This week, we were on the animal unit which is my favourite thing to do at college. I spent my time cleaning out rabbits and guinea pigs as well as feeding them and giving them water. I also changed the drinking water in the red footed tortoises. This was difficult as there was no automatic drain and the water had to be soaked up using a sponge whilst I was in the enclosure itself. The enclosure was a room by itself which you needed to climb in using step ladders. There were a lot of bugs everywhere and it was very humid as the heat lamp had been on. I refilled the pond with a hose pipe as well as filling up the water in the pond. Next, I used a pressurised spray to spray water all over the environment, although I had to be careful not to spray any of the lamps or the glass or else the window would have to be cleaned.

After that, I was told that the elderly gecko needed bathing as she was unable to shed her skin properly. To do this, I used lukewarm water and put her in it, splashing it over her slightly to moisten the skin, I was then able to easily peel it off. This was really fascinating because it came off in a sheet and you could pull the skin off her fore limb like a glove and you could see the fingers in the remaining skin.

This process is completed roughly every 2 weeks. Usually, they are able to do this alone but her age limits her and she struggles to do so.

This week, me and a friend went away to Switzerland for the weekend. As we are both interested in animals, we did several activities that involved them. These were Basel zoo, a nature park/farm and a natural history museum. My favourite of these was the zoo because you are able to see animals there that you wouldn’t see anywhere else. My favourite animal was the monkey, not a specific breed. I have always loved monkeys because of the way they behave. It fascinates me how they interact with each other. Plus, they’re cute!

At the natural history museum, they had a room about insects. Part of this room was showing worms including parasites. We spent quite a while naming each type, using the knowledge we had learnt from class. It was interesting to see them in real like rather than writing about them on a page or seeing a picture.

This week, in health care management, we looked at faeces using a microscope to try and find parasites. Before we could do this, we had to prepare it for the slide. we did this by mixing it with distilled water, putting it in a centrifuge for 2 minutes, filtering it and putting drops of the liquid on a slide.

The slides had grid lines on them which we used to count parasites and parasite eggs in a specific area. We could then use this to work out if the animal needed treatment. We weren’t able to find any actual parasites but there were quite a lot of eggs.

In the picture below, you can see dark rings which are the eggs. It was quite difficult to see them at first but once we knew what to look for, we could see them everywhere. They were also a lot smaller than I thought they would be and not a solid colour like I also thought.

This week, we had a talk from a couple who train sniffer dogs to suit the needs of customers. This included searching for bodies and living people in accidents or natural disasters, finding drugs or sniffing out cancer in people. The man had been on several programs and news broadcasts about his work in helping solve crimes and helping people survive. I didn’t realise there were so many things that a dog was able to do through smell alone.

He currently has dogs in Bangladesh where they are searching for people injured in a building collapse. We saw pictures and he was explaining how they used diggers to slowly work there way through the collapsed building to find pockets where people could survive and then they sent dogs in to see if there were any survivors. He also showed us a news report video about him and a dog that was used to find scrap metal that had been stolen and sold to a scrap metal company. People could have a marker smell put on their property which the dog was trained to sniff out, it could then go around scrap yards to find the stolen property. This has helped a lot after people were steeling railway tracks.

They also trained dogs to help find the victims of the Saddleworth moors murders. Although there is still one body left to find, the dogs helped find all of the other 4 victims. This was the first time that dogs had been used by police in the UK. It is now a lot more common.

The couple also brought 2 of the dogs in that they were training. One was their own pet who would be used by the man in future investigations and the other was to be passed on to someone else who it would then live with. The 2 black Labradors were being trained to identify smelling markers on sticks and computer hard drives.

The dogs would have a trigger collar or badge that would let them know that they were now working. He would tell them to sit and they would only go once he said to. Once they identified the marker, they would look at the man for approval. Once they got it correct, he used a clicker and gave them a tennis ball. the tennis ball was their reward.

This week, I learnt how to inject things for the first time. This was a very difficult lesson for me as I have a phobia of needles. I first learnt how to fit the needle into the syringe and how to undo the cap. We had an orange to practise on as it feels the most like actual skin.

It took me a while to get the courage up to even pick up the packet as I was so scared. It got to the point that I was crying, yet I knew I had to carry on to get better. For this reason, I was determined to carry out the task, despite my fear. Eventually, with the encouragement of my teacher and class, I was able to put the needle into the orange.

I feel proud of myself for doing this but at the same time, I feel like people think I’m being silly for getting so upset. I hope they understood that to me, it was a big deal, even if it was such a small thing to them.

Even though I hated the task, I want to do it again in the future as much as I can in order to improve my confidence and hopefully one day, I’ll be able to get over my fear.