Volunteer service learning at Crooked Rooster Farm in Snohomish By: Lauryn Newman

Volunteer service learning at Crooked Rooster Farm in Snohomish

(5 hours of volunteer work) Contact info: Holly Kohl’s (425)-770-4993

Email: crookedroosterfarm@gmail.com

 

No organization sponsored this volunteer opportunity. Crooked Rooster Farm, Raises service dogs for Autistic children as well as for kids with other disabilities. She works independently, and allows people to volunteer to gain experience with young puppies about proper socialization techniques for dogs planning to become service dogs.

The duties that I preformed were cleaning the puppy play areas, holding and socializing puppies in her service dog program, and helping/ assisting with the delivery of a litter of ne-born puppies (which was not a planned occurrence rather a bonus learning opportunity).

I feel that after my volunteer opportunity it opened my ideas and thoughts to how biology in animal science can greatly impact society by helping people thrive in the world we have today. While volunteering I saw people from all sorts of families that have different challenges and disabilities from severe anxiety to physical and mental disabilities. Its no secret that animals impact our lives in ways that other humans simply cannot do. There is an innocence associated with animals that people are not capable of providing. I feel that the importance of helping start a new puppies socialization and preparing it for its goal in life of helping a person with day to day life far more rewarding and important than regular volunteer opportunities.  We as people have turned far more to technology to help assist us in doing work but what I do at the farm you cannot do in front of a computer screen. If more people left technology and actually got out and did things that are meaningful and that helped other people we would have more well rounded people that had more skills and were not socially crippled by consistency communicating via text message, email, and social media. The real world is not as smooth sailing for everyone as some people think I had a false sense of how bad life can be for other people. By volunteering it allowed me to understand that I may have struggles of my own but there are others that have it far worse then me. People tend to focus on how bad their life is when in reality there will always be somebody that has it worse than you. That’s what volunteering did for me and showed me just how important animals are to people in terms of healing and assisting with struggles that most people are lucky to not have in there life.

 Biology is ”Interdisciplinary “ Because its role in its potential to relate to different knowledge and different ranges of people from different backgrounds is limitless. Biology not only has the potential to impact animals but also the people that live along side these animals.  By volunteering my time I am not just impacting a life of the dogs that I work with by also helping the person who will one day call that dog their own. That dog will go on to serve and help people and give them the independence to live in society on their own terms and function the way they want to that they could not do without their dog. Dogs possess skills that we as humans do not their sense of smell is far better then humans which allows them to be diabetic alert dogs, and seizure alert dogs. Biology helps us understand how we can provide an environment to nurture the skills that a dog possesses to fulfill a greater purpose. Without science and biology we may not have figured out how much more powerful a dogs sensitivity to smell is and been able to apply it to training these dogs for these service dog positions. Science helped us understand how to best utilize the dogs basic biological advantages to work in service to better people’s lives and to help save them.  This also brings all people to work together because these dogs help people of all kinds and from different backgrounds and what better way to get people together then to solve a common problem that effects millions of families struggling to find solutions to help friends and family.  When people have something in common with each other it brings us closer when we help each other to solve a solution. Some person had to have the motivation (whether it be a family member or friend) to figure out how to train dogs to be able to sense low blood sugar levels, and work together with others with a common issue no matter how different of a background they are in to solve a common problem. This is how biology continues to push us forward and why it is truly an Interdisciplinary subject.

4 questions that were raised by my service-learning project were

1)   How specifically they train diabetic alert dogs? (the process, etc.)

2)   Can different breeds of dogs possess a greater ability to serve different service positions?

3)   What the process is to start a non-profit organization?

4)   What other way could dogs help people in a service dog position that we have not yet thought to use?