{"id":15746,"date":"2017-06-06T18:53:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T18:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/?p=15746"},"modified":"2024-01-30T12:07:06","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T17:07:06","slug":"wildlife-friends-foundation-thailand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wildlife-friends-foundation-thailand\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with Elephants at the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My second week at Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand was with the elephants and it really was fantastic. I\u2019m mostly going to talk about my time at \u201cthe hospital\u201d because these elephants were the first elephants I worked with and I really loved working with them. Chokdee and Malai Ngun live at the hospital and they are the most gentle elephants. A day with them consisted of preparing their food, taking them on walks, bathing them, preparing enrichments for them, and cleaning their\u00a0enclosures.<\/p>\n

Now any wildlife animal can\u2019t be 100% trusted, they\u2019re wild animals and are capable of anything but I could tell these 2 elephants really enjoyed the presence of humans and enjoyed just about anything we did to them or did for them.<\/p>\n

For being such a giant animal, both these elephants took food from my hand in the most gentle way, I forgot half the time that there was an elephant walking behind me taking food from me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Malai Ngun (a large necklace made of money meant to bring good fortune to the person who wears it) is a 65 year old elephant that came from a logging, trekking, and begging background, she is also blind in her left eye but it doesn\u2019t slow her down from keeping up and getting her fruit snacks during her stroll. Chokdee (luck ) a 50 or so year old elephant that comes from a trekking, and logging camp.<\/p>\n

These elephants despite their backgrounds still like the presence of humans and it just amazes me, if that isn\u2019t the definition of forgiveness, I don\u2019t know what is. These gentle giants taught me a lot about myself and as I said if they can forgive a human that put them in a stressful environments and painful encounters I don\u2019t see why humans can\u2019t forgive humans for much smaller scenarios and especially being in the veterinary world it gives me a whole new outlook on the human-animal\u00a0bond.<\/p>\n

\n

Click here<\/a> to read more stories from other SPC Study Abroad students who volunteered at the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My second week at Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand was with the elephants and it really was fantastic. I\u2019m mostly going to talk about my time at \u201cthe hospital\u201d because these elephants were the first elephants I worked with and I really loved working with them. Chokdee and Malai Ngun live at the hospital and they … Continue reading Working with Elephants at the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1616,"featured_media":15749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[7,826],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-study-abroad","category-thailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1616"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15752,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15746\/revisions\/15752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.spcollege.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}