This was an incredible trip.  I was lucky enough to go with my awesome friend Brittni East and we got to do so much fun stuff together!

The AAZV conference was held at Disney's Animal Kingdom this year, so Brittni and I went early the weekend before it started so we could hit up the rides!  We got to go to every park and there were barely any lines.

People thought we were engaged and it was funny

 Brittni and I also helped each other out at the Student Reception.  We got to talk to a wide range of zoos and aquariums with externships and we both secured positions for the summer.  Brittni is going to be working at White Oak Conservation Center in Florida and I am going to be working with the Fort Worth Zoo and the Summer Research Program!  This is how we felt about it:


The last day we were at the conference was the Zoo day.  So we got to go to the one park we hadn't visited yet:  Animal Kingdom.  We got a behind the scenes tour of the animal care and veterinary facilities and got to have a ton of fun in the park.  AAZV rented out the park for us to use that night, so we got to ride the rides over and over with no lines whatsoever.  They also fed us this delicious dinner and there was face painting, and a fun auction to close out the night.

Today was my last day at Utah's Hogle Zoo. The friendship and mentorship I've received during these last two years are invaluable to me. I'm extremely grateful to countless keepers, veterinary staff, and of course the visitor experience team for all you have taught me and the friendship you have given me. It has been an honor to work alongside those so committed to education, conservation, and animal care and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors as we all strive to make this world a better place.

Tilikum - Man He Looks Great!

I work at Utah's Hogle Zoo - an incredible zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.  I love it.  Some days like today I wake up completely overwhelmed with how lucky I am.  I'm part of the Visual Arts and Visitor Experience Department.  There is an entire department in our zoo devoted to your experience as a guest.  Just think about that for a second.  As an Eco-Explorer, my job is to teach you about animals and inspire you to care about them.  My ultimate goal is to show you what you can do to help save these animals.  It doesn't matter where you are in the park:  I've got some info for you.  I'll tell you all about who's who and what we are doing to save them here at the zoo and with organizations in the wild.

Love Elephants & Rhinos?  Check out the International Elephant and Rhino Foundations.  Learn about poaching and how it is the number one threat to these magnificent animals. Make donations and be a conscious consumer so that these animals are never harmed by your purchases.  How about the cats of the Asian Highlands like the Amur Leopard and Tiger or the Snow Leopard?  We work with the Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance and the Snow Leopard Trust to protect these endangered animals.  We have some of the best breeding programs for these species and are an active contributor to their Species Survival Plans.  What about Polar Bears?  Rizzo is a favorite here and we are trained by Polar Bears International to teach you about the plight of vanishing polar ice and the simple things you can do to help save the ice and the polar bears that call it home.  We make donations to the Marine Mammal Care Center  and the Marine Mammal Center in California - the two organizations that rescued and rehabilitated our California Sea Lions Rocky & Maverick after being injured in the wild.  We also work with the Niassa Lion Project - a great group promoting coexistence in Africa with the kings of the Savannah.

But my love for my job doesn't end simply with what I do and what I get to teach.  It extends to the people I work with.  I love them.  My fellow Eco-Explorers amaze me with their enthusiasm for conservation and their love for people.  They are like a second family to me.  Sometimes I get to listen to them teach and am amazed with their teaching ability and can't wait to use some of their techniques the next time I get to teach you.  My boss is an incredible woman with a passion for interpretation and conservation who has been paving the way for climate change interpretation around the country.

I also get to work with the keepers at the zoo.  They gave my study group at veterinary school some amazing experiences when we came during spring break. One of them is trying to help me land an internship with a veterinarian at a marine mark and has taught us some basics in training our seals.  Another of them is also a veterinary technician who gave me a bunch of books before starting veterinary school.  I worked with another one as a lifeguard when we were younger and we still joke about using the others towels - even if it does confuse the rest of the keepers.  Another keeper has worked to help another Eco get internships at other facilities.  And yet another keeper has given me experiences with our animals that I will never forget. I didn't get to mention all of them here, but all of them truly have inspired me.  Their backgrounds are varied and impressive.  Their knowledge and care for conservation is vast and inspiring.  I'm a better person every day I get to work with them.

