Dolphin Encounter

Makkiah was invited by his pediatric pulmonolgist to go out and see the Navy dolphins. Unfortunately the doctor didn't make it as he was on-call at the PICU up at the hospital. We missed seeing him.

Another doctor came and took 3 families down to the docks to see the dolphins.

First they brought one of the dolphins up out of the water onto this large mat that they use to transport them out into the open water for training. Makkiah was the only one of the three kids brave enough to go into the boat and feed the dolphin. He even touched the dolphins tongue!

Then they put the dolphin back into the water so he didn't dry out.

Then they showed the kids how to get the dolphins to do tricks. Makkiah had them spinning in circles, giving high 5, "talking", waving (this entailed getting wet!), jumping, touching his hand with their nose, and playing frisbee. To play frisbee Makkiah would throw the frisbee out into the water and the dolphin would bring it back to him! After each trick Makkiah would throw the dolphin some fish or squid. Sometimes the dolphins would say NO by shaking thier heads when you told them to do a trick!! So much like my children although I must say that the dolphins did listen so much better than my kids most of the time.

Makkiah even got to "pet" the dolphins bellies and see how they train them to do thier exams. It was definetly a fun experience and I'm glad he got to go do it.

I'm putting pictures in my Flickr account and will out a few video clips on Taniyah's page.