Week 1

Our internship work-week is Tuesday through Saturday, so our first day of internship was Tuesday, March 27.

Tuesday
We started off with a driving tour of the whole sanctuary, followed by more in-depth walking tours of the animal areas. The driving tour was very informative and a great way to get the "whole picture" of how the sanctuary is laid out on the acreage. The walking tour started at cat headquarters (a new building just completed in 2011), where we met Rio, a sweet little female tabby who is rehabilitating her hind quarters.

From cats, we headed over to Horse Haven, which shares facilities with Piggy Paradise, and also houses the goats and sheep. Here we met Lambert, a humongous sheep who lives with the goats in the new barn (also completed in 2011). Lambert's head comes up to my rib-cage when we stand side-by-side. And with his 5+ inches of wooly hair, he's pretty intimidating! After he head-butted Leesa (intern coordinator) in the hip and knee a couple of times, I decided I would admire him from outside the fence. He must have sensed my apprehension because he came right over to the railing and sneezed in my face. Slimy, black, gritty snot, on my clothes, face and sunglasses. Thanks, Lambert.

Wednesday
Started the morning with puppy socialization class - so much fun! Not for the faint of heart, though. It gets really loud and chaotic in the puppy classroom! I worked with a little blond gal named Dollie, who was shy at first but warms up really quickly. She is so tender and sweet and gentle with taking treats.

After puppy class, we had lunch at Angel Village. Check out the view from the cafeteria! Breathtaking!

This afternoon I worked at the Fairway in Dogtown Heights. There I met sweet, shy Mallory, and decided to take her on a sleepover with me for the night. Mallory reminds me of Katie and Missy's foster dog, Shelby, and also of my parents' dog, Sioux.

Sadly, I don't think Mallory had much fun on our sleepover. She huddled on the bed all evening, shivering whenever she heard a new noise (the faucet running in the bath tub terrified her). She finally did relax a little after I turned off all the lights and went to bed. Poor thing didn't eat, drink, or use the bathroom the whole time I had her.

Thursday
After returning Mallory to the Fairway, it was time to select my project dog! Huck, one of the trainers, had put together a list of adult dogs who he thought would benefit from some extra one-on-one work with an intern. There were five dogs on the list and my co-intern, Michelle, immediately new which one she wanted to work with. Brindie and Blain are both beautiful young dogs who would be a lot of fun to get to know. However, they both seemed very 'normal' to me and have the very likely possibility of being adopted quickly (indeed, Blain has an adoption application pending!). Keystone is a lovely, beautiful girl, who's been known to break up fights between other dogs. Such a sweetheart. Her main "issue", however, is that she is a very skilled escape artist. This scared me, since I'm staying by myself in an apartment located right on a busy highway. So even though I would have loved to work with Keystone, I felt that her flight-risk (and potential injury risk) was too great for me to comfortably take on at this time.

Google was the last pup on the list, and when we met, we just clicked. He greeted me with licks and ear-nibbles and Leesa said, "Google's it! He's choosing you!" Google's main issue is that he obsessively "fences" all day long. He runs back and forth at the fence line of his area. His running has worn a 2-ft-wide by 1-ft-deep rut along the length of the fence. His toenails are worn down to little nubs, and he's missing one back toenail altogether. More on Google later, but now, on to the rest of the day...

Later in the morning we toured Wild Friends and Parrot Garden. While I really respect the work that goes on here, I have to say, I'm just not a bird person. The parrot houses were SO LOUD, I seriously needed ear plugs. The coolest wild animal is a little black mink...I forget his name...but is was pretty cute.

After lunch I worked at Horse Haven. I spent the afternoon riding around in an off-road golf cart with horse caregiver/cowboy Ron and his huge white lab, Cody, shoveling horse poop in all the pastures. Ron's a super easy-going guy, and after we were finished mucking, he took us to see some native ruins and a cool hidden lake. Neat stuff!

When it was quittin' time at Horse Haven, I went back over to Dogtown to pick up Google for our first sleepover. A bit later, Google and I attended a blessing at Angel's Rest. It was very emotional. I cried a lot. A few nice folks tried to introduce themselves and chat but I just cried, thinking of all my pets who've passed away: Rascal, Bigfoot, Chelsea & puppies, Blinky, Star, Brows, Calico, Sandy, Kojak and Norm. Rest in peace, my sweet friends.

Here's a picture of a very small portion of Angel's Rest. The cemetery covers at least a couple of acres, if not more. Each one of the green tags marks a pet's grave. The wind chimes are hung throughout the cemetery and make a beautiful, peaceful song in the breeze.

Google seems to seek out men for attention. There were many people at the blessing, but he specifically picked out several tall, bearded, older gentlemen and asked for pats and belly rubs from them. There were a few dogs at the blessing as well, and Google noticed them but didn't seem to be very intent on meeting them.

After the blessing Google and I came back to my apartment and settled in the for the night. I quickly learned that he is very wary of my camera. As soon as he sees it - whether it's on or off - he just shuts down. Looks away, moves away if he can, and stares at the wall.

Poor little guy is super skinny. He runs off all his calories fencing all day. Hopefully I can help him learn how to relax a bit! We had a pretty uneventful first night. He did sleep well, but didn't drink any water or go potty  at all.

Friday
Today was stressful and sad. After I dropped Google off at his area this morning, I headed over to Cat World to work in Colonel's Barracks. Mid-morning, Leesa showed up to tell me that Google had been in a really bad fight. Google seemed to be okay but Jango was in really bad shape and was in the clinic. I'm devastated that my sweet Google could have been in such a bad fight, and I feel terrible that Jango got beat up so badly. The fight happened while no caregivers were in the building, so nobody knows exactly what happened or "who started it".

Later in the morning I attended a Parelli Natural Horsemanship demonstration back at Horse Haven. It was an incredible learning experience! I've ridden horses a handful of times in my life, and I always had the feeling that the horses' behavior was dictated by fear. It was super neat to see the Parelli demonstration, in which the horse and the trainer communicated with each other so effectively and calmly.

After lunch I worked in Piggy Paradise, which was fun but also a bit ridiculous :o) The pigs are huge, and stubborn, and slightly bratty. I walked a few different pigs, including Sprocket and Scott. Took us about 45 minutes to go 1/8 of a mile, and it took two buckets of treats just to get them to go that far! I'm pretty sure they consumed more calories than they burned on that walk! Scott's run-mate, Lizzy, was not feeling well and she opted to stay in her pen while Scott walked. It was pretty cute to see Scott deciding between going for a walk or staying with Lizzy.

The vet instructed Google to rest at the sanctuary tonight, so he wasn't allowed to come with me for a sleepover. I'm still torn up about the fight. It's so upsetting.

Saturday
This morning I worked with Rabbits at Rescue Village, home to several hundred bunnies from The Great Bunny Rescue in Reno, Nevada. Click here for a video about life at the village and here for the story about the rescue. Sadly, many of the bunnies have paralyzed back legs, as a result of having a fungal infection called Encephalitozoon Cuniculi (E. Cuniculi).

After lunch, we had our first training class with trainer Huck and our project dogs. Unfortunately, our dogs are not allowed to interact because 1) they do not live in the same area and 2) Google is not allowed to meet any new dogs for a while since he just had a fight. The session went great; Huck introduced us to clicker training and we practiced a few basics including "look at me" and "sit". Google is very treat-motivated and intelligent, so he learns really quickly :o)

After the training session, we met with Leesa to "de-brief" and then our first week as interns was over! Google got to go home with me again, and he'll be staying with me until Tuesday morning.