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High praise:
Dr. Scheels is modest about his accomplishments, but Milwaukee County Zoo veterinarian Vickie Clyde calls him “one of the top three zoo dentists in the world.”
The beginning:
He majored in zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before coming to Marquette for dental school. About 25 years ago, he read a magazine article about a zoo dentist. Intrigued, he volunteered his services at the Milwaukee zoo, and soon found himself in a cage inspecting an orangutan’s broken tooth.
“The bulk of my time is extracting problematic teeth, but we run the whole gamut of problems,” says Scheels, who consults on about 50 cases a year.
Improvising:
Zoo dentistry forces Scheels to get creative. He once used 2-by-4 blocks of wood to prop open the jaws of a rhino, and modified a wood chisel from a hardware store to clean the rhino’s teeth. He used tweezers to pull an infected tooth from a pygmy marmoset that weighed just 4 ounces, and a plastic ruler and dental cement to mend an African spoonbill’s broken bill. His experimentation even led to a patented mouth prop that’s now used with dogs and cats in veterinarian offices across the country.
Dr. John Scheels
During the week, Dr. John Scheels, Dent ’75, is an ordinary dentist who treats adults and children at his practice in Wauwatosa, Wis. But during his off-hours, he’s the dentist for scores of species at the Milwaukee County Zoo and Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, where he performs root canals on polar bears, pulls infected teeth from lions, and mends broken beaks of exotic birds.
“It’s an avocation that’s become really rewarding,” he says.
Scheels is a leader in a small and highly specialized field. He’s an internationally known speaker on zoo dentistry who publishes articles and sits on the review board for the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry. He organized and co-chaired the first International Zoo/Exotic Animal Dentistry Conference and created the veterinary dentistry program for the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.
He has worked on roughly 80 species, from giraffes to porcupines, camels to fruit bats. Some jobs are more complicated than others: For example, it takes 10 people to move an 1,100-pound polar bear, and the Chicago zoo insists that someone stand guard with a loaded gun during the process.
Teeth are teeth, but exotic creatures present their own sets of challenges. Animals often try to hide their pain, and by the time they exhibit outward symptoms, the situation can be critical.
His zoo work has also affected the way Scheels approaches his traditional practice.
“It certainly has given me a much more holistic perspective on dentistry, and I know it’s made me a better dentist,” he says.
Quick Facts About Marquette
| Identity: | Catholic, Jesuit, private |
| Established: | 1881 |
| Location: | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Undergraduate: | 8,048 |
| Postgraduate: | 3,500 |
| Campus: | Urban, 90 acres |
| Athletics: | 11 NCAA Division I teams (Big East) |
| Colors: | Blue and Gold |
