Kanjoro's Graduation

A couple of months ago I decided to foster two elephant orphans in Kenya, Kanjoro and Quanza. Recently Kanjoro has graduated to the next stage in his rehabilitation into the wild by moving to Ithumba. Ithumba is the next step in the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's rehabilitation program, where elephants gain exposure to the wild herds in Tsavo National Park.

This is an important step in the reintegration, as baby elephants learn bush etiquette from the matriarch and older females in the herd, or in the case of bulls like Kanjoro, from older bulls in the bachelor herds. Ithumba gives the orphans a chance to interact with all of the ex-orphans and their wild friends, who frequently turn up when new orphans arrive at Ithumba, and this interaction provides the orphans with their bush etiquette training. It is also important that they make friends within the wild herds, as elephants are very social creatures.

While this is a great step in the right direction, it will still be several years before Kanjoro is no longer dependent on his keepers and his milk feedings. Elephants mature at the same rate as humans, so at almost three years old he is much older than the other nursery orphans but very much still a baby. But he is reaching that age where he was beginning to test his strength against other bulls, and so he needed to be moved to Ithumba to be with other orphans closer to his own size.

There is an update on Kanjoro's relocation on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's website, here  Kanjoro's Relocation. Apparently Kanjoro is a nervous traveler and tried to make a break for it when he first arrived at Ithumba, before stopping and returning to the familiar keepers. He will settle in soon, as moving to Ithumba always reunites the orphans with all of their old friends who made the move before them, and an elephant's memory is longer than ours and they can remember other elephants they haven't seen for years or even decades. And then they tend to greet each other with loud rumblings and trunk kisses.

I am happy that Kanjoro is doing so well and was able to move on to this next stage of his life without mishap. Soon he will begin testing his strength against the other bulls at Ithumba that are similar in size to him, and within a couple of years he should be able to fully integrate back into the wild.

Kanjoro on the moving truck with Kilabasi

Kanjoro on the truck

Kanjoro running off the truck and heading to the keepers with his milk

Settling in

The Poaching Wars

As part of my preparation to go to Africa, I have been trying to keep up to date with wildlife news, especially regarding the elephants, and how they have been faring in the poaching wars. So far it's not too good.

I don't think the poaching problem in Africa has been portrayed as a real problem to the general public. The majority of poaching is done to fuel the growing demand in the East, especially China, where a rising middle class uses ivory trinkets as a status symbol. But it's been shown that the majority of Chinese people- one paper said about 70%- don't have any idea that elephants have to die to remove the tusks. They think the tusks simply fall off the elephants as part of a natural process and that they can be collected off the ground. How can we decrease demand from the major source of increased poaching when the majority of the people creating the demand are so uneducated about ivory?

It is believed that 25,000 elephants were killed by poachers in 2011. The number is expected to be even higher for 2012. Already in 2013, less than one month in, 12 elephants have already been killed in Kenya in one of the worst single poaching incidents in that country. One of those 12 elephants killed was a two month old baby, who didn't even have any ivory to poach. At this rate, so conservationists have claimed that elephants may be extinct from the wild within 20 years.

The elephant has always been a majestic symbol linked to Africa. It's hard to think of an Africa without elephants. They aren't even just linked to Africa alone anymore, they are part of the human culture. When teaching kids the alphabet, it's always "e is for elephant". We decorate nurseries with cute blue and pink elephant prints. At this rate, we are going to be teaching our kids to love an animal that is only going to be found in a small number of zoos, where their  natural majesty and beauty can't be appreciated the way it could be in the wild.

But it's more than just the fact that human greed is trying to extinguish yet another species. This is a species that is supposed to have the lifespan as a human, with the same, if not better, capacities for memory and emotion. Baby elephants orphaned by poaching incidents will stand guard over their fallen families until rescued- if they are lucky enough to be found- where they then usually sink into a deep depression and refuse to eat and lose the will to live. One of the greatest things about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Orphanage is that it allows these grieving elephants to be comforted by others in the same position as them, and usually it is not until these new orphans are comforted by their fellow orphan survivors that they begin to turn the corner. It is nothing short of tragic and despicable that entire families are ripped apart for mere trinkets.

The poaching problem isn't going to get any better until there is a rise in public awareness and there is a shift that makes elephant lives worth more than ivory chopsticks. And I don't want to give the wrong impression here, either- rhinos are dying at alarming rates the same as elephants. I don't know as much about their crisis other than they are also facing extinction if the poaching doesn't stop. One new technique with rhinos is to capture them and saw off their horns before the poachers can shoot them and do it themselves. Of course, while this saves the rhinos life from poaching, it leaves them defenseless against other rhinos and other predators. There is no good answer for this other than to crack down on poaching.

