Veterinary Exam of a Maned Wolf!

[00:00:00]I'm Dr. Taylor Gregory, the VP of animal health here at the Greensboro [music] Science Center, and recently we anesthetized one of our main wolves, Guapa, for a diagnostic [music] exam.

[00:00:09]For some of our animals here at the Greensboro Science Center, they are much more comfortable if we start their anesthesia process up where they live.

[00:00:16][music] So, for Guapa, we were able to inject her with an anesthetic up in her blockhouse and then transport her down to the hospital with [music] our veterinary van. From there, we move her into treatment and get started with our procedure.

[00:00:28]Guapa is an 8-year-old [music] maned wolf here who has inflammatory bowel disease. This is a relatively [music] common disease in maned wolves, and we manage it for Guapa with medications and diet. However, recently, Guapa's been losing weight, which could be a combination [music] of factors, but we wanted to check in on her inflammatory bowel disease and make sure there wasn't anything else we needed to treat.

[00:00:51]In order to re-evaluate Guapa's [music] inflammatory bowel disease, we did a couple of things. The first of that was endoscopy, [music] where we took a camera and put it down her esophagus into her stomach to look at the tissue of the inside [music] of her stomach.

[00:01:05]Everything on her looked very normal, and I didn't have any major concerns.

[00:01:09]So, with that camera, we also were able to [music] take small biopsy samples, or small pieces of tissue, that we're sending out for microscopic review [music] by a pathologist. Once we were able to take enough samples, we pulled that camera back out, and we collected blood work to look at GI-specific values, as well as routine blood work on her to make sure there weren't any other identifiable causes. [music] While she was under anesthesia, we did update her vaccines and give her an overall thorough physical [music] exam to make sure there wasn't anything else that we needed to address. We take a look at her eyes, we [music] take a look in her ears, we put all of her legs through range of motion to make sure they're moving appropriately, >> [music] >> we palpate her stomach, we look at her fur and her skin.

[00:01:54]We'll also take a look in her mouth and look at her teeth. [music] As part of a thorough physical exam, especially for Guapa with her history of weight [music] loss, we got a weight here in the hospital, which was 21.8 kegs, which is a little bit less than we would like [music] her to weigh.

[00:02:09]Once we were done with the exam, we were ready to wake Guapa up. So, we get Guapa [music] in a crate where she can wake up safely. We give her reversals, and then we wait for her to show initial signs [music] of recovery such as blinking, swallowing, before we pull that endotracheal [music] tube. So, we make sure her airways are protected as long as possible. Then she's allowed to recover in that crate [music] until she is able to stand on her own without too much shakiness, and she's able to go back to exhibit. [music] Now that Guapa's awake, we're waiting for all of her diagnostics [music] to come back. So, some of the samples we sent out will take a couple weeks to come back, and we'll continue to monitor and care for her and pay close attention to her [music] weight in the meantime.