They had no gas anesthesia, so on and so on. So I talked to Sopon and he gave me a whole bunch of money to buy a bunch of equipment to take over, and so we did, took it over there, set it up in five zoos, you know, anesthesia machines, dental machines, and everything, and then I went back about a year later, and none of the machines were being used, all the dental equipment. So I said, “You know, this type of thing is not working. What you have to do is probably get over there, and have a presence for a period of rather than two or three weeks and do a blitz job, you have to have presence.” So then send a proposal and worked with Borapat who was a Thai that got his PhD at Front Royal, and then after I retired from National, I went over there and spent about three years staying consistently, you know, with them, so that continually we brought out all the old equipment, dusted it off, started using it, and you know, intensified the medical program, and that has worked, because I left and then I came back to do another study about a year later after I left Thailand, and we showed ’em how to anesthetize elephants and rhinos and hippos, and they were much better. I mean they, you could see the level of confidence and everything else, so that paid off being having the continual presence there, but then also as important as leaving. So they don’t continually depend on, “Well, you know, Dr. Bush will come up and do this.” I’m saying, no, you know, “I’m gone now, you guys have had, you’ve gotta pick it up.” And one of my proudest moments that happened just recently, one of my star veterinarians over there had, they did a hippo anesthesia, which to me hippos or Nile hippos are one of the most difficult ones to anesthetize, but they used our protocol and it worked beautifully. Not only that, she had a giraffe with the dystocia, she anesthetized the giraffe using the protocol that we saw, and pulled the calf and got the giraffe back up, and I think it’s doing all right still, which is, you know, excellent work. But again, the problem there is she’s going to do a Master’s degree in England now, and leaving the clinical thing, because in Thailand, a veterinary degree is only the beginning to get in a zoo, then you’re a veterinarian for about three years, then you have to go to curator or director or something, and so they have a turnover of clinical veterinarians about every four or five years, and so you have no mentors or you know, silverbacks in the staff for doing that.
