Now onto the fun stuff!! Zoo trip

Alright, I am sure you are sick of hearing about my school's curriculum and my silly personal life. This blog is supposed to be about being a vet student and all the awesome things I get to do!

Well, unfortunately for you, being in vet school is kinda boring to the outside viewer. We go to class, we sit in lecture, we go home and study, sleep, repeat. I could tell you about how I confused a cow for a horse today - which was perfectly reasonable seeing as how I only had the pelvic region and half of the legs to go by. I could also tell you about how my friends and I snuck over to the large animal clinic this morning to look at the week old foal and his mama. That is our new favorite pastime.

Instead, I will treat you to a more interesting subject (and very dear to my heart): Behavior and Training! I am the Class of 2014 representative for the Behavior Club at my school. I love learning about animal behavior and I believe that this knowledge is important for veterinarians as we cannot verbally communicate with our patients. It saddens me that more vet students are either uninterested or unwilling to learn more about animal behavior and change the way they deal with animals. There is a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of people buy into it.

Anyway, I was selected to go on a trip to the Brookfield Zoo last weekend to learn more about how they train their zoo animals. Not only was this relevant for general behavior interests, but these zoo animals are being trained to tolerate veterinary procedures, so it is relevant to our profession.

We didn't know what all our trip would entail. At first we heard that it was just going to be a powerpoint presentation with a little tour of the zoo after that. That was enough for me! But the day turned out to be much more amazing than expected.

Our first stop on our tour was the public training of the polar bear, Hudson. It really made me happy that they show the training of the animals in public displays like this.

Hudson "standing" for exam

Targeting

We then moved on to other animals like this Argus Monitor Lizard. This is a natural behavior called "tripoding." The lizards stand like this to look for food. The keeper put this behavior on cue so that we can see natural behaviors in unnatural settings.

Tripoding and targeting

At this point, I was already over the moon about the trip. I felt like a five year old on her first trip to the zoo. But the day just got better from there. We went to the Dolphin house and got to sit in on a training session. It was better than sitting in on a show because we could hear the trainers and keepers talking to each other. It was sort of an organized chaos but the dolphins were so eager. How the keepers and trainers are able to tell all of the dolphins apart is beyond me!

Demonstrating some basic tricks

After the dolphins, we moved on to the pinnepeds, or seals and sea lions. Amazingly, the keepers allowed us into the exhibits to watch the animals train. I was in with the seals and they were literally a foot away from me. It was really cool. Unfortunately, we couldn't bring cameras then, but I snapped a few photos of the sea lions later.

Doin' his sea lion thing

And then to top off the most exciting zoo trip ever, our last stop was the Black Rhinoceros enclosure. We were also not allowed to bring our cameras in here because we were going to feed the rhino! We all got to feed him biscuits and rub his face and horn. He was very sweet, though he thought I was holding out on him and tried to eat my jacket to find more treats. I have never touched a rhino before! His lips were very soft but otherwise he was fairly rough.

It truly was the best day ever and I learned a lot about how zoos are changing the way they keep their animals. Tim Sullivan at the Brookfield zoo is an amazing guy and really seems to love his job. He's all about positive reinforcement with both people and animals so he really made us feel comfortable and excited the whole tour.

This is just a snippet of the kind of things I am a part of now that I am in vet school. It is such a priveledge to be able to do these kind of things. I only hope that I will remember these experiences once I am practicing and use them to become a better veterinarian.

I'm a horrible mom.

Or at least my dogs think so. I bought a really cute pet hat and bandanna for St. Patrick's day. Empress is going to wear it in the parade. But I wanted to get some pictures of the dogs modeling their new gear.

This is how it turned out:

The best one of Sport

Empress' best shot. She hated it.

Being peeved.

Gah. I hate you.

I will have my revenge.

Doesn't Em look like an Irish gangster in the last picture? I love it. Anyway, after torturing them for twenty minutes, we worked on some clicker training (Em's trick for RBDT's Clicker Trick of the Month Contest and Sport's flyball work) and then my friend came by with Kenya and we went on a quick hike on the trail by my house. I was even able to let Empress off lead which was really good for her and she and Sport were having a blast.

I love my days off where I can devote the whole day to the dogs!

Sport can Fetch!

Ever since we started looking into Flyball, I have been working on teaching Sport to fetch. Before, he would run at the ball, sniff it and high tail it back to me.

So I started clicker training him to fetch. First, I would click for any time he put his mouth on the ball. Then I would click for him picking the ball. Then I would roll the ball away from me and click when he would pick it up. Eventually I would only click when the ball made it within a foot of my lap. And then I would roll it further and further away.

I wasn't being very proactive about it but we would do it every once in a while. Last night my friend came over and grabbed a tennis ball and started waving it in front of Sport. I told her, "Oh he doesn't play fetch that well." But then she threw it and he went and got it and brought it back and dropped it in her lap! All day he has been playing fetch with me!

I was so happy. I know this is silly for those of you with retrieving dogs, but for a dog that would not fetch anything at all... I am very glad.

Speaking of flyball, we went to the tourney this friday. It was so much fun, but unfortunately, I was so busy the whole day that I couldn't work with Sport that much. But it was educational and it gave me more insight into how the sport works. I can't wait to start competeing with him!!!