Learning anything about marine mammal training will make you re-evaluate so much of your relationship with your own pets. There is so much force involved in the way we handle domestic animals. Most of it isn’t even intentional, it just stems from impatience. I’m guilty of it myself!
But with the exception of certain veterinary settings where the animal’s health is the immediate priority, why is it so important to us that animals do exactly what we want exactly when we want it? Why do we have to invent all these tools and contraptions to force them to behave?
When a whale swam away from a session, that was that. The trainer just waited for them to decide to come back. If they flat out refused to participate in behaviors, they still got their allotment of fish. Nothing bad happened. Not even when 20-30 people were assembled for a procedure, and the whale chose not to enter the medical pool. No big deal. Their choice and comfort were prioritized over human convenience.
It’s almost shocking to return to domestic animal medicine afterwards and watch owners use shock collars and chokers and whips to control their animals. It’s no wonder that positive reinforcement was pioneered by marine mammal trainers. When you literally can’t force an animal to do what you want, it changes your entire perspective.
I want to see that mindset extended to our domestic animals.
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Dungeon meshi is fun to me because I live in a country where you can go to an ostrich farm and ride and ostrich and pet and ostrich and then go to the restaurant and eat and ostrich. Also with crocodiles and zebra and giraffe and so on and so forth. So I've eaten a bunch of dope animals that I like and have met and I was talking to an Irish woman while in Canada and she had a crocodile leather handbag and I said "oh that's so cool, have you ever eaten a crocodile?" and she was genuinly so fucking confused. And I was like "in my country you can eat crocodiles. You go to a crocodile farm or preserve. They breed crocodiles for research and preservation and you can eat them. They're tasty" and she was HORRIFIED. Like how dare I eat a crocodile, no less a crocodile who's relatives I'd just seen swimming in a river. I'd held a baby crocodile and then hate a crocodile???? That's disgusting!!!! And her reaction never made sense to me cause her handbag was made of crocodile leather, so why wouldn't she want to know what it tastes like? Anyway Laios would totally go to farms like that and take a selfie with a Croc baby and then eat crocodile and have a great day out. Laios is you ever become real I will wine and dine you so well...
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First year in practice is saying "let me see if I have the materials on my truck" and then using that brief space to call your more experiencing mentor for help on a case at high speed
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no matter how many times you see it there is something about birth that genuinely touches you. Seeing that new being. Seeing it move for the first time. Still and comatose and then suddenly moving and alive. It’s brought me close to tears every time. Overcome with emotions and knowing that you were here. You were one of the first things this life ever saw. This little thing will go one and see so much but you were there. You were there to dry them off and welcome them to the world, watch them take their first steps. It’s not something you get used to. It never becomes just part of the job.
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My friend: help me with the legs on this drawing of a horse
Me: sure let me just grab some references from my textbook on diagnosing lameness in horses
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@astriiformes was working on homework last night while hanging out at my house. At one point, he turned his laptop towards me, and showed me the title of an article he has just found.
"Deliver This Horse From Evil: The Ritual Aspects of Responses to Veterinary Disease in the Late Middle Ages"
Somehow this is exactly up my alley.
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Patreon
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Today in Vet School:
"They were designed to run really really fast until a wolf or a sabertooth tiger or something eats them...or eats their slower friend. Then they go back to eating."
~Equine Professor regarding the evolution of the horse
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the urge to tell this woman that she's fucking dumb in the pettiest most angry way vs. me having to calm myself down and be as friendly about pointing out things she might want to reconsider because I am trying to help this horse and telling her off in any way will just result in her shutting down and not considering my (very valid) points at all
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What does love mean to u?
in the equestrian world we think and talk a lot about the concept of feel, which is notorious for being vitally important for quality horsemanship yet rather slippery and nearly impossible to describe to someone who doesn't intuit what it is. feel is in everything you do with the horse, it is what can perpetually refine your work in riding but it is also in something as simple as the way you walk up to a horse. anyway love is kind of like that to me, something foundational and encompassing but more or less impossible to pin down in words.
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As I near the end of my first semester of veterinary school, I think my favorite thing I’ve learned so far is how god damn prone to death Horses are. I truly do not know how they’ve made it this far. They can literally die of a tummy ache. Everyday a horse survives he laughs in the face of god 😔
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May have gotten a little more than I could chew yesterday with an emergency hind leg laceration that refused to block out with lidocaine and required a joint tap to check for involvment. I'd never done a joint tap before and this was not the situation to start. My boss had to come out and do it
So very much lidocaine later and we only got 10 minutes worth of a nerve block to put sutures in as fast as humanly possible before he returned to trying to kick me
I need a nap
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i'm doing my bachelors this year for teaching and as i was filling out a form today i had the thought of "oh amelia would know this, kindergarteners are basically like small animals" 😭😭
LSHFKSHDKSJDKD, I’m absolutely obsessed that you thought of me by calling five year olds animals omg
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went out of state today to assist in an equine inguinal hernia repair surgery !!! so freaking cool. i got to place a jugular catheter on a horse!!!!!!!
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Pre-show Vet checkup for #0042 BRS Mountain Mimzy and her foal #0065 BRS Mountain Lotus (both owned by Blaire Coba), as well as #0058 RH Mystic Mirage and her foal #0063 RH Mystic Blue at Raven Hollow Equestrian today!
Custom Teegle Textures by AETHERIEL
Visit: Raven Hollow Equestrian
Campion Mustang Breed Club
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