taslidownunder

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:25:32 GMT

Well, i'm back in Canada now, and my internship has officially come to an end.

And let me tell you, it was arguably the best experience i've ever had. I went all the way to Australia to the little Pet Porpoise Pool to find out if training animals was really want to do for the rest of my life, and to find out if I was cut out for it.
I can now say with 100% certainty that I want to train animals for a living. Working with marine mammals will remain my ultimate goal.

Let me break things down for you ... if I don't, i'll be typing for a very long time!

What I have learned
This list could go on for ever, but I will list a few major points that I have taken away from this.

Basically, the most valuable thing I have gained from this is that I have found my calling.
That patience is EXTREMELY important, and that not everyone can train animals.

What would I change

The length of my stay. As in, I would like to have stayed at least a month longer. Although I had reached the end of my internship, and would not "move up" the ladder any further, I enjoyed doing the job so much, and no matter what, I learned something new everyday.
I would changed who I stayed with. Although living with Paige, the manager and CEO of the park, was very insightful in many ways (I got a lot of inside information on what was going on, and how the politics of marine parks operate), staying with a younger staff member would be preferable.

Highlights

Ummmm, EVERYTHING.
Being around people who care for, and appreciate animals.
Learning first hand how a marine park operates, and what happens "behind the scenes" with various operations.
Laughing with the amazing training staff at the park.
Teaching the public about these animals and sharing them with the world! That sounds so corny, but I love how people react to you when you are working with the animals. Its the best feeling in the world!
Playing with Tilly on my second last day!
Watching the training sessions with the sea lions.
Learning!

Where do I go from here?

It has always been my general goal to complete at least two internships before I complete university. This internship in Australia was really a trial run for me, and I am now happy to say that I will continue down the path of animal training.
In September, I will head back to university for second year, to continue studying psychology.

Now I feel completely refreshed and inspired. Doing this internship opened my eyes and gave me a big boost of re-newed confidence. Now that I know how amazing the prize is at the end, I will not stop following the road to becoming a marine mammal trainer.

Trying to keep Bella occupied.

Athena and I! She was my favorite Australian sea lion!

TILLY! My favorite animal at the park. She was SO CUTE and very feisty for her size.

Swimming with Solomon on my last day.

Getting a kiss from Pearl the New Zealand fur seal.

A genuine New Zealand fur hat!

An unexpected "farewell" kiss from Rocky.

Rocky and I! I'm gonna miss that little fatso.

Jo and Chris, two of the trainers, were kind enough to take time out of their schedules, at the very end of my last day to let me swim with Bucky.
The photos are not the best, because it was about 5:30, and the light was really weak.

If any of you wanna-be animal trainers has the chance to do an internship, TAKE IT!

I miss the park, animals, country, and people so much already, and have made up my mind that I am definitely going to apply for a VISA and try for a job there in a few years when I am done university.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:43:17 GMT

Sorry for not updating lately!

I am now sorry to say that my time at the park is nearly over. I only have a week and a half left. I really really want to stay longer. This way of life, this job, is something that I am enjoying SO much. Every day here is a gift, and I get to learn first hand how this profession and institution works. This really is an eye opening experience, and I would not trade it for the world!

The last two weeks have been quite a roller coaster ride for the park. I witnessed a really dark side of becoming a marine mammal trainer, as one of the trainers on staff, the one I was closest with, got the sack. It was very hard to see her crying ... she reminded me of myself, and many others I know. She always dreamed of working with marine mammals, and was fired because her supervisors saw no potential in her as an animal trainer. So basically, her dreams were crushed, and it wasn't really even her fault.

However, its not all bad!
Here are some highlights from the past week or so:

- holding Bella again
- doing the penguin feeding sessions on my own
- attending a presentation on dolphins for a group of Japanese students. I was there as an assistant of sorts, but i had lots of fun sitting there for two hours listening to a lecture on dolphins. it was all very basic stuff, since the students are just learning english, but still, it was dolphin stuff after all. I can't really complain.
- sitting in on a trainer's meeting
- helping with morning dolphin checkup (rolling them over by the flukes, checking for new rake marks and what not)
- taking various sea lions for "walks" in the afternoon around the park
- going into select sea lion enclosures to clean the pools
- going into the seal pup's enclosure and playing with them. Awwww!!
- helping out with dolphin training sessions in the afternoon (I get to send a dolphin, or multiple dolphins, into the other pool, as well as controlling the gate between the pools and stuff like that)
- helping with Merlin's (he is our awesome Australian fur seal!) "sail swim" (he swims along the front of the show pool with one fin raised to look like the sail of a boat). I get to give him the signal for the behavior when he is half way across the pool, as he is having trouble going all the way by him self. Jo (his trainer) says that it will be easier to phase out someone standing at the half way point and giving him the signal again, than to phase out herself walking across the pool with him.

