He said, “That’s faster than I wanted to go.” But it got there and we accomplished the task. So it wasn’t that they didn’t want to supply these things, but the money was not there for all the specialized equipment. So they’re obstacles, but they’re not, if you just recognize,… Read More
And I said, okay, I started then, how would you deal with this in a sheep or a dog?… Read More
But this isn’t a dog, but the principles are the same, just get with it and do it. Read More
Were the staff the only obstacles that you encountered when you were starting the Sacramento Zoo experience, whereas the other obstacles you’ve kind of alluded, was it the medical part of it with the supplies and so forth?… Read More
Were those the major things that you had overcome or were there other things?… Read More
And I’ve had that sort of cooperation over the years with all kinds of physicians and surgeons and research people, and certainly in the area of research and just general zoo medicine now, there are so many facets of it that no one person can do it all, and they… Read More
How difficult was it in those days as you were at the Sacramento Zoo with that collection of jumping from a bird to a rhinoceros, was it just, that’s what it was, or was it calling for different types of discipline in every case?… Read More
No, it shouldn’t be a different discipline to utilize or be involved with different animals. In fact, on one occasion, I flew to Southern California to do a major surgery on an elephant, and we finished up quite rapidly. I was able to fly back to the university that same… Read More
‘Cause at that time they were using a technique called using the internal thoracic artery and stapling it or transferring it to the coronary artery for blood supply when the coronary artery was blocked. And he used a stapler instead of suture material to do that. And he went over… Read More
And on one occasion, I had an animal brought to me, a chimpanzee, a young chimpanzee with inguinal hernia. And the owner wanted to save this animal, not just as an animal, but he wanted it to be a breeding animal. And so it involved closing the hernial gap without… Read More
That was a little bit beyond me at that point in time, and I called the pediatric surgeon in the medical school and I called and talked to his secretary and she said, “Oh, he’s much too busy to talk to you about this.” And I said, “Well, giving the… Read More
Initially it was free from the university, the terms of payment for our services, but eventually there was a budget for primarily medicine and this sort of thing. But since it was a laboratory, a letter of a resolution, you know, of, I can’t think of the word that you… Read More
Did you ever have occasion to call upon human doctors and specialties or a medical team, a concept outside of veterinary medicine to help with different problems that may have occurred?… Read More
Well, that’s an interesting question. And it was very important to me because I learned how to cooperate with other personnel, other medical personnel, even before I started with the zoo business. I was in a research project with some human thoracic surgeons who dealt with cancer and so forth,… Read More
Well, my relationship with the curators was always good. I didn’t feel a competition, I know that this exists in the zoo world, I know that there are issues of who’s the boss, and I never had that personally. I had some personality conflicts with keepers, but most of those… Read More
So that I did listen, and I felt that this was extremely important. And when I got into trouble is because I wasn’t listening and the curatorial staff or jealousies of who’s boss, and this sort of thing is really a lack of communication. Somebody used the term territory in… Read More
Did the zoo have to pay for your services or was it given free by the university?… Read More
Did you bring your own, were you essentially bringing the entire staff, whatever was needed to do things when you visited the zoo?… Read More
Well, the use of assistance, if you will, or technical associates, however you wanna call it was non-existent. In the early stages of my career, we essentially worked with the head keeper in every area of the zoo that we were involved with at the time. As we moved along,… Read More
And I envied that, but we just did what we had to do. I had a technician from the university that worked with me in the program there, and he would sometimes come with me to the zoo. And that was an extremely important thing, certainly when we had to… Read More