It is upsetting that humans value money more than other life. But until more people are aware of how bad the situation is, nothing is going to change. In the words of Dr. Seuss, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

one of the orphans with one of the keepers at the DSWT orphanage

some of the elephant orphans at the DSWT Orphanage

Wildlife Wine Tasting Fundraiser

The Wildlife Wine Tasting Fundraiser was last Thursday, and overall I'm pretty happy with how it went! Everyone had a great time, and while wine costs kept us from raising as much as we would have liked, at least we weren't in the red! We wouldn't have been able to pull this off without all of the support from local Stillwater business, and thank you to everyone who came out to support us!

I think organizing this fundraiser was a good learning experience, and there are a lot of things I would do differently next time around to try and make other fundraisers more successful. There is a lot more that goes into planning an event like this than I originally thought, and a lot of details in the last minute organizing and finalizing. I am considering doing a similar event again in the spring, but as a beer tasting instead of a wine tasting. I think that may appeal to more people, and keep overhead costs down. I'll have to see how this semester goes, but as always I'll keep this blog updated with my fundraising attempts!

Wine bottles ready for the wine pool

Our raffles, silent auctions and wine pool

Mini cupcakes provided by Cake Crazy LLC. Delicious!

Truffles from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Wine Tasting!

Raffle winners!

Raffle winners!

Drawing raffle winners

Raffle Winners!

Some of the damages from the night

Back Again

It's been a while since my last blog post, which isn't surprising because I always disappear for a while around finals, and then with break it's always crazy. But I can't believe I'm starting my second semester of my second year of veterinary school... it feels like time has been flying by. It definitely feels like it's going by faster than my undergrad, which felt faster than high school. Each successive 4 year block of school feels shorter than the last.

This semester is going to be interesting. I'm already lost in my diagnostic imaging class. I'm not too surprised about this, and I was expecting it. It will help make this semester interesting though. I think I'm going to enjoy my clinical neurology elective and virology class, although I know that will be extremely time consuming for me. If you're wondering which classes I get to take this semester, I have Epidemiology, Food Safety and Public Health, Virology, Pharmacology (again), Anesthesiology, Diagnostic Imaging, Hemolymphatic/Oncology System, Clinical Neurology, Lab Animal Medicine, and Zoonotic Diseases. That's a lot. I'm just hoping I can learn some lizard anatomy and physiology in my lab animal course.

I've also been continuing to work hard on my fundraising efforts. My next fundraiser, a Wildlife Wine Taster, is coming up this Thursday! I've had some early ticket sales, and I'm hoping a lot of people come out to help support us. We've had a lot of support from local businesses in the Stillwater area, and they have really helped me with their contributions. We'll have chocolates from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, baguettes from Panera, and cupcakes from Cake Crazy LLC to go along with our wine tasting. We've also had donations from The Links at Stillwater, The Funnies Comedy Club, Tan and Tone, The Uniform Stop, Summit Co, Downtown Marketplace, Rhinestone Cowgirl, Murphy's Department Store, Reese Chiropractic, DuLaney's Retail Liquer Store, Brown's Bottle Shop, Stillwater Wine and Spirits Warehouse, and JR Liqueur for both raffle baskets and a wine pool. I was so surprised by the outpouring of support from the Stillwater community for our fundraiser, and I am hoping that all of these donations will really help the wine tasting be a success.

I have also paid the deposit for the Africa program, so I will officially be going this summer! I am so excited to learn about wildlife medicine, and I am hoping I can get the chance to work with the elephants and make a difference in the conservation effort. I've been reading a book called "The Elephant Whisperer", and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in conservation in general or elephants in particular. I am also considering continuing my bake sales, since they were so successful, and donating the profits to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. As soon as I can figure out if I am actually allowed to do this on campus I'll be starting that back up.

I can already tell it's going to be a busy busy year, but it always is in vet school! At this point, I don't think I would know what to do with my extra time if I didn't have any extra projects going on!

Finding Kanjoro and Quanza

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working hard to get to Africa, and the journey has led me somewhere that I never thought it would. When I first started researching Africa, I really didn't know more than what I had seen in the Lion King and other stereotypes. I liked African animals, and the mystique of their exoticism. I love leopards. I love leopard print. But I really didn't know much about them.

Since I have made the decision to study in Africa, I knew I had to educate myself more about the wildlife. First, I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of the wildlife vets in South Africa. I wanted to sound like I knew something about their job and Africa. And second, I was actually interested, I did want to know more about these animals, and there was an obvious gap in my education.