I'm really sorry also for the lack of photos. Its really not that easy to get shots though, because when something "exciting" is happening, there is no time for me to grab the camera, and it is not proper of me to carry it around with me at all times.

Abby sleeping! Awww.

Tilly, one of my favorite animals at the park. I thought she looked so silly in this picture. I'll take some more of her, because she is so awesome and full of attitude. This picture makes her look innocent.(she is a young sub-antarctic fur seal)

Here is Adellade (4 month old rescued Australian sea lion) playing with Ozzy and Abby, our 6 month old Australian sea lion pups born at the park. This was the first time they had all swam together.
CUTE!!

Adam getting Bella to do a few things for the camera. Sorry I missed her bow. Woops.

Thanks for reading again!

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:49:53 GMT

As my second week comes to a close, I thought I should update you all on my progress at "The Pool"!

I'm becoming more confident with dealing with the public when they ask me questions, but i'm still not good at it because i've not had the chance to learn all that there is to know about our animals. Its pretty frustrating.
I will say though, that telling the guests about our animals and answering their questions is a really fun part of this career. I love to share my joy of the animals with others, especially those that are curious about them.

I'm also happy to report that i'm much better at filleting fish than I was two weeks ago! Haha.

As for animal interaction, I got to have one-on-one, unsupervised interaction with Bella the baby dolphin! Of coarse, with no bridging (that is the name for the whistle sound that trainers use when working with the animals, for those of you who do not know) of coarse, and with a limited number of signals I could give.
I got to do this because there were only two trainers working that day, the volunteer, and me. One trainer was in the water doing a dolphin swim with a group of guests, and the other trainer was taking her lunch break. Now, little Bella is quite a brat. She has quite a low attention span, and can not participate in dolphin swims yet. Further more, she will not separate from her mother, so they could not put Bella in a different pool while her mother Calamity did the dolphin swim.

What this means is that Bella and Calamity have to be in the same pool at the same time, and while Calamity is doing the swim, Bella cannot participate.
This is where the task of "holding Bella" comes in! What I had to do was take Bella down to the opposite end of the pool, as far away from her mother and the guests in the pool as I could, and keep her attention until the swim ended.
Easier said than done though! She likes to swim off at random times and go bug the people in the swim. Then she'll come back.

I had to keep her distracted for about an hour, because there were two back-to-back dolphin swims! To make matters more complicated, I only had a limited number of fish to give Bella, and it had to last through both swims.

But it was SO FUN! I gave her signals for high five, tongue tickles, roll over, roll swim, kiss, ball catch, and fetch ball. It was fun playing catch with her, because she loves to throw the ball out of the pool, so I had to stand back about 8 feet from the pool to catch the ball properly.
I took her down to the window a few times, and got her to blow bubbles and spin around.

All in all, Bella did very well. She only took off twice during the whole time, which is really good.
So that was definity the high light of the week right there.

I HAVE PHOTOS OF THIS! I just don't have them quite yet.
The pictures were taken by two really sweet ladies who watched me and Bella the whole time. I had a nice time talking with them! They offered to take the photos and email them to me, as I could not abandon Bella to grab my own camera.

Here are random some photos from this week:

Dolphin TV! Haha.
From left to right: Zippy, Calamity, Bella, Bucky

Me and Bella. I look REALLY fat in this picture ... i'm not that fat, seriously.

Cal and Bella again.

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:12:19 GMT

Well, thats one week down, four and a half to go in my internship!

It was pretty tiring overall, on account of I still have jetlag. But really, I was only tired when I got home from work. At work, I felt fine and rather energized! Its a pretty engaging kind of job, so I am never bored really.

So! Since my last entry, i've become more confident with what i'm doing at the park. There is a routine that I followed every day, which no one told me to follow (thats the funny thing about this internship ... there is so rarely someone there to instruct me, so I really have to learn to observe and learn my self), but I have not been told what i'm doing is the wrong thing yet, so thats good!
This routine goes something like this:

