What I conceived two weeks back, the aim of writing a weekly blog has, unfortunately, at the first attempt become a fortnightly blog. Now, a few years ago I would have seen this as a very negative occurrence but, as I intimated in my first blog, there are now positive outcomes to be found in most, if not all, negative happenings that come my way.
The reason I was not able to write a blog last week was because I had been extremely busy and which saw the Animals in Hands road show traveling to North Shropshire, Leicester, Kenilworth, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Derby. During these visits I met some fantastic teachers and a great many knowledgeable, enthusiastic, well behaved and polite young people ranging in age from three years old to sixteen years old. I traveled to these areas to visit two Nurseries, two schools, an After School Club and to facilitate a birthday party in a Village Hall – this all proved to be great fun with extremely positive feedback being given!
All the traveling and facilitating kept me quite busy but, added to this, I went shopping for some new animals!
As I am passionate about animal welfare I have a strict rota in place to ensure no one animal is ‘out and about’ on consecutive days and many now might only go out two days each week. To ensure I am able to maintain this practise I am constantly looking to increase the number of animals I have to rotate.
Once bought, (all are captive bred), the work begins in handling the animals every day to ensure that they are comfortable with being held and that they show no signs of stress or discomfort. With some animals I have handled, such as my rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters, this has taken less than a week to do. Others however, such as the Bosc monitor and the pygmy hedgehogs, have taken several months to become accustomed to being handled. There have also been one or two animals in the past that I have chosen not to take ‘out and about’ as they really have not been happy to be held, for even short periods of time and now spend quiet days basking under heat lamps in their vivariums back at base. As well as being very time consuming, handling the animals is also very therapeutic with the outcome of handling them proving to be rewarding t and, in the main, having a great many positive results.