never met a creature I didn't love. So at that time, we got into llamas. And so we've had llamas ever since. You moved into a house and it came with llamas? Came with three llamas. I know that you can buy a house that it comes with drapes, light fixtures, maybe even like appliances like a refrigerator. But actually get a living, breathing, eating being? A cool llama? That's unheard of. We need a new realtor. Lucas was born out here. He's the first baby from my two mom and dad out there, parents. He's two and a half years old. Is there a reason why you want to get him neutered today? Yes. So I have his parents out there. I saw him. He and his daddy are fighting for control of the very tiny llama herd I have right now. I'm not going to breed him and his daddy to whatever I have out here. That'll be too confusing. So I'm ready to get his manhood taken away. Let's not call it manhood. Take it away. Let's just say we're ready to remove the brains of the outfit. Remove the brains of the outfit. I get kind of weary when you say take the manhood of the outfit. Nervous. Yeah, so that he can be calm again. They can be very aggressive, the males. And pretty much like any species, you got two dominant males. There's an issue in the room. Dogs, bulls, and especially father and son. Llamas will particularly go after the testicle. Yes. They'll literally say, you got some, I got some. I'm the man. I'm taking yours so you're not breeding with their herd. Right. And they have fighting teeth. So they're pretty dangerous if they want to be. Llamas, they're still large animals. These aren't little guys. It's not like a little dog or a cat. I mean, this llama here, Atticus is weighing about 250. And at their adult weight, they can be 450 on the large side. So it's something where you still have to be careful of the sheer size of the animal. And they're camelids. So those back legs can kind of move in a full circle. Horses kick straight back. Cows kick to the side. Llamas, roundhouse. You remember Chong-Li? Yeah. Llamas is like Chong-Li. They ninja everywhere. And watch out. They spit. It's only rodeo. Done. OK. All right. So we're done with the castration. OK. Everything looks good. I don't really see any excessive bleeding. Now what we're going to do is just kind of wait for him to wake up. We gave him a reversal. OK. That actually allows for him to wake up and be a little bit more conscious. I like to see him kind of a little bit more stable before I leave. Perfect. OK. Let's see if we can put him in the cushion. Push him over here. Grab his neck. He got his neck. Oh, OK. Good morning. So obviously, he's going to be feeling a little bit weird, a little bit disoriented. So obviously, keep him away from the other animals. OK. I think he's going to do just fine. OK. There he goes. There you go. Well, I appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to let us come on out here. It's a huge, huge help for us. Absolutely. If you got any more llamas, Dr. Ross would love to come out. I'm one of them. Good job. We're on the grounds where they hold the Renaissance Fair. We're here seeing the birds of prey. Y'all got the stuff? Yeah, we got the stuff. It's a live show with some really cool birds. The mosquito population here in Houston is big. Hello. And basically, what we're doing is going to vaccinate these birds against the West Nile virus. This is my wife, Shannon. Shannon, nice to meet you. And my daughter, Piper. I brought my mussel. He's a pig whisperer. I'm a natural. So now he's going to be the bird whisperer. That's my 26th year here at this festival. And this is the largest festival of its kind in the country. Wow. I'm interested in coming because I'm kind of a Renaissance man myself. But you should see it. It's a real hoot. It's like a whole Renaissance world in here. I thought it was going to be like temporary tents and stuff. All of the buildings here are permanent buildings. This is a three-story bird facility. We have about 20 chambers inside. They don't get along naturally. So we have to make sure they each have their own accommodations. Yeah. Where did the birds come from? The birds that come into our program are not releasable. Some come from rehabilitation centers. Some come from zoos. We actually partnered with the Dallas Zoo to contribute to a breeding program. We're trying to convey the education of it and give everyone a close encounter to really appreciate wildlife more closely. And we've had some losses from West Nile to some of our birds. West Nile virus can cause neurological issues. Muscle weakness, loss of coordination, and even death. Let's go vaccinate the birds. And are we ready? Here we go. Up, up. How's y'all? Pretty too. Yeah, yeah. I've never seen one like that. This is called an African auger buzzard, which is a type of hawk. Orion is one of our oldest birds. In the spring, he'll be 20. 20. That didn't look a day over 19. We have an equine vaccine that we use for birds. I did a lot of research. I talked to a lot of my veterinary colleagues. And this horse vaccine has been proven to work on birds. This is Owlbiss Dumbledore. And he is a great horned owl. Oh, he winked at you. He was found by some hikers at the base of a tree. He had not grown in any of his secondary feathers, the feathers in the middle. So he could not fly. Oh, whoa. This is Everest. A nice looking turkey vulture. Isn't he beautiful? Yeah, he is. He was a vehicle impact victim. His wings aren't quite right. Yeah. So he has permanent injuries and permanent deformities. Now, he can't fly very far. But those are some tremendous wings. So he can catch air and go a little further just by setting his sails. Do you think that bird has a 10 foot wingspan? No. Six foot at the most. I'm probably six feet. Disrespectful. Turkey vultures throw up as a defense. So let's make this quick. Don't throw up on me, buddy. I bet it smells great. Worst smell you'll ever encounter.