7:30 - arrive at the park (i've been getting a ride in the morning with a maintenance guy named Steve. Funny thing is, since its such a small park, everyone kinda pitches in for different jobs. So even though Steve is a "pool maintenance" guy, he gets to work with the animals sometimes. Like the other day, I watched him and two trainers tube feeding our new Australian sea lion pup ... and Steve wasn't just on the sidelines, he was sitting right in the tank, holding the little seal! So ya, its cool to be apart of such a small facility for reasons like that)
7:35 - help bucket fish. Now, this is an area i'm really not comfortable in. The buckets are colour coded to certain animals, and there is a board up in the fish room showing which bucket goes with which animal, and how much food to give them at what time of day.
Sounds simple right?
WELL, the trouble is, there are often not enough buckets for a certain animal, and some animals have the same colour bucket, and during some feeds, the fish need to be organized a certain way in the bucket, and THEN they have to be arranged in the fridge a certain way! And once again, I have not had a formal or in-depth explanation on how to do this, so i'm left to stand there and ask lots of questions, which is annoying to both me, and the trainers i'm sure.
The long and short of it is, I do bucket some fish, i'm just not sure how the whole system works yet, which I don't like because I like to know as much as I can before I set forth to do something.
9:00 - clean buckets from the morning feed, and help clean the fish prep area, then have morning tea (aka: coffee break).
9:00 to 9:30 - odd jobs like feeding the rehab turtles, feeding the fresh water turtles (on mon, wed, and fri only), feed Harriet the pelican (if she feels like eating ... she is pretty picky), cleaning buckets, watching the guests around the dolphin pool to make sure they don't do anything stupid, and just helping out with what ever the trainers want (like putting the stairs into the dolphin tank for people to climb in from the dolphin or seal swim). Stuff like that!

Feeding Harriet!

Our lovely fish room... and me cleaning a bucket before the first show.

9:30 - crowd control with seal and dolphin kisses. Basically, I help set up the area where the people get the "kisses" (like setting up the ropes so people know where to line up) and then making sure they have their hats and sunglasses off.
I don't always do crowd control. Sometimes the trainers will ask me to do something else. Like, the other day I got to go feed Charlotte (the blind New Zealand fur seal).
10:00 - show time! At this point, if I have kept up with cleaning buckets, I have nothing to do (unless someone tells me to) but sit and watch the show until the "tooth brush part' where I have to go and help the child from the audience brush Bucky the dolphin's teeth.
10:35 - when the show ends, I go down to the fridge and get the buckets of fish for "reef tank feeding" and "penguin feeding"
10:45ish - assist with reef tank feeding. I really like this part of the day actually. After the commentator explains the 'Do's and Dont's' of feeding our fish, I get to walk around and offer people fish food and answer questions (which i'm not good at by the way, because I don't know much about our animals yet). Its fun to watch the fish snap up the bait ... and they do it with vigor! They often splash really good. People get the most wet feeding the fish, not from the splashing dolphins during the show.
11:00ish - help with the penguin feeding. Same thing here, I hand out fish to guests and make sure that the dropped ones get picked up and rinsed off. Then I help clean up the area afterward.
On Wednesday, the volunteer did the penguin feed, and I did something else (sorry, I forget what it was ... probably cleaning buckets, haha). When I was done what ever I was doing, I watched two of the trainers keeping three of the dolphins occupied at the windows!

There was a dolphin swim going on at the time, and only one dolphin (Calamity) was being used for it, so two trainers had to "hold' the other three dolphins on the other side of the tank so they wouldn't interupt the swim. They brought them down to the windows for variability, and where very generous in letting the guests take photos. They made sure every single person watching got a photo with the dolphins with they wanted to. They even let the guests choose which dolphin(s) they wanted in the photo! Very kind of them indeed!

12:00 to 2:30 - during this time span, there is a lunch break, the second round of seal and dolphin kisses, followed by the second show and second reef tank and penguin feeding, followed by a second lunch break. Of coarse, with various tasks and bucket cleaning sprinkled throughout.
3:00 - 5:30 - by this point, there are hardly any guests, if any at all, in the park. Its my favorite time of day! There is usually a dolphin or seal swim which one of the trainers is occupied with, and the "afternoon jobs", which include preparing food for Millie the emu and the kangaroos, and brining the Cockatoos in for the night.

Feeding Mildred.

Feeding the roos.

Playing with Zippy!

The final feed of the day for the animals is at about 4:30, which is when I get to watch the trainers at work, which is awesome, because I get to learn.
It is during this final feed that i;ve got to do some cool things! First of all, I got to take Solomon, one of our bull Australian sea lions (he is a biiiiiig boy!), for a "walk" (under trainer supervision of coarse) around the park and down to the grassy area. He was SO cute, he rolled around like a big ol' puppy dog. I even got to lay down next to him. I was told that he is the one of the animals that new trainers get to work with first because he is pretty easy going and gentle. It was really not scary to feed him even though he has a huge head that comes up to my chest ... he just lets you drop the fish in his mouth. He didn't make any quick, snappy movements.
I also got to "walk" Maxine the day after. It was funny, she started to do behaviors that were not being asked of her, so we (the trainer and I) turned our backs to her (to tell her that she was wrong), but Maxine knows that I am a newbie, and she could probably get me to give her a fish for doing anything, so while I was turned around, she started putting her flippers on my legs and trying to do the "marching" behavior. She was trying to get ME to do a trick with her! Of coarse, I thought it was adorable, but I could not reward her, because I did not ask for her to do that.

