This post is really for myself as I think out loud about my learning points during the animal care shifts I’ve worked as an intern at the animal hotel. And also some extended sections relating to memorable experiences (before I forget them!)
Dogs
- Methodology to move the dogs out of their kennels.
This gives them some time and space outside to run (and play?) piss and shit. It also means the kennels are empty which makes them easier to clean! - Cleaning the kennels.
2 ways – a small clean (with water) and a big clean (with disinfectant and a rinse). - Filling up the water bowls.
(I’m only mentioning this because it’s one of the requirements of the final judgement!) - Methodology to bring the dogs back into the kennels.
- How to prepare the food according to a schedule.
The hotel has their own food, but owners can also bring their own food for their dog. Each dog’s food bowl is filled with the right amount of the right food. This may include some meat / paste / treats. - Identifying which dog is which and coupling them to the correct food bowl.
- How to feed the dogs.
- Ensuring the right food bowl goes to the right dog (especially important when medication is included).
- Ensuring dogs with medication take the medication.
- Signing off the medication card.
- Reporting if a dog doesn’t eat.
- Wiping down a dog’s mouth for medical reasons, and giving medication (tablets, sometimes crushed) with the food, and ‘admin’.
Someone showed me how to open a dog’s mouth, put a tablet inside, and make sure it’s all the way in. I tried…but the dog didn’t want to open his mouth a second time! - Walking in and out of the kennels without the dogs following.
- Recognising dog behaviour.
- Smelling my face before eating to know if I’m safe.
- Not wishing to be petting during eating.
I stroked a dog and he recoiled. I thought he was caught by surprise so I tried again, knowing he knew I was there. He bit me to say this wasn’t OK with him. I’ve since learned from the course that many dogs don’t like to be touched whilst eating. - Other small things like a foot on my lap.
- Not wishing to be pushed away from another dog’s bowl.
Doggy Doorway
This story comes from my first day back in the summer.
3 dogs were in an enclosure, and I’d had a great time stroking and petting them whilst they ate. (The staff there encouraged me to do this; the staff in my latter week generally didn’t bother). I collected their empty bowls when they’d finished and opened the door so I could get out. “An open door!” thought one of the dogs, “I”m gonna go through that!” – and he did!
I’m not sure how to specifically qualify how big or heavy this dog was, so I’ll simply say he was strong and very resistant to me grabbing hold of him and getting him back inside! It was a huge effort – one that probably didn’t do my back much good! – but I eventually managed, and closed the cage door.
3 dogs and me inside – they couldn’t get out because the door was shut, and I couldn’t get out for fear of the dogs escaping! Actually I was more bemused than scared. One of the dogs barked at the one who tried escaping. My feeling then was the barker was telling the escapee off for misbehaving!
The cages are arranged in a line so I couldn’t see anything other that the wall in front of me through the bars. I called for help, but there was none! All I could do was wait, but at least I had 3 friends with me! 🙂 Eventually someone walked past. She let herself into the cage – and also struggled when the same dog tried getting out again!
She taught me how to use a dog lead to direct a dog in a cage, and that walking backwards out of the cage door can help.
Anger Management
A cage contained 3 dogs. 2 were going to be collected and brought home later in the day, so the policy is not to feed those dogs as they’ll be fed at home. This meant I had only 1 bowl of food for the dog who was staying. This one approached me as I entered the cage, and also another. This other one (who might be a boxer) was big and strong and tried hard to get his head into the food bowl. I’d learned the trick is redirection (with their own food bowl), but there wasn’t one for him!
I placed the food bowl under the nose of it’s rightful eatee, and gently pushed the other dog away. I got barked at for that, but he moved away. Good, problem solved! 🙂
But no it wasn’t. He stood still, erect, and square to me, staring me down. He bared his front teeth, and growled at me. I was scared. At the time I thought I should let him know who was boss, so I held his stare and also stood straight and full on. Thankfully I heard the other dog had finished eating, so I broke eye contact, moved slowly to retrieve the empty food bowl and walked (backwards) out of the cage.
In hindsight (after reading more about dog behaviour) this was incredibly unwise of me. His anger might have been “dominance anger” where he’s reacting to correction. I should have looked away and ignored him to help him get back down the “ladder of aggression”; I think I was lucky not to have been bitten.
