Personal Reflection on Work Experience – Lost Dogs Home

To be interested in dogs is one thing, but to get your self up early, every morning of your career just to clean, feed and look after dogs isn’t the easiest thing in the word too do. But on the other hand, if you do enjoy spending time with dogs and working along side people of all types this might just be the job you could be interested in, work experience gives you the opportunity you need too test yourself for a week in the busy, but normal day at the Lost Dogs Home in North Melbourne.

Walking into the lunchroom in the morning for the first daytime was similar to your first day at a new school. Starting off every morning was the ‘poo pickup’ as most of the workers referred to it as. Taking about 1 hour for all 150 of the dogs we then moved onto replacing al the blankets in the kennels and hosing them down, which then was replaced by a new blanket. After all the kennels had been successfully cleaned we had a short 20 break for morning tea. Following morning tea was feeding time and we were made to prepare the dog food containing 20 or so cans of dog food MANUALLY mixed with a wheel barrow of dry dog food. Taking about three quarters of an hour to feed all the dogs we then were scheduled for a few emergency calls; which were a lot of fun.

Back in time for an hour’s lunch we then went off again for the last part of the day. This part varied between jobs like; receiving all the donations (blankets, towels, sheets) and folding them to be put into the storage rooms or going into the surgery room and observing different types of surgery, the possibility of going on another emergency call is also likely too. Finally for the last hour of the day there would be a puppy bonding session that would be simply playing with the pups too build their confidence up around people and other pups.

One of the things that might have stood out from the average day for me was defiantly the surgery. Its pretty cool watching a surgeon cutting open a dog for de-sex them or tearing their way though the knee to replace a damaged bone. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t literally like bloody and guts then id suggest you’d stay away from the surgery room. The emergency calls were awesome as well. Picking up stray dogs, cats or even like I did on the last day a raven, was a lot of fun.

The attitude of most of the workers was positive, but it did appear that they seemed fed up and frustrated with the ‘long hours, low pay’ as few would say. It made me think just how hard would it be to do this for a living every single say of the working week and one weekend per month; would this be a job I would want to do for the rest of my life after school. That is an important thing to ask yourself no matter what type of work experience your encounter, ask your self if it is something that you’d feel comfortable doing as a full time job for your whole career. If you get completely bored of work after one week then choosing another path would probably be a wise option.

I found the Lost Dogs Home to be a fantastic place to work for Work Experience and I would defiantly recommend it to any type of person that is interested in animals and wants to work along side them. Good luck in what ever you choose and be smart in your choice; one weeks worth of work experience can make a big difference and could be the factor that changes or cements your mind on what you want to pursue as a job for your entire life.