Guinea pigs, snakes and dragons: Cape Cod veterinarians add exotic pets specialty

If Santa brought you a bearded dragon, macaw, guinea pig, rat or rabbit, your first call should be to one of the Cape hospitals that care for the baker’s dozen of exotic pet species often kept in Massachusetts.

“The most important thing is to cover the basics. You get a puppy and the first thing you do is to get a veterinary appointment. Exotics need that too,” said Dr.Kyra Berg, who spent 13 years becoming a board-certified specialist and surgeon for exotic and zoo animals.

Six months ago, Dr. Berg joined Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists, with offices in Dennis and Buzzards Bay, to set up a practice entirely devoted to exotic and zoo animals.

“We currently do not have a 24-hour center for emergencies for exotics. I am the only specialist and surgeon for exotics and I can’t be in the building 24/7 but when people call for an appointment we can do triage and work with them to get patients in as quickly as possible” Berg said. Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists does provide emergency care for dogs and cats, she said.

“Now we can offer CTs and other diagnostics, and we do get diagnostic referrals from other veterinarians,” she said.

Erica Chamney, practice manager of Oceanside Animal Hospital in Sandwich, said her office sends patients to Dr. Berg’s unit for CT scans and ultrasounds, as well as referring “complicated or emergency surgeries” to her.

“It’s really nice to be able to refer locally,” Chamney said.

How many exotic pets are living on Cape Cod?

Located on the Bourne Bridge approach — the office is known for its life-sized giraffe statue left over from a miniature golf course — the Buzzards Bay office features a full array of imaging equipment.

Neither Berg nor Chamney knew a way to get statistics on how many exotic pets are living on Cape Cod. Chamney said Oceanside’s practice has remained half dogs and cats and half exotics.

The nonprofit Sampson Fund for Cape Cod has recently added exotics in case people don’t have the money to care for their exotic pets so that has been very helpful, she said.

While the equipment at Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists is similar to medical technology for humans, the patients here can have dramatically different bodies.

“We recently had Max, a 44-year-old blue and gold macaw, in for a CT on a mass that in a human would have been in the diaphragm. But in the bird there is no diaphragm so we couldn’t use that marker,” Berg said.

Not only are the patients built differently, they sometimes bite.

Lorelei D’Avolio, a 17-year employee of Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists and one of two exotic pet-certified technicians in the state (15 in the country, Berg said) keeps a gentle but firm hand on the patients.

Wiggly, and high-pitched squeals

Last month, D’Avolio assisted Berg when Kris Fraser of Pembroke brought in her three guinea pigs for a wellness visit. This was definitely not the pigs’ idea, and they became especially wiggly and let loose high-pitched squeals when Berg opened their mouths, one by one, to reach back and check if their teeth had grown too long.

D’Avolio held each swaddled pig as Berg spoke gently, her voice pitched higher than normal.

Berg said the cost of keeping an exotic pet varies widely from case to case, particularly for specialty care including diagnostic imaging and bloodwork.

She recommends exotic pet insurance which, Berg said, is only offered now by one company, Nationwide.

The blog Ferrets and Friends LLC offers charts showing startup and annual maintenance costs for different species. A rabbit, for example, is $98 to acquire but an estimated $822 per year to keep.

One of the issues with rabbits, Berg said, is that females who do not give birth and are not spayed are much more prone to cancer of the reproductive organs.

Regular wellness care and good husbandry

Berg said regular wellness care and good husbandry is critical. Husbandry includes the pet’s living space, diet, fresh air, sunlight, food, exercise and other specific needs at home. “Eighty to 90 percent of illnesses we see in exotics are related to husbandry problems,” Berg said, noting that wellness appointments are at least 60 minutes and cover discussion of avoiding potential problems.

Animals who are considered prey in the wild will instinctively do all they can to hide pain or illness as it would make them vulnerable to predators. That means, pet owners have to be vigilant about small changes.

For Fraser, that meant weighing each of her guinea pigs at 6 a.m. each day to chart weight fluctuations. When Dr. Berg said it was okay to ease off to a weekly weigh-in, Fraser replied, “Oh no, it’s just how I start my day now.”

Fraser said she is making the reverse trip from her South Shore home to Cape Cod because she is so pleased with Berg’s knowledge and bedside manner that she followed the veterinarian when she left her previous job.

An early appreciation for exotic pets

Berg said her parents raised her with an appreciation for exotic pets, from rats (“They are the smartest.”) to snakes (“I didn't mention snakes because a lot of people are afraid of them.”)

“I am fascinated with reptiles and how they have developed,” she said. “I felt a calling to be able to be a voice for their species.”

One of Berg’s first case studies involved an adventurous bearded dragon who, while stretching his legs with his owner, snarfed down a red glass marble. “They are attracted to red, I guess because it looks like a berry.”

Hesitant to perform surgery because reptiles’ slow metabolism can make anesthesia risky, Berg used an endoscopy imaging tube and a suction wand to locate and vacuum out the marble.

If she didn’t already have cats and chinchillas, Berg said, she would consider adding a bearded dragon to the menagerie.

Bearded dragons are the Labrador retrievers of reptiles, Berg said. “They are very cuddly and each have their own personality.”

Gwenn Friss is the editor of CapeWeek and covers entertainment, restaurants and the arts. Contact her at gfriss@capecodonline.com. Follow her or X, formerly Twitter: @dailyrecipeCCT

Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Cape Cod Times subscription. Here are our subscription plans.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Exotic pet care added to Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists practice