Week 1, Day 1 (Posting one day late!)

It's mildly amusing to me that I started this entire blog specifically for my internship here at Best Friends and then the first day of interning was the first day I didn't post about how my day went! Let me just say I was so exhausted when I came home, and processing so much information, that any attempt at blogging would have been rather disastrous. My brain is still pretty much a puddle here on Day 2, but I will do my best to blog on!

So the first day of the internship is basically getting tours and orientations, watching safety videos, and going to a few of the different animal areas. Of course, it was pouring rain and in the 50s for this day of outdoor touring, so I was a little chilly! I also couldn't really take any pictures because they just would have shown lots of clouds and rain. But don't worry: I got a bunch of pictures today (Day 2) and they'll be in my next post. The thing that struck me the most about the sanctuary tour is just how big Best Friends really is. The standard driving tour in a van (which any visitor may take) lasts about an hour and a half, and that's with very minimal stopping to see one dog area and one cat area. It was very helpful to start learning a bit about how things are set up. We also have maps of the sanctuary, which are absolutely necessary to navigate from one animal area to another, especially from the upper canyon to the lower canyon.

After the guided tour, we spent the afternoon driving ourselves (in carpools) to various animal areas for a more in-depth look and often a safety video. All I can say about that, is that I'm incredibly grateful for my fellow interns that rode with me (I drove) because they helped me not get lost while I concentrated on driving on insanely muddy roads. I had to laugh at my black rental car by the end of the day - it looked like I went off-roading in my Mazda! I sure hope there's a good car wash in Kanab that I can use before I leave or I may be banned from Hertz for life.

One area where I felt I learned the most so far was Bunny House and Rescue Village. Rescue village also houses all rabbits and the entire population all came from one massive rescue mission! Many of them have a rabbit parasite that is causing them neurological harm and sometimes paralysis. Not having much knowledge to begin with about rabbits, it was fascinating to learn that there's a lot more to them than I expected. I didn't know that they lived so long, or that they were difficult to bond with one another (if they don't get along, they will fight dirty to the death!). I learned about their eyesight being great for distances, but not up close...an important survival mechanism in the wild. I also learned that they can't breathe through their mouths! Eating is very crucial for bunnies and I learned some facts about their eating that I won't write just in case you're eating. But I'm not sparing you this fact: one single bunny produces 360 poop pellets per day! I wonder who's job it was to research that...

I suppose I should mention that there are 7 interns this session, and we spend a lot of our time the first week together during orientation-type things. But we do start splitting up on Day 2, when the actual work begins. And we'll split even more when we pick our focus areas for the final 3 weeks. All the other interns are really nice, so I feel like I lucked out with a really good group of people. We also spend a lot of time these first few days with Leesa, the Intern Coordinator. She's very helpful for answering our many questions.

All the interns ate lunch on Day 1 at Angel Village, which houses the vegetarian cafeteria. We couldn't all sit together the first day because it was so crowded, so another intern and I shared a table with a couple who are here from Canada volunteering for a week. They had a great story: as it turns out, they were planning a trip to the Grand Canyon, not Best Friends. But when they found Kanab to be a town that is in close proximity to many national parks, they decided to rent a vacation home for their trip here in town. They had never heard of Best Friends, but they began seeing it mentioned in all the vacation home rental ads, so they checked out the website. Well, now they're here volunteering and they absolutely love it so much that they're not sure they're even going to make it to the Grand Canyon after all!

Another cool thing about lunch was meeting one of the founders of Best Friends. There's a fantastic book about how Best Friends came to be and the amazing work that the founders did. If you're an animal lover, this book is a must read. It's called Best Friends: The True Story of the World's Most Beloved Animal Sanctuary. I absolutely loved the book!

Well, this blog is getting quite long and I still have to blog about Day 2, so I'll wrap this up by saying that Day 1 was very exciting, overwhelming, and exhausting!