Dr. Lamar Hunter has just joined the Carolina Tiger Rescue team as a wildlife veterinarian. After he graduated from NC State’s vet school, Dr. Hunter studied under Dr. Angela Lassiter at Carolina Tiger Rescue. He helps with physicals, medical procedures, and loves seeing the animals improve under the care of the awesome vets at the rescue. Dr. Hunter enjoys working with all the animals at Carolina Tiger Rescue, but his favorite is the lions.
Dr. Hunter’s Blog 3/4/19
We have been keeping a close eye on Fenimore Tiger over the last couple weeks. The keepers have noticed that he hasn’t been feeling his best, isn’t eating all his food, and is getting around a little slower than usual. Because of this, we scheduled a physical for Fenimore in hopes of getting some blood work and doing an ultrasound on him to find out what is going on. Friday promised to be a cold and rainy day, so we decided we were going to move Fenimore into our quarantine building to keep him as warm and dry as possible during the physical. We also needed electricity to run our ultrasound machine!
Once Fenimore was sedated, we safely loaded him into quarantine and began the physical. We found him, as we expected, to be extremely muddy! Fenimore loves to play in the mud, even when it’s cold outside!
Getting a good, in-depth look at our animals is not always easy. Sedating a tiger can be very risky, but sometimes it is necessary to ensure they are healthy. If they are not healthy, we want to find out what is wrong with them so we can treat them as quickly as possible. Luckily for Fenimore, the ultrasound did not find anything remarkable, but that also means we are not quite sure why he’s not feeling his best. We will send his blood work off to the lab and wait for it to come back and hopefully that will give us some answers. Sometimes, though, we don’t get much information from the blood work either.
Fenimore spent a couple days recovering in quarantine and then it was time to get him back to his enclosure and to his buddy, Emerson. These two have not spent any time away from each other since they got here, so I am sure they were ready to see one another. I know, also, that the now clean Fenimore is ready to wallow in his mud pits again in his enclosure! On Monday, we loaded him back up into the crate and moved him back to his enclosure where he is safe, sound, and dirty once again! I will keep you posted if we find anything new about Fenimore’s results! Now I have to turn my attention to Tio Tiger, who will be having surgery on Tuesday on one of his feet! A vet’s job is never done!
