Week 88: ABMA

I spent my first project week at the Animal Behavioral Management Alliance (ABMA) conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I gotta say the city wasn't that great, and we generally found the customer service to be incredibly poor across the board in that city. Sorry to any natives, but it's just not the same friendly atmosphere there that I've grown accustomed to. It was my first big journey to the east coast, that I can remember at least. The week was filled with paper presentations and small workshops (which is code for more lectures). There were quite a few people from my class that did attend, as well as our staff members Gary and Cindy. I didn't meet a lot of new people, but the few that I did were nice and helpful! I was glad to find that we Moorparkers are a bit ahead of the training curve from what I got out of the presentations. I really enjoyed seeing the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium as well as the National Aviary. The big highlight was when we went to the animal shelter and got to work with their animals to help make them more adoptable. News crews came out and I actually made both the news cast and the local paper! I was working with some of their cats, and got some high praise for some of the work I did with a very shy kitty! The whole time I was also paying very close attention to things because I was also a judge at the conference and at the end I was surprised to be rewarded with a nice etched glass paperweight for my contributions. I think it was lots of fun and I'd love to be able to attend more of these in the future! Unfortunately, I was in such a rush when I left, I forgot my camera, so maybe I'll be able to steal some nice pictures off of my friends...