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- What we're doing is a complete physical
examination on our red panda Phoenix.
Phoenix has been with us, I believe for about two years,
he was born at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Wiinipeg.
We're here at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine
to do this examination.
Doing a physical exam is part of our
preventative maintenance program
and it's what we do for many of the animals
we have at the zoo.
It contributes to the overall knowledge on the
physiology of the red panda.
As you can see we have a great support team doing it
and what it'll do is it'll really give us some base line
information on the overall health status of this animal.
We'll look at blood, we'll look at urine,
be able to check his musculoskeletal system.
Use ultrasound to check and see the internal organs
are all functioning normal.
And, it also gives us that information that we can then
share with other facilities.
So if in the future he was to develop a kidney problem
or a liver issue, we would have that base line information
to draw on and further tests would indicate
what medical issues we're facing.
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Red pandas are the first species that are being managed
globally in captivity.
We participate in a program here in North America
called the Species Survival Plan,
every pair of red pandas is evaluated on an annual basis
by biologists and animals are then placed together
for that years breeding.
The concept is to maintain genetic diversity
at 97% after 100 years.
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It's a little different procedure than your normal pet
and you can understand seeing the claws on this animal
that if he was awake you wouldn't be able to do
the same type of physical examination.
We have a number of different vets working
doing different things at one time so that we don't
keep the animal sedated for too, too long.
Anytime you do sedate an animal there's always a danger
but by monitoring it as closely as what we are
it really reduces down any risk of anything going wrong.
They'll monitor the heart rate, they'll also
while they have him like this give him all the shots and
check for external parasites at the same time, ear mites.
Basically what they're doing here is checking all the teeth,
they'll make sure that there's no gum disease.
- [Vet] He's got a tiny little chip fracture,
incisor, right maxillary.
No bulb exposure.
- [John] Just a little chip on a canine tooth there.
(Vet speaking away from camera too low to hear)
Getting some blood samples.
Normally if you're doing blood tests you shave
but because this animal does spend most of it's time
outdoors in the winter we don't want to shave it.
It would make it susceptible to frost bite after.
Getting blood is important, a lot of an animals' health
can be monitored through blood and urine.
They'll go in for an eye exam.
That's a complete eye exam,
it checks to see if there's any damage
or any issues that's developing,
from cataracts to loss of vision.
You can see now checking joints
and looking for signs of any damage or arthritis.
Everything is marked down so at the end of the exercise
we'll have a complete understanding of his
current physical health.
You can see that something like this, because it's
not done everyday it's a great teaching opportunity.
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We're just taking a full body x-ray.
It allows us to look at vertebrae, all the joints
and some of the internal organs actually show up
which is really great.
We can check for arthritis, we can check for bone disease
and different things.
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For the ultrasound it's identical to what
would happen to a human.
If we were going through a physical exam and they were
doing an ultrasound on you, it's the exact same process.
This is just to ensure that the internal organs
are functioning the way they should,
that we don't see any signs of tumors or cysts
on any of the organs.
After the ultrasound we have a picture of it all
so the vets can check it out and also it'll go into
his medical records.
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What Amy's doing is she's taking paw prints on canvas
we'll use them both for educational uses
and potentially for some fundraising uses to help
pay for some of our education programs.
It's a perfect opportunity while the animal's sedated
to do something like this and the ultrasound is still
going on in the background, so we're not losing time.
We're actually doing a number of things at one time.
The paint that we're using is a non toxic paint,
it's actually made for children to use.
Washes off very easily, it's water soluble.
We want to set him up so that he will actually
do his own painting in the future.
It's all based on rewards and using their natural behaviors
and setting up canvases for them to walk on.
We'll see if we're successful with that.
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