| Tuesday 5th July 2005 |
Another good zoo visit, with an
excellent enrichment programme. Their star otter toy
is a woven bird nestbox, stuffed with hay, containing
a hard boiled egg, hung on elastic string from a branch. Each
otter had one of these. Much fun was had finding and
eating the egg, and afterwards the nests became pond
toys before being finally shredded and added to the
bedding. |
|
| Tuesday 14th June 2005 |
Zoo visits are going well. I
have just been to three excellent zoos, and collected
lots of good and useful information. I am also helping
to convert the IUCN Otter Specialist Group Bulletin
for the web, which is incidentally giving me access
to lots of otter information for KASBAH, as well as
ultimately helping otter scientists and people generally
interested in them. The Bulletin is full of incredibly
interesting stuff, but very few libraries hold it. On
the other hand, anyone can subscribe and get their own
copies for the princely sum of €16 per year. See this
link but the email address is wrong - apply to Arno at
Arno.Gutleb@veths.no. We
will never put the most recent version on the web, so
if you want up-to-date info, subscribe NOW! (<end-advert>
:-) |
|
| Wednesday 16th March 2005 |
Zoo visits have resumed. I
went to the ABWAK Conference at Dudley Zoo on 5th/6th
March and made many excellent new contacts, and grovelled
to people I promised to go to last year and didn't have
time to do. Now I have a string of visits set up starting
this weekend. All I have to do is find the money to
pay for them . . . |
|
| Wednesday 7th December 2004 |
KASBAH UNLEASHED
Long have been the discussions and great the machinations, before
we came to a decision on the way forward. Tossing aside
the PhD process, KASBAH will reform back to its roots, and
I will do the project the way it ought to be done, rather than
the way that will get me a PhD. The Otters come first. The
Bristolians agree, and are sorting out a way I can be attached
to them whilst not being shackled by adminstrative procedures.
Now I can reformulate my workplan to reflect the needs of the Grounded Theory
process, and start visiting zoos again.
"From the ashes of disaster bloom the roses of success" (as
sung in the great film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" which strangely
did not feature otters - I don't know why) |
|
| Friday 19th November 2004 |
KASBAH IN CRISIS
The upgrade review is over and . . . KASBAH will have to undergo
massive changes to fit the pattern for a PhD! Suggestions include
dropping otters in favour of rats or mice or chickens, and
reducing the GT component to a third, duplicating using classical
methods as well. Give up Otters????? |
|
| Friday 29th October 2004 |
I had a mock upgrade review on Wednesday
with Mike and Prof, where I limped through my presentation and
they took it to bits and suggested how to present the project
in a better way. It was very useful and very constructive but
also gruelling (which I guess it should be!). I've sent off a
final version of my Upgrade Report (because we made some decisions
about the number of zoo visits), and Mike will distribute it
to the assessors. The Day of Doom is Friday 19th November . .
. |
|
| Thursday 10th October 2004 |
I've finally done my Upgrade Report
and sent it off! It was hard work trying to do it only one day
a week, so I took two weeks off work, ordered about a ton of
references from the Library, and knuckled down. It was really
interesting, because I didn't have to keep stopping to do other
things, so I could see how the whole thing hangs together and
fits into current animal welfare research. Now I have to go and
see Mike and Prof on 27th October, and have my Upgrade Review
sometime in mid-November.
Since then, I've been to Scarborough Sea Life Centre to do
a day's observations on Eric and Cherry. It was a very cold
and windy day!
|
|
| Friday 27th August 2004 |
I've done more observations at Buckfast.
I think I need to do several sets of observations on each pen
of otters, at different visitor densities just in case this
has an effect.
Still working on my upgrade report.... It's really hard
doing that kind of thing at home. I keep wanting stuff
that is at work, and if I work on it in the office on Mondays
(I work Tuesday to Friday at the lab), there is always
something I need that is at home. Also at work, people
assume I am AT work, and rush over to ask me to "just
have a look at xxxxxxxxx it'll only take a minute" and so
on. And at home, there are always distractions like
something that needs doing that won't take five minutes - and
before you know where you are, the whole day is gone.
Sometimes I wonder if it will ever be finished.
