Handling the Goat

Some of the darting tools used in the course

How do you get a 3 inch dart through the skin on the rump of a snared grizzly that’s staring at you ferociously? When you’ve got an unresponsive antelope that has stopped burping, where do you position the nose in relation to the larynx? If the heart of a wolf stops beating how many CC’s of Dopram V do you give? Hurry up, you have to answer these questions quickly – but calmly – or else that wild animal you’ve been trying to capture for months dies or takes out its frustration on you.

These were actual questions and actual scenarios posed to me as I sat front row, mouth agape, in Dr. Mark Johnson’s Chemical Immobilization and Wildlife Handling course in Belgrade, Montana at the end of March 2015. Because of this class I now have a certificate earned through Dr. Johnson’s company, Global Wildlife Institute, which says I can answer these questions in the heat of the moment. And while darting and handling lions, tigers, and bears might seem a little dramatic, this is exactly what we talked about throughout each of the day’s activities. 

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Dr. Johnson showing how use one of the air pistols

Dr. Mark Johnson has been teaching this course and several others for almost two decades. His resume and experience read like the list of a weekend marathon on the National Geographic channel: Yellowstone veterinarian during the 1995 wolf reintroduction, dog handling in Tibet, feral dog capture in the Caribbean islands and Indian sub-continent, Alaskan Grizzly Bear captures, and Desert Bighorn relocations. With a black belt in Aikido and accompanying build as well, imagine Steven Seagal mixed with Jeff Corwin and the gentleness (and patience) of a 3rd grade teacher and you get something resembling Dr. Johnson.

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After sedating our animal, the team I was on had to do physical exams as well as draw blood

The stories and videos shown in class ended with: “and that’s how you capture a ram from a helicopter” or: “now remember, a black bear in a tree is in a compromised position and you need to let the animal be your teacher.”  Out of context, these are just great sentences that caught me unawares each time. Within the frame of this course, it still didn't seem exactly normal but it made sense that these are the maxims gathered from a life of experience working with wildlife. That experience has developed something else, something unique. Compassion is intrinsic to Dr. Johnson’s ethic and how to keep your animals and you as optimal as possible while still achieving your tasks is a lesson taught over and over. For example, when trying to draw blood my frustration was mounting because the animal we worked on started to come out of anesthesia. While still sedated and calm, it began to make noise and move and I was ready to give up. Dr. Johnson came over and said: “Now imagine you’ve been searching for this endangered animal for a year and finally have this one chance to collar it and get vital data from it for the survival of the species. Having this wild rare animal in your hands is a wonderful gift! Putting more drug might threaten the animal so what do you do?” That mind game helped focus my attention and I got the work done but it was the sense of wonder that is innate to Dr. Johnson’s methods that captured my attention. He’s right: having these wild animals in our hands is something special and something worth our compassion and diligence.

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Now, I doped a goat. The previous course Dr. Johnson taught worked on wolves and the next course will work on mountain lions in the Dakota Zoo. I got a goat. To assuage my initial let-down (or more likely, the affront to my manly manliness of not handling a wild beast with giant teeth), I was told that working on ungulates is actually harder and if you can handle a goat, a wolf is no problem.  Those sound like somebody’s last words but I’m not going to push it because you know what? I liked that goat. I’m glad I got to work on that goat. That goat smelled pretty bad when I put the thermometer in his rectum and it smelled even worse when it belched but it was a terrific goat and even better teacher. That goat taught me how to keep an animal with an airway system that seems designed to die without warning alive. That goat taught me how to draw blood through dense hair and while constantly bleating a fragile sound intended to make your heart break for even wishing to take this animal’s blood out of it. Because of Dr. Johnson’s methods I found a weird sense of awe after our goat stumbled onto its hooves, looking dazed like it escaped an alien abduction –because, it, well, kind of did. 

A curious kid from the goat farm that supplied our test animals/teachers

Our team’s goat, and all of the 5 goats our class worked on, got back in the truck feeling, I’m sure, a little confused but without incident otherwise. It was probably an analogous feeling that I and my classmates felt after the week of studying ketamine doses, ideal dart sizes, optimal pressure on our dart guns, and proper compassionate handling of animals that would rather be running as far away from you as possible or finding your jugular with their canines. We walked out of the class with tons of information in our heads and for me a realization that this is not only a skill that professionals employ for critical research and management but also a philosophy that underlies their motives. The course and the experience once again showed me that those who choose this type of work for their profession are tapping into a different source of inspiration than what motivates many others. Conservation professionals who purposefully choose to utilize Dr. Johnson’s ethic of diligent compassion or those that come by it on their own are implementing their skills in some exciting ways. I am looking forward to putting both the practical and the equally important intangible skills I learned into practice.

You can find Dr. Johnson’s course and company on his website and Facebook:  http://www.wildliferesources.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/wildlifehandling?fref=ts

For more photos of the class, please visit my Flikr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/118319178@N03/sets/72157649315441424/


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