Sometimes I also get to work with the veterinarians and veterinary technicians at the zoo.  They are an incredible team that has been so encouraging in my pursuit of veterinary education and my pursuit of working in zoos and aquaria.  I light up every time I hear the hospital calling on the radio and every time I see them in the park.  They are the veterinarians I most want to be like.

I hope this give you a taste of what is like to work at a zoo.  It's all about the animals - that's what has brought us all here and why we all work tirelessly for their conservation, care, and protection.  But it is also about the people.  Zoos have some of the best people in the world - people that are qualified and capable of doing anything they want to but that choose to work here because they want to make a difference.

So go to the zoo.  There are people there ready to make your day.  There are people there to show you how to make a difference.  There are people there making a difference for this world like no where else. But you won't find people anywhere else that care more for animals and conservation than those who staff zoos and aquaria. So find your nearest accredited zoo or aquarium and go today.  I promise you'll love it.

ZEW stands for Zoo, Exotics, & Wildlife - it's one of the clubs I'm a part of here at vet school.  If you know me at all, you'll know it's basically everything I could ever want in a club and I absolutely love it.  I've had some incredible opportunities to work with knowledgeable veterinarians who are willing to take time to teach us some pretty cool stuff.

So what is an exotics club like at a veterinary school?  Let me tell you.

A couple weeks ago, I got to attend ZEW's deantlering wetlab.  A&M has a Wildlife Center that allows us to get a chance at learning the management and medicine of non-domestic species.  It's pretty neat.  There is a herd of white-tail deer does and a few males separated from them for population control.  Every year as the bucks finish growing their antlers and shedding their velvet, the ZEW students get to help with deanterling.  Male deer use their antlers to fight each other and normally in the wild they can run away if those fights get intense.  That's not so much an option here at the wildlife center, so we remove their antlers every year to keep them from hurting each other.

We started out bringing one of the bucks named Buck (creative I know) into the restraint center which has these amazing catwalks to give you access above the stalls.  Dr. Blue darted him to get him his anesthesia and soon the procedure was underway.

Buck Before the Deantlering

In Physiology, we had just been learning about the muscarinic acetocholine receptors of the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest one as opposed to the fight or flight one).  As Buck went deeper into anesthesia, his heart rate was slowing down (which is typical) so to keep his heart rate up where it needs to be we gave him some atropine - a muscarinic receptor blocker.  It was so cool to actually see the importance of what we had just learned a week before in class.  The parasympathetic system then couldn't further depress the heart rate and we were able to keep him stable and get the job done.  It was awesome.

And After.  He's still sleeping on the floor in this pic.

But the coolness doesn't end there.  I'm also a part of the Exotic Cat Team.  How cool does that sound? Taylor and I signed up to help take care of the two servals at the wildlife center.  SERVALS.  It's awesome. Their names are Morpheus and Camilla.

An African Serval Cat Who's Pretty Chill Like Morpheus

Morph tends to be pretty chill.  He mews a lot and likes to spray his enclosure basically all the time but he's definitely my favorite.  Camilla likes to remind us that Servals are not domestic kitties.  All the time. She likes to remind Morpheus of that too, but he just seems to ignore her.

Another Serval with a More Camilla-like Demeanor

Every morning and evening during the weeks we are on, Taylor and I meet up at the Wildlife Center to get them their food and to do some brief cleaning.  There are a series of doors we open and close to shift them around the enclosure so we can make sure they get their food separately (Cami will steal Morphs food if she gets the chance) and to make sure the whole enclosure is cleaned and that we are never in there with them. It totally reminds me of the back area of Asian Highlands at Utah's Hogle Zoo and gives me a little glimpse into how awesome being a cat keeper must be.

Yesterday was another of ZEW's awesome wetlabs.  After tending to Morpheus and Camilla at 7 a.m., I went straight over to school where I participated in some of the coolest labs and lectures.

From 8-10, I learned all about avian reproductive anatomy and how to perform a spay from Dr. Steve Fronefield from ABC - Animal & Bird Clinic.  Did you know that the Kiwi has the largest egg to body size ratio?  Well it does!  Check out this crazy image to give you a clue just what I mean.

Looks Uncomfortable to Me

Isn't that crazy?  They don't eat a few days before laying because they just can't!

