A good veterinarian needs the skills of a super sleuth…in the category of Sherlock Holmes or Poirot….given that most of their patients don’t speak. The super sleuth veterinarian must draw on excellent skills of observation and deductive reasoning to figure out what is wrong with their patient.
Owners need the same super observation and deductive skills. Regretfully, my skills were slow to notice that something was wrong with Frankie. In the last few weeks I was slow noticing what was going on and wrongly deduced the situation. I mistook Frankie’s lack of “getting around the yard” to mean “it’s to hot to walk around the yard.”
Frankie wasn’t getting around the yard much and it was defiantly hot outside. Frankie would find a cool spot in the yard and stick there for most of the day. That I noticed.
The bigger clue that got me thinking something was wrong was Frankie wobbled when he walked. Still, I just watched.
It was cooler outside one evening so I took Frankie for a Big Walk. He walked, slowly, down four houses, sat on the neighbors lawn, and then sat to grazed eating only the the grass that was within “head reach”
The walk back to the house, took an soooo long and Frankie kept stopping to rest. I started adding up everything I’d seen in the last two weeks and came to one very sure result: Frankie was having mobility issues.
Frankie’s local veterinarian was unable to do an x-ray saying his equipment was not appropriate for large tortoises. He suggested I find a horse veterinarian to have them do the xray on a portable machine.
The equine veterinarians I called would have this very long pause when I explained that I needed an xray of a 100 pound sulcata tortoise. Only one would consider doing the x-ray and it would be another week before they could see Frankie.
I had a sense of urgency that Frankie needed to be seen SOON, and I needed a very confident veterinarian could do the job.
So I drove four hours to Birmingham, AL to see the best turtle doctor in Alabama: Dr. Alvin Atlas.
Yes, I did. Just Frankie and me, in the car, for four hours.
At the vet’s office, they sent staff to help me get Frankie out of the car and into the building. It took some time to get the limping Frankie inside. Just walking into the examination room was painful. Unlike his last visit to see Dr. Atlas, Frankie just sat there.
This is far enough. Not walking another step.
When Dr. Atlas came in to see Frankie all I told him was Frankie was having mobility problems. Dr. Atlas sat on his stool and he and Frankie just stared at each other.
Dr. Atlas said, “That is unusual.”
“You mean Frankie just sitting there?”<br …read more
Read more here: Turtle Times
