Tiger Troubles

Over Spring Break, my friend Paige and I decided to take have a "Day Date" to Sunset Zoo in Manhattan.  Neither of us had ever been there before and having a mutual love of animals we decided it was the perfect activity for a sunny afternoon.  We never dreamed that one of our new friends we'd meet at the zoo, we'd meet later at school on the necropsy floor.

Bob Jr., Sunset Zoo's male tiger, was euthanized this morning at K-State.  It happened to be one of our favorite animals that we saw at the zoo - although we did notice that he was looking pretty darn thin.

Turns out Bob the Tiger was 18 years old and had been suffering from chronic kidney problems for the past 10 years.  This afternoon we got to watch the necropsy (an autopsy on animals) of Bob and then take a look at his kidneys.  Bob's kidneys had cysts and subcapsular cysts and he had progressively lost over 1/2 of his body weight.  As sad as it is, I think it was a very good choice by the zoo and K-State to euthanize him before his health declined further. 


On the bright side - I'm in the elective, Special Interest Anatomy and we saved one of Bob's forelimbs and one of his hindlimbs for our class to dissect next Wednesday.  It will be an exciting thing to check off my bucket list... "Dissect a tiger.  Check!"

Just one of the many things you never expect you'd do or see at vet school.  It's always full of surprises :)

I've included a few pictures of Bob in his final days - I'll spare you the pictures of him on his final day... after a little work had been done :)