This Dog Raises Baby Cheetahs and Wallabies and Ocelots

Blakely has the most difficult job in Cincinnati Zoo. He has to play with babies all the time. He's never shown any aggression or snapped. If he gets upset, kind of like any mom would, he just leaves the room. You are so cute. My name is Dawn Strasser and we're at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Blakely is a five-year-old Australian shepherd. We got him from a rescue and I use him in the nursery as a nanny or a companion dog. This is about you when you're taking a nap. Blakely's here for the main purpose of teaching the babies the correct animal cues as they grow up so when they are introduced back to their own kind, they know what appropriate behavior is. He teaches them how to play, how to interact. I can tell him no, don't bite me, but I'm not an animal and I don't give the same cues that he can. So we make a great team. Blakely has worked with cheetahs, ocelots, otakins, battered foxes, a warthog, wallabies, to name a few. He's working with four baby cheetahs right now. It's been a long seven weeks for him with these little cheetah cubs and he's, I think, tired because he's on alert for 24 hours a day. If they start making too much noise, he'll come and get us like, something's not right, something's not right. He's kind of like a second set of eyes for us too. A lot of times they still recognize each other, like Dale the otakin he raised, when they see each other, Dale will still run up in front and grunt at him and he'll kind of jump up on the wall and it's kind of like, hey, how you doing? Thank you. Yeah, well, I like to think I have an office, but I'm pretty sure it's not. I don't think it is.