who's a good boy? are you happy now? are you happy? yes, you are much happier. look at that,look at that spring in you step. yes, yes, yes. i do need. that's my good boy. good boy.
i can't do this with you anymore,you're too heavy. yeah, 200 kilos worth. hey big boy, how you feeling? >> i'm arriving at the parkearlier than usual, it's a monday morning, a huge week ahead. performing dental surgery,around about 20 animals at the sanctuary, including the leopards and the hyenas. when we did aslan, it opened up everyone's eyes tothe importance of dental healthcare.
if we've got the abilityto make their lives better by fixing their teeth, why not? we're here at the operating theater, it'swhere it's actually all gonna take place. >> nice to meet you. >> glad you're here. >> we have such a fantastic team. >> what can i say about gerhard? >> a man of few words, butwhen he speaks, there's wisdom. this guy travels around the worldto do work on walruses, and
on hippopotamuses, and elephants. >> this week, we've got a number ofanimals that we need to look at, but it is exciting. the atmosphere, that's the way we do it,it's in the bush. >> dr. steenkamp had some ideas andone of those was to duplicate the theater. have two tables, as one goes down getsstable, then we can go and fetch another. we get normally one case that's quitebad and one that i think is not so bad. >> between myself and dr. steenkamp,we have over 30 years of practice. we said, okay,we've got several lions here.
most likely, we'll have broken teeth,and they can be whether root canaled or extracted. so the packing that we broughtwith us was exactly that. >> and then there's adrian,we call him the anesthetizer. i've worked with many anesthetists in mytime, but there's a gut feel that he has. he uses the monitors just to verifywhat he's already thinking, and that's impressive. >> always in a little bit of anticipation,a bit of nervousness on the first day, no matter how many animalsyou've anesthetized before,
there's nothing that's quite a good thing. once we get going, i think everythingwill ease, and we'll relax a lot more. >> hyenas are an incredible speciesthat i hold close to my heart. each hyena, i'll tell you,they've got characters of note. >> thank you. it's a metal. not strong enough for hyena teeth. from a perspective of the dentition,obviously hyena's teeth are quite strong.
so, i'm really interested tosee what they think of that. >> this hyena, gina, is probably oneof the hyenas that i have a really, really good relationship with,been now 15 years. so, i've known her since she was a tinylittle cub, before she became the top dog. what's interesting is when you'reromping around with her and play fighting, all the other hyenasi think look at you and think, what does this weird creature got that we don'thave, because she rules with an iron fist. there's definite fear thatgoes through that enclosure. if she doesn't like you, she picks on you.
we only have four leopardsat the sanctuary. two that are needing teethrepair are coal and nikita. i've got a really goodrelationship with nikita. she's just an amazing cat. really, really affectionate,and it's very, very strange for a leopard to be like that. hello, my sweetie. the leopards are going tobe pretty easy to dart. in fact, the female, i'll probably justgive her an injection in her buttock.
the only reason i can do that isbecause she's been handraised by me and she's actually an incredible cat. you try this with coal, the other male,he's probably gonna swing around and swipe you in the face andthat's not gonna end well for my face. probably be an improvement. >> two root canals,two fractured teeth, so very similar to what we've been doing forthe past few days. >> once you have a fracture of a tooth, the most important bit isthe pulp on the inside.
if you see the white that's there, that isthe enamel, and then all of this is root. >> i think that we havean incisor that's busted as well. >> this is was not like this a week ago. >> and that infection can then goall the way down this root, and eventually even out into the surroundingbone causing inflammation or infection into the bone,potentially causing an abscess. so our aim this week isto remove all of this, get to healthy dentine,to fill it with cement and then do a finalrestoration on the crown.
tal is the first lion that i everdeveloped a relationship with. hello, big boy.it started back in 1998, when i was just 22, coming on 23 years of age and that'show my career with lions kickstarted. so my relationship withtal has been incredible. it's gone through a full cycle,he is now an old men. there's several complications that one canexpect when working with an older animal. they're not as resilient as the youngercats, so we are a bit concerned that when you put him under that there could bebreathing problems or heart problems. the one thing that makes me more nervousthan anything is those things i can't
control and that would be part ofthe anesthetics that makes you humble. >> andyou can feel the hot breath coming out. >> i mean the worst thing that canalways happen is losing an animal under anesthetic orsomething going wrong like that. but fortunately, those kinds of casesreally, really are few and far between. >> there's always the trade-offas to what do you do, do not put him under anesthetic andleave him with bad teeth or do you take the risk andgive him a better quality? see his muscle tone is not as good as it'sused to be, you can see he's very thin,
the ribs are showing. >> 206 1. >> hang on for a second,just be quiet for a second. >> he's stopped breathing. >> color is still okay here. >> heart rate is 48 which is a bit slow. >> give him a nice bigslap on the chest gerhard, get him to take a breath. >> i was lost of words, really.
i thought to myself, is this it? is this how i say goodbye? it's not a very nice way, it's not how you imagined it after a 18 year relationship with him. >> we just had a moment where i wasjust as i was about to connect him up to the oxygen, he just stopped breathing for a lot longer than what iwould be comfortable with. being an older lion he can'tafford to go without oxygen for
a period of time a long period oftime anything that's necessary. i'm actually giving him an antidote now, which does mean that hemight become quite light. >> all right. >> no, it's all's well that ends well. preparation. it makes one start to reflect on how vulnerable these situations can be. how vulnerable these animalscan be in your hands.
this big powerful, king of the jungle and like there,he's flat on his back clinging on to life. >> there's a lot more wears thanthe one we had from yesterday. the 11 year old were much betterdental wise than this guy. >> but he's also a great grandfather. my boy. my boy, not very graceful. >> right. >> i think that whole adrenalinekinda rush, that emotional drain,
the rest of the day, i was justmentally and physically exhausted. i'm obviously happy to have tal back. a bit of a stressful day,a bit of an emotional day. glad it's over. hi, guys, so it's the last morning today. we're here at the farm,i'm just coming to collect the guys. don't have such a hard morning. just gotta go and do some checkups onsome of the animals, how they're faring. my god.
now we can see those teeth. here boy. he's got his attitude back, which is good. hard to believe that he wasa flat cat on the table, where we thought, man,maybe this is the last. as i said to you, as i told you,he's got a long time left in him. i work with these animals on a dailybasis and i can see that, these animals actually know that we've done somethingfor bettering their way of life. >> we not have hoped foranything better, in fact.
it went really, really well. walking around,seeing those animals today, and how quickly they've recovered back tonormal really, it's just been fantastic. >> initially, we were gonna countthe amount of root canals we did, but we decided to add them all together andlook at the length of root canals we did. at the end of the week, we did 1.334meters of root canals in the whole week. i'm sure that's a guinness world record. >> where on earth do you get to do this? that amount of predators in one week,with those kind of people,
that kind of experience and that groupyou take collectively everyone involved. it's just amazing. definitely, something thatwill go with me to the grave. i think if we each do whatwe can to help the animals, as a collective, we're gonna get very far.
