- What we're doing is a complete physical

examination on our red panda Phoenix.

Phoenix has been with us, I believe for about two years,

he was born at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Wiinipeg.

We're here at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine

to do this examination.

Doing a physical exam is part of our

preventative maintenance program

and it's what we do for many of the animals

we have at the zoo.

It contributes to the overall knowledge on the

physiology of the red panda.

As you can see we have a great support team doing it

and what it'll do is it'll really give us some base line

information on the overall health status of this animal.

We'll look at blood, we'll look at urine,

be able to check his musculoskeletal system.

Use ultrasound to check and see the internal organs

are all functioning normal.

And, it also gives us that information that we can then

share with other facilities.

So if in the future he was to develop a kidney problem

or a liver issue, we would have that base line information

to draw on and further tests would indicate

what medical issues we're facing.

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Red pandas are the first species that are being managed

globally in captivity.

We participate in a program here in North America

called the Species Survival Plan,

every pair of red pandas is evaluated on an annual basis

by biologists and animals are then placed together

for that years breeding.

The concept is to maintain genetic diversity

at 97% after 100 years.

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It's a little different procedure than your normal pet

and you can understand seeing the claws on this animal

that if he was awake you wouldn't be able to do

the same type of physical examination.

We have a number of different vets working

doing different things at one time so that we don't

keep the animal sedated for too, too long.

Anytime you do sedate an animal there's always a danger

but by monitoring it as closely as what we are

it really reduces down any risk of anything going wrong.

They'll monitor the heart rate, they'll also

while they have him like this give him all the shots and

check for external parasites at the same time, ear mites.

Basically what they're doing here is checking all the teeth,

they'll make sure that there's no gum disease.

- [Vet] He's got a tiny little chip fracture,

incisor, right maxillary.

No bulb exposure.

- [John] Just a little chip on a canine tooth there.

(Vet speaking away from camera too low to hear)

Getting some blood samples.

Normally if you're doing blood tests you shave

but because this animal does spend most of it's time

outdoors in the winter we don't want to shave it.

It would make it susceptible to frost bite after.

Getting blood is important, a lot of an animals' health

can be monitored through blood and urine.

They'll go in for an eye exam.

That's a complete eye exam,

it checks to see if there's any damage

or any issues that's developing,

from cataracts to loss of vision.

You can see now checking joints

and looking for signs of any damage or arthritis.

Everything is marked down so at the end of the exercise

we'll have a complete understanding of his

current physical health.

You can see that something like this, because it's

not done everyday it's a great teaching opportunity.

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We're just taking a full body x-ray.

It allows us to look at vertebrae, all the joints

and some of the internal organs actually show up

which is really great.

We can check for arthritis, we can check for bone disease

and different things.

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For the ultrasound it's identical to what

would happen to a human.

If we were going through a physical exam and they were

doing an ultrasound on you, it's the exact same process.

This is just to ensure that the internal organs

are functioning the way they should,

that we don't see any signs of tumors or cysts

on any of the organs.

After the ultrasound we have a picture of it all

so the vets can check it out and also it'll go into

his medical records.

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What Amy's doing is she's taking paw prints on canvas

we'll use them both for educational uses

and potentially for some fundraising uses to help

pay for some of our education programs.

It's a perfect opportunity while the animal's sedated

to do something like this and the ultrasound is still

going on in the background, so we're not losing time.

We're actually doing a number of things at one time.

The paint that we're using is a non toxic paint,

it's actually made for children to use.

Washes off very easily, it's water soluble.

We want to set him up so that he will actually

do his own painting in the future.

It's all based on rewards and using their natural behaviors

and setting up canvases for them to walk on.

We'll see if we're successful with that.

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