I volunteered to look after the mailing lists for the IUCN
Otter Specialist Group at the conference, and I've set them up
- fortunately this takes very little effort. |
|
| Saturday 31st July 2004 |
Otter Observations are now underway. I decided which of
the behaviours on my otter ethogram are likely to show up
during an observation session, and made a grid for recording
them, with the others categorised as "conspicuous
behaviours" and recorded in notes should they be
seen. Then I had to decide how often to record the
behaviour, and whether to mark down all behaviours seen or
whether to follow specific animals throughout the
session. After some trial and error doing observations
at zoos, I decided that to get an accurate record of what the
animals do, I would have to take observations of specific
animals at one minute intervals, and observations would have
to run from as early in the morning as possible
(realistically, due to public liability insurance, when the
keepers come to work), till as late as possible (again,
because of insurance issues, when the keepers go home).
I will need to do several sets of observations of each otter
pen, at different seasons in case visitor numbers affect
behaviour.
So far, I have collected husbandry information at 8
establishments, and I am happy that my husbandry categories
work for all the different set-ups. I have done
behavioural observations at two establishments, one of which I
have done a repeat visit to.
And Wooo hooo ! CCLRC are going to pay my fees for another
year. |
|
| 2 - 11 June 2004 |
IXth
International Otter Colloquium in Frostburg, Maryland. |
|
| Monday, 2nd May 2004 |
Mike and Prof gave me feedback on
my upgrade report: it needs lots more work done on it
:-( |
|
| Thursday 26th February 2004 |
And so the dimmest person in the
world went to the WRONG PLACE to do her otter talk... I
never got there! Fortunately someone stood in and did an
off the cuff talk. I am so embarrassed. Now I owe
them a free talk next year. I also have enough slides to
do an otter talk any time any where! |
|
| Thursday 22nd January 2004 |
The URC Bloodbath was on 21st
January My talk went well this year, with lots of sensible
questions.
Starting to do slides for the otter talk in February.
I am doing them as a PowerPoint presentation, and then
emailing them to the USA to be made into 35mm slides (cheapest
deal). |
|
| Thursday 8th January 2004 |
I was really hoping to do a lot on
KASBAH over Christmas but I had flu instead :-(
I've just sent what I hope is a suitable upgrade report to
my supervisors, for handing on to the assessors. It's
quite long. . . and not double spaced yet. I've finished
what looks like a workable formal visit protocol as well.
The URC Bloodbath is on 21st January and I'm up first to
talk about my work, so I have to do a PowerPoint presentation
for that.
I've also been asked to do a talk for a local wildlife
group near the end of February, and I will need to slides for
that. |
|
| Wednesday 10th December 2003 |
I have to do my upgrade report to
have the final version in the assessors hands by the end of
the first week in January. Eeek! Because I am very part-time,
this did not have to happen at the end of the first year, like
for most people, but the university is getting restless. I
have to produce 20-30 double-spaced pages as a mini-thesis.
I've also compiled an ethogram for the Asian Small-Clawed
Otter, which is a catalogue of behaviours they display. I can
then use this to create the list of behaviour categories I am
going to observe. |
|
| Friday 21st November 2003 |
I got through my second annual
review! Now I'm concentrating on developing a formal visit
protocol, to enable anyone to follow the way I'm doing the
observations. It's a codification of what I note down when I
visit an otter collection (or "otter farm" as my
supervisors call them!). I've also started working out exactly
what behavioural information I need to collect, and how I will
do it. The hardest part is defining the behaviours - I know
what I mean by "nosing about", but without a live
otter to hand out to people who want to verify my results,
it's a bit hard to explain! |
|
| 10th October 2004 |
The OSG Bulletin came out with MY
paper in it! I am so proud. . . |
|
| Thursday 21st August 2003 |
I've been working on my graduate
upgrade report and I've realised something that probably the
whole world had already noticed - A HORSE IS NOT A WILD
ANIMAL! That makes it a foolish check species to
use. Now I need to decide what to use instead.
