Shifting Perspectives in Wildlife Rehabilitation with Debbie Sykes [Episode 73]
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Who is Debbie Sykes and what is her background in wildlife rehabilitation?
Hello and welcome to the Animal Training Academy Making Ripples podcast show, the show where we share the stories of the ripple making extraordinaires with behavior nerd superpowers who make up the Animal Training Academy membership. I'm your host and one of the happiness engineers at Animal Training Academy, Shelly Wood from Drop Your Jaws Dog Training in Cape Toronto, Missouri, in the United States. We're absolutely thrilled and grateful to have you here with us today. Make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss a single episode. This show is brought to you on behalf of the Animal Training Academy membership. So if you like the conversations in these episodes, then we want to invite you to continue them with like-minded people in the ATA membership, which you can find out more about at www.atamember.com.
Within the membership, you can get access to twice monthly live web classes, the back catalog of previous web class replays, plus a huge library of videos and projects to help you problem solve your training challenges. And we're a sociable bunch with an exclusive private Facebook group and forums area. It's like a Netflix social media platform for animal behavior geeks. Today we are excited to welcome Debbie Sykes to the show. Debbie has been a wildlife rehabilitator since 2006, playing every role from volunteer to educator to animal care director. She is currently a wildlife veterinary technician for the Teaching Hospital Midwestern University, a certified veterinary technician with V-E-G-E-R for pets,
an independent consultant for wildlife rehabilitators and educators, is the speaker chair for the Clinical Animal Behavior Conference held in Chicago, and an instructor for the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council. Previous roles include the Director of Nashville Wildlife Conservation, Assistant Animal Care Director at Walden's Puddle Rehabilitation Center, a behavior technician for Veterinary Behavior Solutions and a hoofstock intern at the Nashville Zoo. Debbie graduated from Northern Arizona University with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Volunteer State Community College with an Associates in Veterinary Technology. Her career experiences have led her to focus on bringing awareness and increasing the quality of care for wildlife patients and educational ambassadors.
She is always learning more and encourages others to always ask questions. Welcome, Debbie. We're very excited to have you here with us today.
Oh, my gosh. I've been listening to Animal Training Academy now for over 10 years. So I'm excited to talk about helping wildlife and zoological companion animals thrive on the sister podcast. So thank you for having me.
Yeah, you're very welcome. And thank you for joining me. I'm excited to hear you talk about all of those things. We have touched on a little bit of wildlife rehabilitation in this podcast before, but not a whole lot. And reading your bio, you have a pretty extensive extensive background in wildlife rehabilitation and care. So I'm excited to learn a lot from you today. Could you start us off by telling us your story, how you started working with animals and how you made it to the work that you're doing today?
Yeah, well, I stumbled into wildlife rehabilitation in 2006 when I was taking an ecology class in Southern California. One of our field trips was to a local wildlife rehabilitation center, and I learned that they accepted volunteers, so immediately started volunteering there. From then I completely fell in love and, you know, had been doing it almost ever since. I took a short break while I finished college and really figured out where I wanted to live, which turned out to be Nashville. So moved there. I started volunteering at a wildlife hospital there and was hired on in 2012. Those first few years were pretty heartbreaking, though. Our survival rates were incredibly low. We dealt with constant disease outbreaks, cannibalism, and really just daily losses.
The animals that did survive didn't always leave us in the condition we hoped for.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who is Debbie Sykes and what is her background in wildlife rehabilitation?
0:02–20:06
2
How did Debbie first get involved in wildlife rehabilitation and what were her early challenges?
20:06–33:19
3
What does it mean to view care from the animal’s perspective and how did that shift change her practice?
33:19–42:50
4
Why does compassion fatigue occur in rescue work and how can focusing upstream help prevent injuries?
42:50–46:57