Action-Reaction: Animal Husbandry and Behavior
My practicum site was the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center in Derwood, MD. MCASAC has been and is still currently undergoing administration changes in the volunteer department, but the way I found the site and applied was through their website. After following the instructions on the website, you will be required to sign up for basic housekeeping training, complete a Fear Free online education certification in order to handle animals, volunteer training, and animal handling training for each group of animals you would like to work with. In the process of training, you will meet volunteer coordinators that will be the main people who will supervise you and help you fill out your forms in the beginning. Be prepared that there will be many hours of training before you will be eligible to volunteer--this was something that I did not realize would be such a long process (due to available trainers and a change in management), which caused me to be unable to complete the amount of credits which I signed up for (80 hours for 2 credits). Luckily, Dr. Holtz and Dr. Merck were kind enough to help me apply for a Dean's exception, but now that you have been warned, please do not cause them this additional heartache! After you have received all the training for a certain subset of skills, you will be under the supervision of all the staff and expected to know what to do and where to find help by yourself. You will essentially be an unpaid employee.
Depending on what training you received, you could be doing a variety of things. I got behavioral training, cat training, and dog training. Additionally, as a psychology major, behavior was the most interesting part to me. So, the majority of what I did was behavior monitoring, enrichment, and training. With cats I have to go slow with introducing myself and assessing the situation to see if they want to engage in enrichment or training with me. If they did, I would open their cage and see if they are fearful. If the cat is outgoing I will try to take them to the enrichment room so they can get new sights and smells, bigger climbing opportunities, and a chance to play with toys. If a cat is shy but not fearful, then I may spend some time acclimating them to my voice, seeing if they are interested in different types of food or treats, accepting of touch, or anything that can create a bond between the animal and the human. Being trained on reading animal behavior is critical because any bite or scratch that goes deeper than the surface of your skin has to be reported, which will cause the animal to be placed back into quarantine and taken out of the adoption kennels for 2 weeks. With dogs, everything is much more fast paced. Most of the dogs at the shelter are large and will take advantage of you if you do not know what you are doing. My favorite enrichment with dogs is to train them to do tricks with operant conditioning (e.g. sit, down, stay). Perhaps one of the most unexpected things I did was that I really enjoyed educating the people who came in to view the animals. It is really gratifying seeing the people's faces light up and also the hard work you put into training the animal paying off.
The most obvious thing I learned in terms of science is operant and also classical conditioning. I get to firsthand train animals to act to commands. I also realized that there is a lot of classical conditioning that happens that is detrimental. For example, when the cart for cleaning cages is rolled around, many animals associate that to their environments being disrupted and can become fearful or aggressive. This was interesting because it wasn't something I had anticipated, and it turns out a lot of the operant conditioning is done to combat the classical conditioning. I also gained a new appreciation for observation and carefully taking notes of these observations--something that I never really thought had a purpose when I did them in labs.
Beyond science, working at the shelter has solidified and made me much more aware of what career path I want to pursue in life. I love talking and educating people that come in and I love working with animals. Jobs relating to these things were always set on the backburner, but with this experience, I more clearly see what I excel in. I also see that there are much bigger communities out there for me to explore, such as those passionate in animal welfare or law enforcement in relation to animals. I am now more seriously looking into animal behavior or working with kids (since in a way they can be similar to animals in the most adorable way possible), and am planning to continue working at the shelter and possibly getting hired as an employee there in the future.