Christina Petzinger (shown here with Amy) was our intern/volunteer from Tennessee who lived with us this summer. Christina is an Animal Science Major at Berry College in Mt. Berry, Georgia and she helped us more than she will ever know. We were lucky that she found us through the web site and although we really aren’t set up for interns, we gave her an opportunity which she accepted. Initially, she lived in a long term residency motel and drove back and forth from Rockwall every day, then after a couple of weeks we recognized her maturity, character and the fact that she was incurring considerable expense personally just to be at PrideRock, so we made an exception for her and opened our small house up to her. It worked out great and with her being there all the time, we felt things were being taken care of while we were at work. She didn’t have it too bad, sleeping until noon and working from about 3 or 4 p.m. until about 10 p.m. each day except for her day off on Wednesday. Taking advantage of every opportunity presented she was able to visit three other sanctuaries and also spent some time at the Dallas Zoo with the nutritionist, which is her main interest. Most of her life has been spent in the country and working with all kinds of animals but she wanted the big cat experience to complete her work with animals and help her decide if she might want to work with big cats in the future. Christina worked very well, needing little supervision in most taskes. In addition to cleaning pens, feeding and making repairs, she helped build a new cinder block house for Freddie cougar and worked with me on several projects that I needed assistance with. Christina’s presence freed up time for both Carol and me allowing us to: do all the mowing which seemed to take every weekend the first part of the summer; to work more with the wolves; and to get some much needed maintenance completed. Christina made friends with all the animals and seemed to be especially attached to Zoe, Rambo and Nia, I'm sure they felt the same way and were sad to see her leave at summers end. You can see Christina’s You Tube blurb for PrideRock below. This girl worked right out of her boots, I mean they just came apart while she was wearing them. :-)

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