Somewhere along the way though I discovered something new and fell in love. I fell in love with the majestic African elephants and their story. It started when I read "Love, Life and Elephants" by Dame Daphne Sheldrick. I highly recommend that book to everyone, even if you don't have any special interest in elephants or Kenya. While reading this book, I began to see elephants in a brand new light.

Since finishing the book I have done a lot of additional research, and a lot of it has shocked and surprised me. I have learned that the average lifespan of the African elephant is 70 years, very close to ours. I have learned that their memory is better than ours is, that they remember things for life and use that memory to hold grudges. I have learned that elephants are very social animals; they love, they grieve, and they also get jealous and hold grudges. Their hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in emotion, is larger than ours.

I've learned that elephants make friends for life, that they will recognize an elephant they haven't seen in over 30 years and rush to meet them. I have learned that elephants are the only animals on Earth besides humans to hold funerals, that they will bury their dead with branches and hold a funeral procession. Everything about them suggests that their intelligence and emotions are on a level with ours.

But in doing my research, I have learned a lot of disheartening facts as well. At least 25,000 elephants were killed in 2011 for their ivory. Most of the ivory gets shipped to China, where the new wealthy middle class can afford ivory as a status symbol. And the scary part of it is that a recent poll found that as much as 70% of the Chinese population believed that their ivory came form elephants whose tusks just dropped off.  The lack of education is a dangerous fuel for the poaching fire.

Since realizing the depressing facts of the elephant poaching problem in Africa I have become a lot more interested in the movement to stop it. One of the most heartbreaking parts of the poaching problem is the orphan elephants that are left behind. Baby elephants are completely dependent on their mothers for at least 3 years, and have no hope of surviving in the wild without them. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust runs an orphanage in Kenya to take in these orphaned elephants. These baby elephants are usually found standing beside the body of their murdered mothers, sometimes having been there for several days. Once they arrive at the orphanage, they go through the same grieving process that we do. They become listless, refuse food, shun the company of the other orphans, and may act our aggressively. But at the orphanage they have a second chance, and most of them turn it around and eventually bond with their keeps, staying at the orphanage until they are old enough to be released back into the wild.

The story of the African elephant and their plight has now become my main objective, and where I am hoping I can make a difference. I have since decided to foster two of their baby elephants, Kanjoro and Quanza. Quanza came to the orphanage after her mother and two sisters were killed by poachers. She is a little over one year old. Kanjoro came to the orphanage after a Samburu scout found him and saw that he had been alone for several days. He is about a year and a half. Both of these elephants would have died for sure if left on their own in the wild.

One day I hope that I will be able to go to Kenya and visit my two fostered elephants, but until then I want to learn as much about their species as I can while I am in South Africa. The more I learn, the more I can do, and I will have a better position from which to help.

Quanza, right after arriving at the orphanage

Kanjoro

Kanjoro receiving one of three daily milk feedings

Kanjoro

Quanza settling in, and another orphan trying to sneak her second bottle

The orphaned elephants develop close bonds with their keepers

A crowd of orphans

Playing

Two new orphans settling in

If you can help an orphaned elephant, please visit the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's Fostering Page here http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/fostering.asp

Fundraising Update

It has been a while since I've posted an update on how my fundraising for Africa has been going, so I thought I would do a quick recap.

So far I have done bake sales, a fundraising event at Ibiza, and Christmas pet photography. All together, with a couple of individual donations, I have raised about $1,000. I really appreciate all of the support that everyone has been giving me! I had a great time with the bake sales, and a really great time doing all of the pet photography! It never ceases to amaze me how generous people can be, and how they are willing to go so far above and beyond in helping with my cause.

       
                        



My next upcoming event is going to be a wine tasting at Zannotti's Wine Bar on January 10, in Stillwater. Besides the wine tasting we are also going to have a wine pool, raffle baskets, and a 50/50 raffle!




Here are some pictures from our pet photography shoots!

Equine Acupuncture

Yesterday was the Holistic Club’s first wetlab, which I am very happy to say went off without a hitch. Dr. Holyaok, the same professor I had for my equine therio class, is certified in equine acupuncture, and he gave us a quick lecture and demonstration in acupuncture before turning us loose on the mares in the barn.

First he showed us the one of the major meridians, the bladder line, which runs down the neck and back just lateral to the spine, and he ran a needle cap over the points to show us how the mares would involuntarily twitch when he ran the needle cap over certain specific acupuncture points. Then we divided up between the mares and performed this same pre-examination on our own mares. Our mare was very sensitive over a acupuncture point by her hip, which happens to correspond with the ovaries. This makes sense, since it is the fall transitional period for the mares as they enter their winter anestrus.

