Bridges

Saturdays always seem to be the best days of the work week. Maybe because its technically my 'Friday', but its fun to see the aquarium come to life and actually have more than 10 visitors a day! I got to visit with each of the whales during the training sessions and work on my point follows with them. I'm pretty sure I have those down to a T now! Lynn (my awesome mentor) introduced me to bridging today too. This is a hand signal (or a whistle for experienced trainers) that is given to the whales to tell them to basically stop doing a behavior because they have done it correctly and will receive a fishy reward. I got to practice bridging during my attention thresholds I have been working on with each of the whales and during point follows.

I was a little skeptical when assigned to work with Kela today. This morning she was miss grumpy gills and seemed to be having a bad morning. When I was brushing the exhibit pools, she was being aggressive towards the brush pole and jaw popping at it (which is a sign of aggression). Then later on in the morning she 'yelled' at Naku for some odd reason. But when I got to work with her one-on-one for our feeding session, she seemed perfectly fine. In fact, it was one of the best sessions I have had with her so far! She stuck around a lot longer than normal for tongue rubs which I was very happy about since shes the one its takes a while for her to warm up to newbies.

No new pictures to post this time :(