I've been asking around about herbivores on the various zoo
listservs, and there have been suggestions of tapirs, eland,
oryx, some kind of gazelle, giraffe or leaf-eating primate,
but the most votes are for zebras. This seems sensible
to me because they have been kept in zoos for a LONG time, so
there is lots of experience, they don't seem to be
particularly hard to keep, they are very much like donkeys or
horses, and there is lots of information available. It
was originally Nick Simpson-Eyre from Chessington who
suggested zebras - thanks, Nick. Prof thought zebras
was good idea. Looking at all the zebra holdings
in the UK, it looks like the Chapmans/Burchells (Equus
burchellii) is the most commonly kept, so that's the one I
will use, although I suspect that the information for the
other species will be so similar as to be just as useful. |
|
| Thursday 14th August 2003 |
I went on a jolly zoo visit to
Chessington World of Adventure, to see Nick Simpson-Eyre again
and ask yet more questions about the Asian Small-Claws there,
Madonna and Guy, who have just had their second litter (born
on 8th August).
Excitingly, Arno Gutleb has written back to say my paper has
been accepted for the IUCN Otter
Specialist Group Bulletin, and will be appearing in the
October issue. Hooray! |
|
| Tuesday 12th August 2003 |
Crikey! I hadn't realised it
was so long since I updated this (shame, shame). All
manner of things have been happening. I gave my talk on
KASBAH at the laughingly-named "Bloodbath" where I
got off lightly with three quarters of an hour's questioning,
much of it on the philosophy of science. Where is my can
of "Philosopher-Away!" repellent? I've made
some more zoo visits, applied for a travel grant from the Universities
Federation for Animal Welfare, which has been granted
(hoorah!), been bitten by Bertie Otter, had numerous happy
days playing with Daphne's otters, and been to the European
Otter Conference on Skye. At the moment, I am doing
my report for upgrade from "unnamed postgraduate research
degree" to PhD, but it's going on a bit. Every time
I think I've finished a section, I realise something new needs
to go in, or I need to rejig the whole thing. Bah!
I didn't get round to doing the behavioural observations this
winter due to idleness. On the positive side, I
submitted a paper to the IUCN Otter Specialist Group Bulletin
which is currently being peer-reviewed. Fingers, toes
and little paws crossed. . . |
|
| Friday 20th December 2002 |
KASBAH has evolved! It is now an
evaluation of certain IT methods as welfare tools, but the
otters are still involved up to the hilt! I gave a talk on the
project to other PhD students in Cardigan in October, and I've
visited lots more zoos to collect data. I have to revisit them
all in the New Year to do some behavioural studies as as way
of getting the otters' opinion of their environment. I've
re-designed my thesis again! I also ran out of money trying to
pay for all the trips, so I'm going to apply for a small
project grant to cover the travel and accommodation. I'm
looking forward to Christmas to get some work done on the
project - I've started the first analysis, but the method I am
using requires repeated analyses. I'll be visiting Daphne and
her otters after Christmas, for fun with furries! Merry
Christmas and an Ottery New Year! |
|
| Tuesday 17th September 2002 |
I had a meeting with one of my
supervisors to discuss my annual report, and review where
KASBAH is and where it is going. I have to do a longer report
by around Christmas for the upgrade from MSc to PhD, for which
I need to have done a preliminary analysis. To do that, I need
to have more data, so I have a packed schedule of visits
ahead! Last weekend I visited somewhere new; upcoming visits
are to places I've already been to (so I can make sure my
current list of questions is answered), and some new ones. By
the beginning of November, I hope to have enough to start
analyzing it. |
|
| Friday 2nd August 2002 |
In the last few months, I have done
some more on my thesis, and visited some more places to gather
information. I have also been meeting specialist vets who
handle otters, and contacting useful people in Germany and the
USA. I need to get enough information from people who own
otters to start analysing it, which means quite a lot, or I
will have to revise my analysis every time I visit somewhere
new. Visits are difficult at the moment because it is the
height of the tourist season, so staff are busy and
accommodation is hard to get. |
|
| Thursday 23rd May 2002 |
Phew! They didn't hate it! The
questions passed muster - I need to find a victim to try them
out on now. The skeleton is obviously just that, skeletal.
