Hi Again!!
My name is McKenna Hancock and I am a Junior Zoo and Conservation Science and Biology Double Major at Otterbein University. I am currently a Dog Intern at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia. Yep! I am one of the two dog interns here at CCF.
The project I was given is the dogs, everything pertaining to them and their care. I have been crazy busy since being given this position. For those of you who do not know, CCF has a livestock guarding program. What that entails is that we give farmers in the area a livestock guarding dog, specifically an Anatolian Shepard for a small ;fee. Then the farmers send their livestock out to graze with the dog and the dog protect the livestock at all cost. This project has given the farmers a tangible object to protect their livestock against large carnivores in the area. This means the farmers kill less of those large carnivores and Cheetahs, Leopards, and African Wild Dogs benefit from this program. There is about a two year waiting list for these dogs!
So what do I do? I help feed the dogs, twice a day for most dogs and three times a day for the ones with puppies. I help take care of the puppies and weigh them every single day, as well as take the temperature and monitor the mothers that are pregnant and soon to give birth. Monday the 17th one of our females went into labor at around 5pm, being one of the dog interns I was tasked with sitting in with the mother and the dog staff monitoring as she gives birth. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences getting to sit in on the birth. While we were in there we recorded the time each puppy was born and any notable other things, like the mothers contractions and whether the puppies were suckling. From 5pm to 11am the next day Repet (the mother) had 11 puppies!!! It was a very long night but it was very worth it. After the birth I took to drawing out the chest markings on every puppy on a piece of paper and any other notable markings that could help us tell them apart. Along with a weight and a number that would help us monitor each puppy to make sure they are all healthy and gaining weight. These little 11 puppies will soon be saving Cheetahs in the wild. With the puppies we want them to care more about the livestock then they do about us, so they get goats in with them when they are still young. As well as we want to spend as little time with them as possible so they do not bond to humans but to the livestock.
Alongside the puppies I am also doing parasitology on the dogs to make sure that they are healthy, basically we take a fecal from the dog and we "float" the fecal using the McMasters method. Then we view it under the microscope to see if we see any eggs from parasites in their fecal. It is a lot of work but it is something I have never done before and I probably would not have learned it if not for this place.
Name: Keitha Lear
Class Year: Senior
Hometown: London, Ohio
Internship: Keeper Development Intern
Location: Dallas, Texas
I am now back in Ohio from spending 12 weeks in Dallas! It is crazy to me how fast this summer went by! It is so hard to say goodbye, even though I was ready to come home and see my family. There are a few updates since my last blog. My presentation on my research project went extremely well and everyone loved it! The other interns and I raised $21,000 for the Peregrine Fund with our conservation campaign! In this blog, I will talk about the things I did outside of the zoo on my weekends! My "weekends" were Thursday and Friday and I actually enjoyed that because not a lot of people did fun things on those days. Also, grocery shopping during the weekday is not as busy!
On my weekends, I tried to do something every other week because I don't know how many times I would go back to Dallas. So, I wanted to do as much tourist-y things as I possibly could. Most of the time, I was by myself, which was super scary at first but I got used to it! Fortunately, Chelsey Butler had an internship in Fossil Rim and we saw each other frequently! I got to Dallas a week before my internship with my family to do a some sight-seeing. We went to the Sixth Floor Museum, where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F. Kennedy. It was really interesting to learn more about the historic event, but I had constant chills down my spine! The next activity I did was go to the Fort Worth Zoo and to the Fort Worth Stockyards. The zoo was very nice and it had a small Texas town where the Texas-native animals lived! The Stockyards was a small old-fashioned town with bars, a rodeo, and they did cattle drives every day. It felt like I was in a Western movie! Fort Worth is the next neighboring city to Dallas and I definitely recommend that if you visit Dallas, you have to take a day or two to go to Fort Worth!
The next weekend, I went to a Texas Rangers baseball game. The Rangers played against the Cleveland Indians. And since I am a big Cincinnati Reds fan, it was inevitable that I go to this game! That was my favorite activity I did because I love baseball and there was something peaceful about watching a baseball game by yourself. What made the day even better was that the Rangers beat the Indians! The following weekend, I visited the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden. The flowers were so pretty and they had many places to sit and read if you wanted. I took that time to play with my phone's camera and I got some amazing pictures that look professional!
I was very lucky to have the 4th of July off because it was a Thursday. I visited the state fairgrounds and got to see the fireworks inside the Cotton Bowl! The fireworks were definitely big and entertaining! The next weekend, I explored downtown Dallas and went to the Reunion Tower. It is a tower that gives a 360 degree view of the city. Again, it was an amazing thing to do when you like to take pictures. The following weekend, I visited Chelsey at Fossil Rim. Fossil Rim is a drive through safari park and we used Chelsey's staff vehicle and drove everywhere, including behind the scenes things! It was so fun to see Chelsey working where she always dreams of working! My last weekend in Dallas was spent with an aquarium intern named Bri, and we went to Billy Bob's which is the world's largest honky tonk. It was so much fun wearing cowboy hats and watching people square dance! They also had a rodeo! It was a great way to end my internship, Texas-style!
I truly loved my internship at the Dallas Zoo and having to get to do so many fun things outside of the zoo. I miss everyone already but I had a blast learning about the zoo world and I can't wait to learn more as I get older! Thank you to everyone who has been reading along! It was a lot of fun capturing my summer in the Lone Star State! Bye Y'all!
My name is McKenna Hancock and I am a Junior Zoo and Conservation Science and Biology Double Major at Otterbein University. I am currently a Dog Intern at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia. Yep! I am one of the two dog interns here at CCF. 
The project I was given is the dogs, everything pertaining to them and their care. I have been crazy busy since being given this position. For those of you who do not know, CCF has a livestock guarding program. What that entails is that we give farmers in the area a livestock guarding dog, specifically an Anatolian Shepard for a small ;fee. Then the farmers send their livestock out to graze with the dog and the dog protect the livestock at all cost. This project has given the farmers a tangible object to protect their livestock against large carnivores in the area. This means the farmers kill less of those large carnivores and Cheetahs, Leopards, and African Wild Dogs benefit from this program. There is about a two year waiting list for these dogs! 
So what do I do? I help feed the dogs, twice a day for most dogs and three times a day for the ones with puppies. I help take care of the puppies and weigh them every single day, as well as take the temperature and monitor the mothers that are pregnant and soon to give birth. Monday the 17th one of our females went into labor at around 5pm, being one of the dog interns I was tasked with sitting in with the mother and the dog staff monitoring as she gives birth. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences getting to sit in on the birth. While we were in there we recorded the time each puppy was born and any notable other things, like the mothers contractions and whether the puppies were suckling. From 5pm to 11am the next day Repet (the mother) had 11 puppies!!! It was a very long night but it was very worth it. After the birth I took to drawing out the chest markings on every puppy on a piece of paper and any other notable markings that could help us tell them apart. Along with a weight and a number that would help us monitor each puppy to make sure they are all healthy and gaining weight. These little 11 puppies will soon be saving Cheetahs in the wild. With the puppies we want them to care more about the livestock then they do about us, so they get goats in with them when they are still young. As well as we want to spend as little time with them as possible so they do not bond to humans but to the livestock. 