After learning all about the anatomy, we got to go into the anatomy lab to practice our new surgery skills on some chickens after performing a brief necropsy.  It was really cool.  The yolk starts out on the ovary with the oocyte and then when the follicle ruptures, it travels down the uterine tube slowing forming the shell as it goes along (mostly around the shell gland right before the cloaca).

Crazy, Huh?

Then from 10-noon, I got to sit in on an awesome lecture on fish anesthesia.  I definitely had a leg up because of working at the Aquarium of the Pacific and in Dr. Johnson's Lab at BYU.

Mandarin Goby

Alison Wilkes, one of the PhD students at TAMU taught us all about it.  She also talked about a bunch of cool procedures that she is doing for her research.  She studies the role of iodine on thyroid tissue in fish by using high resolution PET/CT scans on fish injected with radioactive iodine to obtain 3D images of fish anatomy and iodine uptake.  It's pretty cool stuff.  Here's one of the pictures she took.



After a yummy lunch, I then got to attend a lecture on wildlife medicine and rehabilitation from Dr. Melissa Hill and John Karger from Last Chance Forever - a raptor rehabilitation facility located in San Antonio.  We learned all about donating our time and passion towards helping wildlife.  Whether it be a Barn Owl...


...or a Bobcat..


...or a Bald Eagle, they had something to teach us about that species' medical needs and rehabilitation.  It was incredible.


It really impressed upon me that no matter where I end up as a veterinarian that I will always have the opportunity and privilege to help with conservation efforts if I am willing to donate my time and resources to helping wildlife.  It also made falconry seem crazy awesome.

Then from 3-5 I was learning about sea turtles and their anatomy and conservation needs from the good doctors at the Texas Sea Life Center.  Do you know why the Green Sea Turtle is called the Green Sea Turtle?


It's actually because their fat is green.  The adults have a herbivorous diet that gives their adipose tissue a green color.  After learning all about chelonian anatomy, we got to go into the anatomy lab again to do necropsies on four young green sea turtles.  It was so cool.  Because of their shell, they don't need lots of muscles around their body wall.  So once you get inside it's basically really huge pecs and some glutes.  And that's about it for muscles.  Their lungs sit at the back of their carapaces and, like land turtles and tortoises, they breathe by moving.  As they do so, their muscles move around to expand the areas for the lung to fill.  It was really cool to see.

After that, we got to have a meet and greet with all the cool doctors (there were other classes going on besides the ones I took) and to do some networking.  Then it was back to taking care of Morph and Cami.

ZEW is awesome.  Vet school is one big adventure.  I love me some zoo medicine and I can't wait to play a bigger part in it!

All right guys.  I know that was a while.  But a whole lot went down since I last wrote last year.  That whole getting unengaged thing can be kind of a bummer.  So naturally I didn't really feel like writing and as a result, this place has been LAME.  Sorry about that.  Thankfully, lots of REALLY COOL EXCITING things have happened to me since then.  And I'm just going to have to catch you guys up on that as we go along.  So get ready. Here it comes.

First off, I graduated from BYU with Honors in Biology.  That was a long time comin, but I loved my time there and made some really great friends that will stick with me for a long time.

Secondly, this past summer I was hired as one of this year's Eco-Explorers at Utah's Hogle Zoo!  And I LOVED it!  There's something amazing about standing next to an adult African elephant or looking into the burning eyes of an Amur tiger that just gets your juices flowing.  As an Eco-Explorer, I had some amazing experiences with some of the coolest animals in the world.  And what was even cooler is that I got to share them with people and help them to see why these animals are important and what we can all do to help save them.  It was pretty awesome.  But since each of these experiences deserve their own post, they're gonna be coming interspersed with other posts from the other awesome life event that has happened since then - VET SCHOOL!

That's right.  I'm a first year veterinary student at the one and only Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  It's incredible.  Now that I'm here, living the dream, I can tell you that all those classes I took at BYU to fulfill every prerequisite of every veterinary school in the United States have been well worth it - and that they have truly pointed me towards my calling in life.  I love animals.  I love medicine.  This place is perfect.

I also got into North Carolina State University, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Illinois.  But when I came here for my interview, I felt this is where I was supposed to go.  And now that I'm here, I can safely say that it pays to listen to the Spirit when He's prompting you!  God knows what He's doing and I'm grateful for my time here, what I've learned so far, and the friends that I've made.

So stay tuned.  It only gets better from here.