Week 1, Day 3: Pepsi, Parrots, and Pictographs

Today's been a long day and my brain feels like mush, so hopefully the photos will do the majority of the storytelling for me.

Project Dogs

The first thing the interns got to do today was pick our project dogs! Each intern picks one dog (from a list provided by staff) to work with for the duration of our internship. Sometimes they're shy or have some behavior issues that could be worked out. Other times, they just need basic manners to make them more adoptable. They're all green collar dogs and we will work with them in training class and help socialize them. We're allowed to take them on outings into town, or just around the sanctuary. I plan on taking my project dog to the Welcome Center and into town so that tons of people see him and want to adopt him! We met all the dogs before deciding which one each of us would take. Sometimes, the dogs just chose us. All the dogs would be fantastic to work with, but I had a top 3 in mind and I got one of my top 3 dogs! Introducing....[drumroll]....Pepsi! Pepsi was the first dog we met and he was such a love. He greeted everyone happily and lingered a little with me, giving me a bunch of kisses on the chin. I totally fell in love with him. He's an adorable Pit Bull/Basset Hound mix. Click on his name above to see a picture and info about him! I'll keep you posted on our progress together as a team.

More Orientation 

After we got our project dogs assigned, we headed up to the Upper Canyon for two more orientations: Wild Friends and Feathered Friends. What that meant, was 2 hours in a row of standing and walking in the hot desert sun, listening and learning. I have to admit, I was exhausted and my legs and back hurt a lot by the end of those two hours! Wild Friends is where the sanctuary helps wildlife, such as predator birds. Some wild friends will be at the sanctuary forever because they wouldn't make it in the wild, some are adoptable, and others are being rehabilitated to be released back into the wild. Here are some of the friends we saw:

Next, we moved onto Feathered Friends, which includes parrots and cockatoos. Interestingly, one of the beautiful dogs rescued from the disgusting cruelty of Michael Vick's dog fighting ring has found her permanent home at Best Friends and she prefers to live by the feathered friends rather than the other dogs (can you blame her after what she went through?). Best Friends actually took 22 of the dogs rescued from Vick (now called the Vicktory dogs) and many of them our now living happily in forever homes. There were two that were mandated to stay at Best Friends for life. That doesn't mean the sweet girl who loves to live with parrots is in for a bad life. She's got it pretty good at Best Friends (all the animals do!). She's now a purple collar dog (not red!) and she's working on her Canine Good Citizen test! Here she is:

UPDATE: I was mistaken when I originally wrote this post. Kayla, the Vicktory dog above, is actually NOT one of the ones mandated to stay at Best Friends for life. She is adoptable!

If the Vicktory dog was the highlight of my tour of Feathered Friends, the parrots were definitely my low point. I got bit by a parrot! And guess what? Their beaks are strong! It hurt! I had my back to a bird in a cage and she reached out and bit the back of my shoulder:

I'm told parrots have no saliva and cannot give me any sort of disease by biting me. But I was told this will probably bruise up pretty badly. Needless to say, I will not be focusing in birds from here on out!

Lunch

As usual, we ate at Angel Village and it was packed because there were updates being given by staff throughout lunch. There were stories of adoptions, successes, ways to help spread knowledge in the community, etc. It was fascinating and often funny and/or heart-wrenching. I honestly nearly broke down crying at my lunch table because I was so exhausted, hungry, and angry about getting bit while I was minding my own business. Then someone starts telling an emotional animal story and I was nearly a goner. I managed to hold it together and it was mostly a really great lunch.

Horse Haven!

I got to spend my afternoon working at Horse Haven, which is an area that I do want to focus on for the rest of my internship (along with a couple other areas). I adore horses and I fell in love with each one that I met today. There were plenty of volunteers in Horses today, so the mucking went quickly. We drove from pasture to pasture in a four-wheeler-type-thing and met lots of different horses. Each pasture is gorgeous and has views to die for! Below is the pasture at Disney Barn. It's called that because Disney built it when they wanted to film a movie there. I believe at least three movies were filmed there and Best Friends kept the barn up, because it is actually a really great barn!

Below are two gorgeous horses, and the one on the right is named Cowboy. You'll notice his middle is completely sagging. Some horses develop that later in life, but this guy was born with it. Because of that, he was going to be killed. Luckily, he was saved and is living a happy, healthy life at Best Friends.

See the gleaming coat on this next horse? His name is Smurf and I got to groom him. I also got to brush  another horse to keep flies off of him while the farrier worked on his hooves. 

After we finished mucking and grooming, we took the 4 wheeler (which you can see a little of in the picture above) out for some sight-seeing in the canyons! It was amazing! Below is Kanab Creek.

Next we saw some legitimate Anasazi ruins! 

Here's me at the Anasazi dwelling (don't ask why the photo is discolored...for some reason blogspot is discoloring a ton of my photos, but I'm just posting some of them anyway).

A little ways down the road, the Ansazi had a storage area for their grains:

On the walls of the storage area, we got to see actual pictographs (they've been studied to make sure they're legit). You can sort of see the shape of hands painted on the wall below:

The last stop in our sight-seeing tour was a hidden lake. In the photo below, you can barely see the entrance to the lake under the rock overhang.

It was super dark inside, but once our eyes got adjusted, we could see that there really was an underground lake in there!

Here's me at the entrance to the hidden lake:

After sightseeing, it was time to head back to do more work at Horse Haven. I swept out the office/lobby. Did I mention there's an office pig?! His name is Squeaky and I'm in love with him:

This note about Squeaky was on one of the office doors and made me laugh:

Horse Haven also houses goats and sheep, so the last thing I did before leaving was go help put the goats and sheep to bed. I asked if this meant telling them a bedtime story, but really it just meant getting one goat her medication (which I fed to her), and then cleaning out their areas, making sure they had enough food and water for the night, and closing in the couple animals that need to be closed in at night. Below is a very lovely sheep named Buddy. 

I ended my nine-hour day feeling completely exhausted and sore, but satisfied with a good day's work helping animals in need. I will leave you with an adorable story from Horse Haven. There is a small horse named Missy that came to Best Friends with a badly broken leg that had not been treated properly. The poor little horse had to spend all her time here immobile in a sling, getting her bandaging changed, but not getting to be a horse. She was getting pretty depressed. Then, Steve the goat came along. Steve was lonely too, so the staff decided to see if they could keep each other company. It's a match made in heaven and both animals clearly love each other. And the great news is that Missy is in her first week out of her sling and doing great! Here's Missy and Steve napping together:

Again, sorry for the weird color distortion. Any other bloggers having trouble with that?