Well, Sunday we had a bit of a stressful situation with our 3 year old male Rhino (Sam). Let me give two quick bits of back-story.



- Sam HATES water. He is a big sweatheart/softy most of the time, but he turns into a paranoid demon when you try to get him to soak or you try to spray him down. The few times I have done it, he usually spends most of the time pooping repeatedly and trying to get out of the tub. I have given up even trying, and instead just mist him down and/or rub Shed Ease on him when he is shedding.



- When Sam comes down from his castle (a.k.a. cage) in the morning, he poops almost right away, then goes to lay under my window in the sun. Throughout the course of the day, he usually does another mini-poop. We have tile floors and newspapers, so it's super easy to take care of.



So, Sunday Sam did his usual thing. He came down, pooped, sunned himself, pooped a little bit more, roamed around a bit, etc. Well, my wife gets the idea that maybe we could get him to let us hose him down if we got him into our walk-in shower instead of trying to get him up into the tub. Sounds like a great idea. So since Sam likes her more than me, she talks nice to him and gets him to walk into the shower, and she sprays him down with warm water. Well....he hated it. It wasn't any better. He did what he always does. So, apparently since he had already pooped several times he didn't have anything left to expel. He must have strained the area, because after she got him out of the shower, one of his hemipenes was out and wouldn't go back in. When he got back up into his cage, he was sitting very uncomfortably. We tried applying a bit of sugar-water to the area and that didn't help. We applied some PreparationH and that didn't help either. Finally, I got a couple of Qtips, gobbed them with KY jelly, carefully lubbed up the entire cloacal region, then VERY slowly and carefully worked the hemipene back. Once it was back in and appeared to be STAYING back in, we left him alone to rest. We're at day 2 and everything seems to be ok. He was back to his old self yesterday, acting like nothing happened.



Anyway, we will NOT be trying any more bath/shower related things with him. We have a humidifier that he tolerates and he gives us no problems when we mist him down with warm water during sheds. That's just going to have to be good enough. LOL

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