TulsaPets Magazine May 2021

14 TulsaPets • May/June 2021 in and make a form of the base of the tooth and cut the tooth off and basically do a root canal,” she said. “And then to protect the base of the tooth, he put a metal cap on it just to protect it from shattering, and that was interesting. “Forever, whenever you could see in his mouth, he had a silver cap, so we made lots of jokes about him having bling, having a grill,” Backues chuckled. Backues said there was another time many years ago when a chimpanzee had a classic stroke, just like a human might have. “We had a physician/neurologist (for people) come out and just help us assess her across the bars through the mesh; obviously we don’t go in there with them, even though he really wanted to. We kept telling him even with her one good arm, she is still capable of really hurting you,” Backues said. “It’s the exact same process, if you have a cerebral vascular stroke in a chimpanzee and a human; they have the exact same signs depend- ing on the severity and where the stroke actually happens.” The chimp lived for several more years and gained about 70% of her movement back after doing physical therapy. “She had some residual loss of motion in her arm, but she went back into the troop and continued to be a contributing member,” Backues said. “It took a lot of time and effort by the chimpanzee keeper, the challenge of trying to get a chimpanzee to do physical therapy. … ‘Can you come up to the bar? Can you show me your shoulder?’ Our keepers did an amazing job of that, just to try to stimulate her to move those parts of her body.” And as with any long-term caretaker of animals, Backues is sometimes faced with end- of-life decisions for older, seriously injured or sick animals. Dr. Backues Vet staff with Rainy the bear.