Next Dr. Holyoak showed us how to place a 3 inch acupuncture needle in one of the main points on the bladder line. I don’t remember what it is called (Ba Hoi, maybe?), but it sits right at the highest point on the back by the hips. He showed us how to find it, and you can actually find it better with your eyes closed because you can feel the acupuncture points. As you run your finger along the midline back to the tail, your finger actually falls into a little depression, which is the acupuncture point. Technically I guess Dr. Holyoak showed us how to insert the needle as well as find the point, but since he did it in about 2 seconds it really wasn’t too helpful for the rest of us, who were now told to insert needles into that point on our own mares.

Me inserting acupuncture needles into the kidney points.

We proceeded to put about 9 needles into each mare. The first one, then 3 kidney points on each side and one ovary point on each side. The hardest part of getting the acupuncture needle in was getting it through the skin- I think a lot of us were taken aback at having to insert the needles on our own so quickly, and we tapped them in too timidly. Then we had to try and push them down through the skin before sliding the needle in the rest of the way. I had it by about the third needle. 

The horses really seemed to enjoy getting acupuncture. Which each successive needle their heads dropped lower and their eyes slid closed until it looked like they were falling asleep. As we found each acupuncture point by the same method as the first, by feeling for the slight dip in the skin, we could always tell we were in the right spot because they mare would kind of twitch when we inserted the needle, the same way she did when we ran the needle cap over her in a test for sensitivity.

After we had all of the needles in, we hooked up the 3 kidney points for electroacupuncture. Electroacupuncture is very similar to the concept of STIM in people, in that you are sending an electrical impulse into the muscle. The only difference is with electroacupuncture that pulse is being guided directly into the acupuncture point. There have been multiple studies that show that using electroacupuncture over regular acupuncture provides greater pain relief for longer period of time. I did my senior seminar on using alternative therapies such as acupuncture to treat lameness in horses, so most of the studies I read revolved around treating back or other lameness-causing injuries in horses, but the electroacupuncture always had greater efficacy than acupuncture alone.

When using electroacupuncture, you always start out at zero and slowly turn the dial up until you can start to see the acupuncture needle actually start to twitch within the muscle. Horses will all have different tolerance levels, and out of the 5 we worked on only one thoroughbred mare reacted at all, when hers got turned up a little too high, and she was completely fine once it was turned down just one notch. We left those electroacupuncture probes on for about 20 minutes, and we turned them up a little about halfway through. I believe that is a pretty standard treatment time, which is another advantage electroacupuncture has over regular acupuncture- it provides better results in a faster time.

While our electroacupuncture was running we turned to the ovary points, which we planned to treat with moxie. I’ve heard mixed results on moxie, and I don’t know as much about it. But we stabbed some aluminum foil over the needle to lay over the horse to catch any falling moxie ashes, and then stuck the little moxie cap on top of the needle. Moxie is made up of herbs, and I believe that it is used to bring heat into the acupuncture point. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, everything is about the balance between yin and yang, feminine and masculine, cold and hot, wet and dry, and so on. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, if it is determined that there is too much yin and you are out of balance, then the treatment is literally to bring yang back in and balance out your qi. I am starting my acupuncture course tonight actually, so hopefully later I will be able to explain this all better. But we stuck these moxie caps on the acupuncture needles, lit them on fire and just let them burn out. The horses didn’t mind at all.

The moxie cap on the ovary acupuncture point

The moxie burning

Electroacupuncture and moxie.

While we were waiting for these treatments to finish, we all got a hold of some smaller needles and practiced acupuncture on ourselves. I inserted 2 needles into my arm in the large intestine 11 point and large intestine 10 point. I think LI-10 is supposed to help relieve stress, so that seemed like a no-brainer. I don’t think it hurts- there is a little something, yes, but then the needle is in. With the first point I just felt a slight cooling sensation after the needle was in. I also inserted a needle into the skin between my thumb and index finger, which is supposed to be good to treat headaches. In that spot I felt some tingling, but that’s it. I don’t think I left them in long enough to actually treat myself, since it was too cold to be out in the barn with my sleeves rolled up.

LI-11 is the one right on the elbow, and then moving down my arm toward my wrist is LI-10

Overall, it was a great lab. I love that we actually got to insert the needles ourselves, that we saw 3 different techniques of acupuncture, with the regular acupuncture, electroacupuncture, and moxie, and that we got to attempt it on ourselves, because what better way is there to know what it feels like? Next week our club will be hosting a similar wetlab aimed at small animal acupuncture, which I am eagerly anticipating. Hopefully by then with a week of my Traditional Chinese Medicine classes under my belt I’ll have some more background knowledge on the different points and what they are all used for.