Friday, January 11, 2008

Training Baby Elephants #9


Scan000010708, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

So eventually Ben and Darlene took "Anna May" and "Baby Ned" on the Big Apple Summer Tour where they immediately painted up the carriage and made a feathered hat for "Anna May"
Meanwhile we took "Peggy", "Toto" and "Dutch" to Catskill Game Farm where later Barbara and I took some time off leaving Chico, Karen, Shannon and Dalilah to run the shop.
During our brief vacation we attended the CHS Convention in Columbus where Cliff Vargas invited me to come to Californioa in the Fall and help Rex do some stuff with the elephants. A story I have bored you with before.

By the way the interview went well, now that I think about it, I never did one that didn't. So it is just a matter of how it is presented.

Posted by Buckles at 1/11/2008 06:23:00 AM

2 comments:

Bob Cline said...

Can you tell us anything about Dutch?
Bob

11 January, 2008 16:08
Buckles said...

Poor Dutch. We were showing Albany, Ga. in 1985 for Hanneford when your namesake Bob Cline visited from the Cheraw Zoo nearby.
He said they had an elephant they wanted to find a home for since they were getting a young African.
On the way out of town we stopped by the zoo and loaded her up and as we were pulling out Bob yelled, "Her name is "Pepper" and she can't lay down!"
I thought he meant she was never trained to lay down but when we unloaded her at the next spot I realized that she had a chronic disability and couldn't lay down.
For some reason I changed her name to "Dutch" and lugged her around the country for about five years. On one occasion Tommy H. had to have a 3 ring display and much to Shannon's dismay, he had to walk her around the ring endlessly while she carried a basket in her mouth containing a stuffed bunny rabbit, that was the extent of her performing skills.
While at Catskill Game Farm in the summer of '89 she made a turn for the worse and the local Vet recommended she be euthanized which he did.

12 January, 2008 08:18

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