South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Exotic pet vet is back
‘Dr. K’s ER’ offers a new season of wild office visits
A parrot attempts to fly out of the examination area and into the waiting room, where a chameleon peeks out of a pink and blue carry bag .
white umbrella cockatooA wanders around the clinic while vets and assistants prepare a ferret for jaw surgery. A 60-pound gray pig snorts with excitement when offered treats.
At the center of this wild environment is the cool and calm Dr. Susan Kelleher, known best as “Dr. K” to clients and TV viewers.
It’s just another morning at the Broward Avian and Exotic Animal Hospital in Deerfield Beach, the setting for Nat Geo Wild’s cable reality show “Dr. K’s Exotic Animal ER.”
For the past four years, cameras have shadowed Kelleher and her staff of 13 as they treat just about anything that can crawl, hop, slither or fly through the front door. Her motto is, “If it fits through the door, I’ll treat it,” except venomous snakes. Her cases have included neutering a rat, installing a pacemaker for a ferret and having a shell made from a 3-D printer for a tortoise that was injured by a driver after Hurricane Irma.
“Every day is different,” Kelleher said with a smile as she sat in her office between surgeries.
She had just treated a 24-year-old Russian tortoise for a wound, one of her six patients by midday. “That is one of the cool things about my practice. We see animals that live decades and decades and decades, which is fascinating. You don’t see that in a dog and cat practice. It’s a whole different level of bond with the pet when people have them that long.”
We caught up with Kelleher, a married mother of three children ages 9 to 14, ahead of today’s 9 p.m. season premiere of her show. As the Loxahatchee resident sat in her office under anatomical posters for rabbits and birds, she talked about life on and off camera in South Florida.
What are your most common patients?
“It depends on the day. A lot of birds. A lot of rabbits. You really honestly see everything and anything on any given day. We get fish. A lot of reptiles. Primates. Invertebrates. We have people bring tarantulas in. Large exotic cats like lynx or tigers. A lot of pot bellied pigs. People don’t realize how popular they are and how amazing they are as pets. We see anywhere from one to four pigs a day. Mostly intestinal issues. … People absolutely love them. They are phenomenal. They are great family members. They are intelligent. They are fun.”
Is it difficult working with cameras all around you?
“You do get used to having the cameras on. Even though I have done this for 23 years on a daily basis, there is still something that I’ve never seen or something I haven’t necessarily done before that comes in and you’re not only doing it for the first time, you’re doing it on camera for the first time. So that part of it can be a little nerve-wracking. The production company Spectrum (Productions) is great. They are respectful of our space and patients.
“When they are actually filming, this place is mobbed. Ten to 12 extra people, the producer, the show runner, the (production assistants), three camera guys, the sound guy. It’s just a ton of people here. There are Go Pros. Camera guys everywhere. It’s intense. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s intense. This isn’t a lot of space and if they are in the middle of filming something, and they can’t move, you need to ... it’s challenging.”
When did you know you wanted to be a vet?
“I am that corny story that I had wanted to be a veterinarian literally since I was 3. This is all I ever wanted to do. And so as a kid, I had a lot of pets, not necessarily normal. I lived in the suburbs of Buffalo. I had a pet chicken, rabbits, dogs, all different kinds of (animals) what my parents would let me have.
“I went to vet school (University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine) thinking I wanted to be a zoo vet but I really enjoyed the one-on-one relationships with clients. I love people as well as the animals. I like doing that one-on-one with the animals, with the clients and family member. There is a lot of value in zoos but you do a lot of herd health and there’s a lot of politics sometimes. I love this. I love what I do with the clients. I enjoy it.”
You’ve been called the MacGyver of vets because you’re resourceful in treating your patients. Is there a recent case that stands out?
“We just had a tortoise who after Hurricane Irma last year got out of the yard because the fence got damaged. A car drove over it and literally scraped off his top shelf. He had this huge gaping wound, the spine was exposed.”
“With him, I had to do surgery to treat the wound and clean the back and try to sterilize some of the pieces of the shell that were remaining. Long story short, we wound up getting a 3-D-printed shell to put on him to protect him. I worked with an engineering company from Miami who did the 3-D printing. They are called 3DChimera and they did the design, they mapped him, they made the artificial 3-D printed shell and it turned out amazing, so that was really cool. It’s mounted on him. … He has his own Facebook page, George the Mighty (tortoise).”
You must have pets at home, right?
“Yes. Xander. He’s an 18-year-old blue and gold macaw. Then we have Durda, an African spurthighed tortoise who is in his late 20s. He has been a blood donor for patients here three to four times now. We have two box turtles. We have a black-headed caique (a little bird). We also have two rabbits, a cat and three dogs. That’s everybody.”
We see animals that live decades and decades and decades, which is fascinating.”
Dr. Susan Kelleher
How do you balance work, the show and home life?
“It’s definitely challenging. Working mom, the practice, the show, kids in three different schools and all the pets, but the kids are really good about helping with the pets. We’ve got a system down of who feeds who. They have to help and it’s just the way it is. We have to leave the driveway by 6:40 in the morning. We do it. Nobody has missed school yet.”
You’re a big advocate of microchipping pets
“That’s a huge, huge important thing. I have been trying to get as many people as possible to microchip their pets. We literally get 10-12 birds a year that are lost and found. We want to get them back to their owner. That’s a huge thing, especially living in hurricane season. It’s really important to me. I want pets to get back to their owners. Microchipping is life and death for them.”
What do you want viewers to take from the show?
“The biggest thing that I’m grateful for that the show has given me is a platform to show people the level of care that is needed and the level of care that these patients deserve .… It doesn’t matter if it ’s a mouse, a hamster or a $10,000 parrot. This is their family member. And that’s really important to me that people see that they need and deserve and respect these species more. It’s hard filming but it gives me a platform and I love hearing stories from friends that are veterinarians who say someone came in with their Amazon (parrot) up in Boston because of something they saw in the show that let them understand that there was something wrong with their amazon parrot. That makes my day, that the show had an impact on somebody.”