Amongst many other things, I have to do some work on
explaining how a mass of information such as that gained from
the questions can be handled systematically. It's not so easy
to explain because I do it all the time professionally, and
sometimes, it's hard to remember how you learnt to do it
following formal rules when you do it on instinct now! Of
course, the references mostly arrived after the event. Still,
on with the show. |
|
| Wednesday 8th May 2002 |
Did a first draft of my skeleton
thesis, and Structure Interview questions, and sent it to
Professor Webster and Dr Mendl for review. It's pretty
skeletal except the section on Natural History of Asian
Small-Clawed Otters, which I've just done for Otterjoy.
Nervous - it's the first thing I've written for them. |
|
| Monday 18th February 2002 |
Professor Webster, Dr Mendl and I
met to discuss progress, problems and next steps. I have to
produce a skeleton outline of my thesis, with paragraphs
fleshing out the sections, by the end of April. I also have to
produce a first draft of the list of questions I am asking
keepers, sorted into categories, with indications of the
reason for asking those questions.
At the Open Day at the Berkshire Agricultural College at
Burchetts Green last weekend, I met Bruce Berry from the New
Forest Owl Sanctuary again. They are currently rearing a baby
short-claw, and have several others, some newly come from
Malaysia. He is interested in KASBAH and says visit anytime. |
|
| Thursday 7th February 2002 |
I went to the postgrad workshop on
Animal Behaviour at Bristol. It was really good, and I met
several very helpful people. Some of the talks were extremely
interesting, especially about PIGS and their preferences. One
was right over my head, about population dynamics, with lots
of algebra in. Kindly, someone there gave me a horrible cold,
which has been going on relentlessly for the last three weeks,
which has rather knocked my schedule sideways - I have got
some programming done, but none of the site revisits I wanted
to do.
Major excitement for me - I wrote to Klaus-Peter Koepfli,
of Koepfli &
Wayne (1998) and he wrote back, was really helpful, and
also said he liked OtterJoy, especially the Historical Otters!
I was very happy.
I've ordered some books from the US on fur farming, which
were written in 1909 and 1923 respectively; whilst I don't
want to see otters in fur farms, I do want to find out how
they kept them in the trials that I knew from other sources
had taken place.
I need to write a project description for KASBAH, derived
from the proposal, but including modifications that have
happened since then. |
|
| Wednesday 9th January 2002 |
Over Christmas, I have started
designing some tables for the database. At present these are
the ones that I need to store information from site visits in.
The database is MySQL on my secure KASBAH website. Although
I've written applications using (and been DBA on!) SQL/DS,
INGRES, ORACLE and SQLServer, this is a new one to me. So far
it seems fine though.
I am going to a postgraduate workshop in Bristol on
23rd/24th January, and I want to combine this with revisiting
the establishments in the West County over the succeeding
weekend.
I had a bit of a panic over Christmas that I had taken too
much on this quarter, but when I looked at the list I had set
for myself, it no longer seems so over-facing! The big problem
is fitting my job in - the KASBAH stuff is so much more
interesting, I don't really want to stop doing it and think
about the work that pays the bills! |
|
| December 19th 2001 |
Have started analysing the
information I got from the West Country to see how it blobs
together and what things are related to what. I need to do
this to discover what questions to ask! I've also bought some
more web hosting for a secure, password-protected site for the
actual project, where confidential stuff can be put for access
by me and my supervisor, Dr Mendl. This is where the meat of
KASBAH will be. I have also decided on coding conventions for
building the IT infrastructure and I will have to build a data
dictionary (boring but saves effort in the long term).
The paperwork from Bristol has caught up and I have
accepted the offer (which I got on 21st November) of a
postgrad place starting on 1st November! So it's all settled. |
|
| November 8th 2001 |
Just got back from visiting lots of
collections in the West Country that have otters. The places I
went to seemed very interested and happy to help. Gathered a
lot of useful information, and I am starting to see what
questions I should be asking. All the places I went to agreed
that I could come back soon and find out more. |
|
| October 11th 2001 |
Met Professor Webster and Dr Mendl
at Langford, for a formal interview to decide whether they
would accept me for postgraduate research. They were very
interested in the wider applications of KASBAH, and the
intention to create a general tool that could, for example, be
used to help with Animal Welfare Research. They decided to
accept my application, initially for an MSc, but if the
generalised aspects of the work prove possible, it will be
reregisterd for a PhD (this is the way all further degrees are
handled at Bristol). Professor Webster said he would send all
the paperwork to the graduate entry people at the University
immediately.
