USARK Alert: Arlington County, VA

[Crowfingers]

It's really nice to find someone who is respectful in debating these issues. Usually people have such polar opposite views that they are ready to rip each other's throats out. You sound like someone I would take my pets to see. I think licenses would be a good idea for some animals for sure. Are you a rehabber? I'm planning to get a rehab permit in a few years since I love working with wild animals, birds in particular.

Thanks, I try to be respectful as much as possible. Hot heads rarely get listened to.

I've had my rehab permit since 2009, not too difficult to get here in VA, yearly conferences and symposiums help keep everyone up to date on medicine and techniques. It's been rewarding for sure. The hardest part is unlike companion animal medicine, you loose a lot more patients. The state dictates that an animal has to be fully functioning to be released, which can be hard - so if it is too hurt to survive at 100% - you have to put it down. There are also very strict limits on what can be kept in captivity for education animals, so even if you can technically 'fix' them but not enough to let go, sometimes the state denies your request for keeping it for education purposes. Also, many are not ok with captivity and are supper stressed - even if the state approves. If you can handle that, you'll do fine. The survival rates are what usually burn us out first, healthy orphans do ok - things that are actually suffering disease or severe injury can have a harder time of it.

I have a soft spot for predators - I leave the bunnies and squirrels for volunteers and prefer to deal with the birds of prey and reptiles.