First day!

It was my first day as an intern at Oceans of Fun! The first day is always kind of crazy for everyone, not just the interns. There is a lot of learning on both sides- from the intern and trainer perspective. Just getting to know the individuals, the duties, basically everything. Starting out as the new kid on the block is a scary yet exciting thing.

They started me out on the most basic and important thing...cleaning. I have met a lot of people who totally under estimate the amount of work that goes into working with these animals. It is far from "jumping off Flipper's nose" all day.

I was on my hands and knees a couple of times cleaning a pen...there is a lot of scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, and rinsing. It is part of what you have to do to keep a healthy environment for the animals.

I skimmed the pool, brushed the pool, cleaned some pens, scrubbed some buckets...and I got to watch some sessions too. :)

I really felt weird watching the sessions, though...I am so used to not being able to stop and watch a session like I was able to do today. I am sure that there will be days where I am unable to- because it will be busy once shows begin...but they made a point to tell me today that I am welcome at any time to watch them and "that was what I was there to do" to learn training techniques by watching examples...and also watch and learn each animal's personality.

I also got my project topic for the research paper I need to work on. I am also going to be using this topic as the research proposal/presentation for the Ohio State Psych research symposium in March. I am to do a poster presentation as part of my independent study. Whew! Lots of work a head of me! I better start reading some papers right away. :)