Long drive gone by...

So...I made it to Washington state, Eatonville to be exact. It took me 2 days to drive up, and I stopped in Eugene for the night. I passed thru Weed, CA and took some pics of Mt. Shasta, then spent more monotonous hours on I-5.


I also took a detour of Mt. Rainier before getting to Eatonville. It was amazing! I kept trying to see it from the car, then BAM! There it was...covered in snow, and gigantic.


I started my new job as a canine handler for scat scent dogs for the group Conservation Canines, affiliated with UW. I am living in a house in Pack Forest, and of course my room is right next to the dog kennels...oh joy! Right now I am a glorified dog walker, that only gets paid for half the hours that I actually work. I am up at 7am to take the dogs (13 of them right now) to pee/poop, and then breakfast. Then I get an hour break for my breakfast, then out for 2-3hrs of exercising them! So I am pretty much hiking, walking, and biking them all around Pack Forest. Then another hour or so break for lunch. And then back out at 1pm for another 2-3hr round of exercising. Then another break before short potty break walks, followed by dinner. And then my last shift is around 10-11pm for a last potty break before bedtime. I am exhausted! But, I hope in a few days I will get some new training for scat related work. Then I will be exercising and training, probably with no breaks at all, haha!

In the beginning of December they are going to send me, and 3 other dogs handlers (2 other new ones) to NE Alberta, Canada to search for wolf, moose, and caribou scat around the oil extraction camps. The main mission of this organization is to do non-invasive scientific research in terms of human impact on the natural populations. So we collect scat of target species and then send them back to the lab at UW to analyze for stress and reproductive hormones...blah blah blah. Anyway, I am just looking forward to hanging out with a dog, and doing field work, and getting paid for it!! Yay!

OK...I'm tired.