I am now officially an extra-mural graduate student
of Bristol University Vet School! - if I can find my degree
certificate.... |
|
| 3rd October 2001 |
All my paperwork and referees
letters have arrived at Professor Webster; he invited me to
come for a formal interview with him and Dr Mendl on 11th
October. |
|
| September 2001 |
Filled in the applications forms
and sent them to Professor Webster, along with a shorter
version of the KASBAH proposal for attachment to the forms.
Organised my referees to send their letters to him too. CLRC
wrote to Bristol University stating that they should be
invoiced for the tuition fees. |
|
| 30th August 2001 |
Professor Webster emailed to say
that Dr Mendl was also very interested, but would like to meet
me to discuss the "do-ability" of the project. He
asked me to fill in an application form, produce a one-page
condensed version of the proposal, and find some referees, and
for all the paperwork to be sent to him directly, rather than
to the Graduate Entry Office. |
|
| 3rd July 2001 |
Went to Langford (University of
Bristol Vet School) and met Professory Webster. He had not had
time to read the full version, but was still very interested
on the grounds of the very short outline in my original email.
He suggested that he contact Dr M. Mendl as a potential
co-supervisor on the project, but this meant a delay as he was
not available until August. Everything sounds promising! |
|
| 27th June 2001 |
Sent Professor Webster the URL for
the new, improved version of the KASBAH proposal with
less IT jargon and more animal-oriented information in than
the one that went through our departmental machinery. |
|
| 6th June 2001 |
Having had no response from Oxford
(not even an acknowledgement), emailed Professor A.J.F.
Webster at University of Bristol to see if he was interested.
He replied almost immediately to say that it sounded like the
kind of thing that his people at Bristol were interested in
and suggested that we should meet. |
|
| 8th May 2001 |
Wrote to Professor D.W. MacDonald
at Oxford asking if he was interested in my project and/or
could recommend a potential supervisor to contact. |
|
| 2nd May 2001 |
KASBAH got its trendy name and
acronym thanks to me, 'Tony and the OED! |
|
| April 2001 |
Looking into the research interests
of UK university staff to try to find a suitable supervisor.
Established a shortlist of five. |
|
| 16th March 2001 |
My Department at CLRC, ITD, agreed
to pay tuition fees for postgraduate study on my project, and
support me with the usual facilities at RAL - PC, printers,
library etc. They agreed with the suggestion that it would be
better to do it in my own time, rather than do formal day
release as this reduces the stress levels by removing the
pressure to complete. They also agreed to supply me with
formal letters of introduction if required, for example, for
giving to managers of wildlife parks to indicate that this is
a fully supported, 'official' project. |
|
| Early March 2001 |
With help from 'Tony Conway,
produced a project proposal for Departmental management to
find out if they would be prepared to support me in a further
degree by research. This was favourably received by my
Division Head, Dr. Ken Robinson, who took it forward into the
Departmental machinery. |
|
| December 2000 |
Mentioned my idea to my former
Supervisor, Stephen Cook, now a research fellow at Reading
University. He was keen that I should pursue it, and suggested
that if I were going to do it, I should find out if any
university would be willing to register it for a higher degree
by research - this would have the benefit of a formal academic
backing when approaching wildlife parks and so on. Discussed
this also with 'Tony Conway, and Dr. Damian MacRandal, at CLRC
(where I work), and they agreed that this was well-worth
investigating. |
|
| Autumn 2000 |
Conceived the idea of a computer
system that put together information about animals in the
wild, welfare information from animal behaviourists and
observations by keepers to indicate how to manipulate
conditions in captivity to produce happy otters. This was
prompted by a visit to a zoo keeping Asian Small-Clawed Otters
which looked thoroughly miserable, when I realised that I
actually had no way of knowing this apart from gut instinct. |
|
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