WHEW!
These entries will get less long and tedious, I promise. Once I start doing more specific things, i'll report just about those, and not about the whole day.

I'll also get more photos ... like, photos with marine mammals and not with birds. Haha.

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:05:32 GMT

Oh my gosh.
I did NOT handle my 23 hour travel day well at all. This is my first time this is my first time traveling overseas so I really had no idea what to expect.
It is now two and a half days since I landed, and i'm still not operating at 100%. I'm still over the Pacific ocean somewhere I think.

Not to mention, I'm pretty overwhelmed to actually be in Australia! The town I am in, Coffs Harbour, is quite lovely so far. Its a quaint little place, nestled right on the ocean and flanked by mountains. Its really a nice change to be in a tropical environment for once!

Anyway, I have just completed my first two days of internship! I wasn't officially supposed to start until today, but yesterday I went down to the park just for fun, and asked if I could help out at all, and ended up being there all day!
I got thrown into the melee as soon as I got there. I was shown the way down to the fish house and was told by the trainer who was down there to start bucketing fish for Rocky (one of the young seals). There I was, elbow deep in bloody, scaly water, getting the occasional stab from a fish spine. Finally, for the first time I felt like a marine mammal trainer!
The park was understaffed that day, so there was not much time to explain things to me. I got to help prep some fish (for Rocky and for the reef tank feeding, which requires you to fillet the fish, which i'm utter rubbish at), do crowd control for the dolphin kissing session, feed the fairy penguins (twice), prepare the food for Mildred (the Emu) and the kangaroos, clean the fish prep room, break up big ice blocks with fish in them for the seals to play with, feed Charlotte (our blind New Zealand Furseal), feed the turtles, hand out fish to guests during the reef tank feeding, feed Harriot the pelican, and cleaning!

Boy oh boy, there is quite a lot to be done, and I felt really awkward during a lot of the first day, because I had no time to absorb anything! For example, when I was helping with the penguin feeding session, I had to hand out fish to people, and explain the rules of feeding, and answer all these questions that people where asking about the animals and the park it self. Of coarse, I couldn't answer them properly, because I am like a guest my self! I had just got there, and had no formal training on anything!

But all in all, I really liked the challenges that were thrown on me yesterday, and I think I did alright. I just smiled through it all.

Today was my first formal day at the park.
They were still understaffed, so there was rarely anyone there to tell me exactly what to do. I made the best of it though, and tried to repeat all what I had learned yesterday, so I was able to carry out many tasks with no one asking me to.
I got to watch a lot more training sessions today, and got to help out a little bit in the show. There is a part where a child is taken from the audience to brush one of the dolphin's teeth. My job was to guide the kid over to the correct spot and help them up to the side of the pool if necessary, and tell them to only brush the teeth, not the gums or tongue. Also, I have to place a trash can out on stage as part of the show at one part.
I did not do fish prep this morning (I think the trainers down there were a little stressed out and did not want to be teaching at such a hectic moment, haha), but instead. I cleaned off the walls of the main show pool.
During my lunch break I went up and played with Bella (our youngest dolphin) and Zippy (also a dolphin) and I also got to feed Charlotte the blind fur seal again! She is really sweet. After you have fed her out, we tap her on the nose so she knows we are done with the feed. She lives with a 20 month old sub-antarctic fur seal named Tilly, who is SUCH a brat to poor Charlotte! Small dog syndrome, I reckon.
I guess the highlight of my day was when I got to feed out Zippy the dolphin while the three other trainers where working with the other three dolphins. I also got to target him with my hand.

I feel like I have learned a heap of information about this profession already from talking with all the training staff. And crikey its only been two days!
Phew, i'm really tired.

Sorry, no photos yet. I'm trying to work out a way for someone to take some for me.

Leaving soon!

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:36:39 GMT

Oh boy.

Well, this is more of a test journal than anything, but also, a place to note that OH MY GOD i'm leaving in a meer 15 days.

Where did the time go?! I have so many things to do before I leave! Lets see ... get proper foot wear, wax (ack!), stock up on random travel amenities ...

At least I have all my flight/accomodation on the other end prepared. I totally lucked out and am staying with the manager of Pet Porpoise Pool! She sounds really nice, and is, ironically, from Canada herself! Not to far from where I live now actually.

I'm very excited to be leaving on this journey to really start working on my dream.