An essential part of our health assessment of each individual turtle is performing a physical exam! Physical exams can give us a lot of information, so they are therefore very important. While performing a physical exam, it is important that you maintain the same process each time, so that you do not miss anything. It [...]
Working dogs play an important role in many aspects of our society. The canine intelligence, trainability, and sense of smell is unmatched, which makes working dogs great assets to their human counterparts. In your daily life, you may see service dogs or police dogs, but have you ever heard of a turtle dog? In the [...]
Our first week in the field was scheduled at Ayers Sand Prairie State Nature Preserve and the Nachusa Grasslands in northwestern IL. This coming week, Maddie and I will be going back to these sites to recapture some telemetry turtles that we will be following over the entire active season this year, until they go [...]
This week, we want to introduce you to “The Turtle Dog Man,” Mr. John Rucker! John is from North Carolina and before training a famous team of turtle dogs, he was a high school English teacher. However, when visiting his family’s North Carolina home, his dogs started bringing him turtles on his land and he [...]
Monday: Today we set the stage for the whole week! Paul and Paige lead the way to set up our turtle traps. They both have a keen eye for identifying the best location and selecting the best bait to catch our shelly friends! After all the traps are set up we head back to the [...]
Howdy, everyone! Last week we told you a little bit about us. This week, we want to introduce you to our biggest helpers in the field, the turtle dogs! They are Boykin Spaniels who are owned and trained by Mr. John Rucker. They go into the field with us for every Ornate and Eastern Box [...]
SIDEQUEST! All WEL Fellows report to DuPage county for a all effort sampling week! This week was interesting for Jaime and I! Unlike normal where we spend the entirety of our week at sites around cook county, we were sent out to DuPage to assist in their summer sampling! Jaime and I spent half of [...]
This week, we focused on trapping at a headstart release site. We found a bunch of Blanding’s there last year, and I was excited to see who we would re-trap! Javelis and I set out with 20 traps each and went to four different ponds. It was fun seeing new faces, such as Pineapple (who [...]
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(Engineer & Model: Javelis from Lake County) How does one carry multiple traps into a marsh without it dragging and getting caught in the brush? Enter Javelis from Lake County to offer wisdom and guidance. She strung several small traps together via a colorful and durable rope strap that formed the Trapper Purse. And let [...]