(Incidentally, this dominant aggression seems to explain some cretinous shits on the road. I was already on a roundabout when a lorry (who was stationary) suddenly pulled out in front of me. I slammed on my brake and sounded my horn, and he sounded his back. Why? What had I done wrong? Answer – I’d challenged his dominance by ‘correcting’ him – and he got angry! Or the time a van suddenly stopped on a “cycle street” (effectively a huge cycle lane where cars are also allowed to drive but “as a guest” with no priorities) and reversed at speed with no indicators. I swerved on my bike to avoid being hit, and in my own anger I banged the side of his van as I wobbled past him. He wound down his window and called out he didn’t see me, so pleased with the acknowledgment I turned around to say yeah no worries, but then he swore at me – when it was him who hadn’t seen a cyclist on a cycle street! I told him to put his indicators on next time. “Yeah, I know that!” he says, and walks to the other side of his death machine van. He’s in the wrong, he knows it, but he’s angry at me for correcting him. Animals act out of their nature, and this is easy to accept from them. Humans too, but we should know better. I wonder how in the future I’ll control my anger on the road…
Washing 2 Dogs
I brought the first of the 2 out of his kennel and lead him into the washroom. The lead training I had with Hella a couple of weeks back really helped! 🙂
At one side of the tiled room is effectively a bath where one side opens so the dog can jump in. Nearby is a table with a universal brush (guess who’s just read the section on dog brushes from his course notes! 😉 ), shampoo (one squirt for the bottle, the rest with water) and a hair dryer that looks like it’s just been taken off a ghostbuster’s back.
It didn’t take much persuasion to get the dog to jump onto the bath; the side of the bath needed a lot of persuasion to close because it was bent. I can easily imagine how this happened! I exchanged the lead for a shorter, plastic one which I could attach to the wall-side of the bath. This, as the theory goes, stop the dog from moving about too much, and from jumping out of the bath.
I put on my apron (with love hearts), struggle with tying it up behind my back, and switch on the shower head. It’s fast, it’s powerful, and it’s stone cold. Half a minute later we’re fine, and the dog is more settled with the noise (and water!).
It’s been a long time since I’ve had any of my own hair to wash, and it’s also been a long time since I washed my daughters’ hair as they’re now grown up. I’m happy enough doing it with this guy! He gets hosed down all over, except for his head because dogs, I’m told, don’t like the hair dryer blowing wind over their ears.
You know when dogs are wet and they shake themselves dry? The guy washing this dog wasn’t so dry after the shaking…
Next up, squeezing the shampoo bottle and rubbing it in. I didn’t know how much ‘detail’ to go into. Right into cracks, folds and crevices? Or just a surface wash? I went for the latter. Rinsing it all out took yonks, but the dog seemed happy enough.
Towelling dry was easy to do because the dog was compliant, but difficult because the dry towels weren’t completely dry to start off with. This is because the tumble dryers are over-loaded because of the sheer volume of stuff that needs to be washed and dried, and the rate at which towels and blankets are used. I’m guessing as long as their wet with water and not with piss then it’s OK. Hmm, but not if the towel is being used to dry a dog!
I brought in the hair dryer for backup. It was noisy and powerful and the dog didn’t like it, even though I took care to keep the air stream well away from his ears, and directed towards his tail (I’m guessing going in the direction of hair growth was best…? As a baldie I haven’t used a hair dryer for decades. As even as a long-haired dude decades ago, I didn’t use a hair dryer then either!). As I’ve learned from my course notes, dogs sometimes show stress by keeping their body low, and that’s what this fellow did – he lay down in the bath, in the run-off!
Another rinse, several shakes, several more rubs with the towel, and keeping the hair dryer nozzle so far away that it didn’t upset the dog that it was pretty much ineffective somehow got the job done.
And the second dog? Rinse and repeat! 😉
Cats
- Cleaning the shared enclosures.
- Cleaning and refreshing the litter trays
- Changing the food bowls and refreshing the water.
- Checking up on the medication requirements.
- Methodology for weighing and recording the cat’s weight.
Thoughts and Feelings
As I write these points down, they seem like quite a lot! But a lot of it was picked up and not shown, or are non-transferable skills, i.e. they relate to company methodology (e.g. a different animal hotel would do the same tasks differently).
Colleagues are still important to me
The people I worked with made an absolute world of difference. This was true in my previous technical life, and I’d thought that working with animals would reduce their importance as I’d be working for the animals and not the people.
Indeed being with the dogs was awesome and being with them easily
This turned out to be not entirely true because rather than working for a salary, I’m working to receive knowledge (and practical experience), and this knowledge comes from my colleagues. This meant I needed them to ‘play ball’. Some were awesome, many neutral, and let’s just say the distribution is bell-curved.
2 shocking realisations:
1. My eyes felt really irritated after barely an hour working with the cats. In the evening I noticed they’d swollen in the same way they did when I insulated our roof with glass wool. This was a massive surprise.
2. The experience of being a cat owner myself made me feel much more comfortable around the cats than I did with the dogs as I felt I could read them better. Or maybe because it was much, much more peaceful and I could hear what my colleague was explaining to me!
