Working -- Cory Day

--Story by Deepa Bharath; photo by [tk]

HE IS

Taking care of “patients” and “guests”

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

Cory Day has been feeding and cleaning animals since he was a

teenager.

Now 29, he continues to work with pets at the Back Bay Animal

Hospital, where the Newport Beach resident tends to sick animals and also

looks after pet guests at the hospital’s pet motel.

As one of the hospital’s managers, Day says he does “a little bit of

everything.”

“I do anything from feeding and medicating the animals to cleaning the

kennels,” he said.

Day said he has never received any special training or education to do

what he does.

“I don’t believe you need or require any particular training,” he

said. “What’s more valuable in this business is experience.”

LABOR OF LOVE

And Day has lots of it, having been in the business for about 15

years. He came to Back Bay Animal Hospital a year ago, he said.

The most challenging aspect of his job? Communication, he says.

“The animals can’t communicate their problems to us,” Day said. “So we

need to figure out what’s wrong with them and relay that to the owners.”

The pet motel mostly entails maintenance work but gets really busy

during weekends and holidays, he said.

EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT

The interesting part of his job, Day said, is the satisfaction he gets

in seeing “something through from beginning to end.”

“When the animals get here, they’re really sick sometimes, and it’s

nice to see them recover and get healthy,” he said.

Day gets emotionally attached to several of his “patients” too.

“That explains why I have three dogs, two cats and two parrots at

home,” he said. “I end up adopting them when their owners can’t take them

back for whatever reason.”