Living the H.I. Life

Hey! Thanks for checking out my blog :) It is so amazing! The internship is great. It is very structured, and everyone wants to help you learn about marine mammal training. You actually go through phases in the internship where, in each phase, you learn about training… like in the first phase, it is all about the basics: basic husbandry skills and basic animal training definitions (operant conditioning, LRS, etc.) Then the second phase is more detailed parts of the first phase, and getting hands-on learning. Then the third phase is you proving you can really do all of it! :)

Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoy my blog :)

If you’re looking to get into animal training, it definately helps if you have unpaid animal experience. Before I landed this internship with dolphins, I completed an internship at a zoo. And before I got my zoo internship, I did volunteer work at an aquarium and at a horse stable! Dolphin training internships are highly competitive, and typically you wont be considered if you have zero animal experience. So anything working with animals, even volunteering at a dog shelter, always helps!

As for college, many facilities prefer degrees related to Marine Bio, Zoology and Psychology… but honestly, there are many cases of animal trainers who have degrees in, like, Business or Computer Sciences. The type of degree doesn’t necessarily matter, but benefits you. I am majoring in Psychology and it has absolutely helped in my training internship, because I had learned aspects about operant and classical conditioning already!