Caring for Animals

Caring for animals when on holiday
By Heidi Carloil

A few years ago my friend Angi and I went on holiday to Australia and had the most amazing time! We were there for about 6 months and found our travel to Australia the most hilarious one. We went backpacking across the country, met some amazing people and saw some amazing places. 

One of the best things we got to experience though was an opportunity that arose when we were in Sydney, Australia’s plush city. We were backpacking around and saw some signs up asking for help on animal jobs at a nearby farm that had lots of animals. 

Well Angi and I liked the sound of this as we were both extremely passionate about working with animals and needed a little bit of extra work to earn some more money for the rest of the trip. 

So we gave the number a call and got talking to the owners who invited us to come along for a bit of a trial. Who knew that the trial would turn into such an ordeal! As soon as we got there, John the farmer took us around the farm for a bit of a tour. On their farm they had so many different animals! 

The animals that they had were some ducks, 2 dogs, 4 cats and even some pet snakes! Luckily the snakes weren’t poisonous otherwise I might have been a bit scared! Anyway, we helped out with some basic pet care services, such as cleaning and feeding. But, our animal care tasks were not problem. We were in for a great trouble. On one of the nights we were there it was reported that the largest storm in the history of Sydney was on it’s way and that we had to prepare the house and property for some potentially big damage. Well we took the animals that we could inside and locked them up, but a couple of the dogs had to stay outside unfortunately and the ducks too had to stay outside.
 
The storm came that night and wow it was really scary. It was very loud, very windy and there was lots of thunder and lightning. The next day we had to perform some pet-sitters tasks, such as cleaning up and it was a big mess, but the biggest thing we had to do was go out and find the animals because the ducks and the dogs had gone missing! 

Finding the ducks wasn’t too hard as they hadn’t really gone too far from the water, but the dogs were difficult as we really didn’t know where they had run off to. We did a bit of a search and soon found one stuck underneath a tree, so we had to get the help of some people to lift the tree, pull out the dog and take him to hospital. Luckily he was fine though so that was a relief! 

On the way we did also find some horses that looked like they had run away, so we kept them in John’s farm to look after them until we could find the owners who were worried sick about their beloved horses! Luckily though everything turned out ok in the end!
 
Overall, working with the dogs, dog-sitting, and looking after the animals were a great experience and I think that Angi and I had the time of our life on our trip overseas in Australia. It really was a memorable experience and I think that John was very grateful that we were there in such a time of crisis! It would be nice to go back there one time and work with the animals once more, especially when there wasn’t an emergency, but for the fact that we had such a blast really brings a smile to both Angi and my faces! It’s definitely something we would do again!
Some students studying in Australia, earn quick money through pet jobs like this. They study, travel, and work in Australia at these animal farms. Pet jobs also give them valuable work experience, which help them immensely for the future.