Buggy day...

Hey everyone!

Since it poured yesterday all morning and then again later at night, I woke up to a lovely mosquito infested day. I had to get up an hour earlier today because I was scheduled for fish duty in the fish kitchen. Once a week I will have to do this. Myself and another trainer measured out all of the 9 different types of fish that each dolphin gets throughout the day and made all of their buckets. Each dolphin has a different diet depending on their needs. It was actually kind of fun :)

The rest of the day consisted of slapping myself and the other girls at work constantly throughout the day. I have never seen so many mosquitos at once. Usually as long as you put on some bug spray you are fine, but today the spray did not seem to help unfortunately. Now I feel itchy constantly and I always think there is one landing on me (yes, I am seeing things). Not to mention I know I'm going to look like I have major chicken pox in the morning!!

BUT...if I can have a day like I did yesterday everyday then I would sacrifice my body to the mosquitos from time to time ;) Yesterday was amazing!! The sister facility to Dolphin Cove, called Dolphin Plus, has a California Sea Lion named Wono and the trainer needed some more assistance in her training and asked us interns to go over there. She was adorable!! We didn't get to feed or touch her yet, he said we would be able to once we do a few more training sessions with him, but we got to see some of the cool behaviors she knows. Wono very recently had cataract surgery and can see just fine now, but before a lot of her behaviors were taught by voice instead of using hand signal. I thought that was pretty cool because even now that she can see she still knows the behaviors by voice. The trainer said we will get the chance to come back even more throughout the summer so I am very excited for that.

When we got back our trainers needed some help with the training of some of our dolphins so we got to get into the water again :) They were working on separating Samantha (mom) and Isaac (baby) during a training session. Since Isaac has been training and working the interaction programs he has never done one without his mom. We were put into the water to practice this. I was placed with Samantha and Alfonz and the other intern was placed with Isaac and Julie. It was interesting to see if Samantha was going to allow her baby to be trained without her, and she did! The interaction went great. I got to do things like a dorsal toe (holding onto the two dolphins dorsal fins while they glide me through the water), superman (where they push me through the water by my feet while I lay flat on my belly), and back pushes (where they push me through the water by my feet only I am laying on my back). They were all so much fun and I got to do them a bunch of times!! I even got to do other behaviors like rubs, kisses, telling them to speak, dance, spin, and have them jump over a pole. It was so much fun and was a great end to my day!!

Today I got to participate in the enrichment for the dolphins which is always fun. They like to keep the animals always guessing and excited so they will bring out a new toy or something fun for them to do almost every day. Today was "fishsicle day". We made ice cubes with little fish sticking out randomly (like a popsicle with fish in it) and through them into the lagoon for them to play with and then eventually eat. They loved it!! :)

Tomorrow I have my first class. Almost every Saturday the interns at Dolphin Cove and Dolphin Plus will meet up to take a class on research, training, or any other topics that have to do with the field. Tomorrow I will be learning about research, so I will let you all know how that goes.

OH! And everybody wish Emma luck, she will be learning how to use the bathroom on a toilet starting today. I ordered a kit and it just came in. It is designed to teach your cat how to use a toilet just a few steps at a time. It basically puts a litter box on the toilet and you slowly make holes until the hole is big enough that you can take it away. I REALLY don't want to deal with the litter box, so I am trying this out lol. She seems very smart so I think she will get it down.

For tonight I plan on watching movies in bed the rest of the night until I fall asleep. I am exhausted today! Getting up and hour earlier is really hitting me haha. Have a good rest of your night, friends!