Open Wide and Say, “Roar!”

By David Richardson

Dr. David Sullivan, pediatric dentist, is just wild about teeth. So are some of his patients. Wild, that is. Really wild.

You see, Dr. David, as many people call him, has some unusual patients. They aren’t the children he typically sees each day. They’re, well, big . . . and hairy . . . and sometimes weigh more than four hundred pounds. They’re real animals—zoo animals.

On most days, Dr. Sullivan tends to his human patients, teaching them how to brush and floss and care for their teeth. A few patients cry. Occasionally one may bite. But, all in all, there isn’t much for Dr. Sullivan to be wary of in his practice.

On some days, however, the Cincinnati Zoo calls with some special work for him to do. Since 1982, Dr. Sullivan has volunteered his time performing dental surgery on many of the animals. The zoo may ask him to pull the tooth of a Bengal tiger, repair the tusk of an elephant, or give a root canal to one of their famous gorillas. Whatever they ask, it certainly wouldn’t be routine work for most dentists. For most, this would be a frightening experience.

Dr. Sullivan with one of his patients.

Luckily, Dr. Sullivan feels differently. “I’m not afraid of the animals,” he says. “I have been around them so much that I’m used to them.”

How does a children’s dentist find himself caring for the teeth of a black rhino or a white gibbon? For Dr. Sullivan, it was a matter of chance.

“When I was a kid in school, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a veterinarian,” says Dr. Sullivan. “I even applied to veterinary school in college.”
But Dr. Sullivan soon realized that veterinary work was m-possible for him. “I volunteered at a veterinarian’s office to get some experience,” he says. “I was miserable. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes were swollen shut. I had allergy symptoms.”

So Dr. Sullivan tried pediatric dentistry and found he loved it.

After he became a dentist, Dr. Sullivan worked at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. While there, he was asked to help with dental work on some of the animals in the hospital’s research lab. It wasn’t long before he began a dental program for the animals.

Word of Dr. Sullivan’s work with animals spread, and soon King’s Island Amusement Park and the Cincinnati Zoo were calling to ask for his help. Now he regularly gets calls from the zoo.

Once in a while, he gets calls from farther away—such as the time the owner of two leopards in Los Angeles flew them to Cincinnati so Dr. Sullivan could care for them. These animals weren’t zoo animals. They were animal actors who had already been in two movies and a television show.

	Otter teeth may not look like human teeth, but they still need dental care.

Dr. Sullivan has also worked on the famous white tigers belonging to performers Siegfried and Roy. It is vital for these animals to have good teeth. As everyone knows, a beautiful smile is very important in show business.

But Dr. Sullivan is most proud of the work he did on an ailing African hornbill, an animal that doesn’t even have teeth. The bird had broken its bill, which was causing its tongue to dry out. This made it difficult for the bird to eat.

“It would have died,” says Dr. Sullivan. He needed something that would work and work well.

What worked was a system of metal posts that either screwed into the bill or locked onto the outside of the beak.

Dr. Sullivan and his assistant at work on one of their "wilder" patients.

“I’m also proud of the work we did on the first tiger,” he says. “There was no literature to go by because the field was so new, so we did it from scratch. We took X-rays and measured the teeth from tiger skulls in a museum. The treatment was one hundred percent successful.”

Perhaps the most unusual work Dr. Sullivan ever did was not on a wild animal but on a pet. “I helped a vet put braces on a poodle,” he remembers.

While most of Dr. Sullivan’s patients have little idea that he spends some of his time working with large, dangerous animals, it’s most likely good practice for him. After all, sometimes a busy dentist’s office can be a real zoo.