Blog Post #12: Challenges
This biggest challenge I am currently dealing with is feeding Sapphire correctly. Sapphire is non-releasable because of her disabilities and because of her disabilities, she has to be fed a certain way. Sometimes I forget what she can and cannot do which makes it really hard to feed Sapphire. Instead of trying to improve my skills on that, I've been avoiding to avoid feed Sapphire and have my mentor do it. My mentor told me that all I need is practice and then I'll be able to feed Sapphire no problem and since Sapphire is fed twice a day, at least once a day during one of her feedings, my mentor lets me feed Sapphire and she helps me feed Sapphire correctly. The reason why I have a difficult time feeding Sapphire is because she is she is target trained and is blind in her left
eye. In order to feed her, I have to out a pink bouy in the water on her right side and then keep the food out the water until she gets kind of close and then put the food that's being held on a claw thing that some people use to pick up trash and Sapphire will grab it with her mouth. My issue is putting the bouy on her blind side and also putting it in an area she can get it. She has a hard time swimming because of a couple boat accidents she had which made her unreasonable. With practice, I can already tell a difference and see that i am getting better at it. |