Alanah Buss, 20, travelled to Costa Rica to take care of injured sloths at the Sloth Sanctuary for two weeks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I didn’t except that going here would teach me a lot about life,” she said. “A trait of the sloths is that they are leisurely, they take their time and enjoy life. This taught me that I need to slow down in my own life sometimes.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buss is a junior at Washington State University, where she studies animal sciences in the hopes of becoming a veterinarian.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I am still deciding what type of vet I’d like to be,” she said. “I’m considering small animal surgery, exotic animals or a zoo vet.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buss has always been an animal lover.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Animals are amazing because they don’t talk back, they give you unconditional love and there’s no drama like there are with humans,” she said. “I remember watching a show called ‘Emergency Vet’ when I was six and that got me hooked, I wanted to be a vet ever since.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buss wanted to go on the trip to Costa Rica after watching videos of sloths.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I thought they were so cute,” she said. “And I knew the experience would help me get into veterinarian school.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buss researched the information on the trip and started saving money.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“She did this all on her own,” said Staci Buss, Alanah’s mother. “I was a nervous wreck waiting to hear that she was okay over there, but I am so proud of her for making it happen for herself. Whenever Alanah has a goal, she goes for it all the way and makes it happen.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Sloth Sanctuary is a 300-acre reserve based in Limon, Costa Rica, where a group of volunteers dedicate themselves to research, rescue and sloth education. Injured sloths are brought into the sanctuary to be cared for and released back into the wild.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Costa Rica is not animal friendly,” Alanah said. “The locals have been known to pour gasoline on animals and set them on fire.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Alanah took care of a sloth that was missing an eye due to children abusing it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It was so hard to see an animal that had been hurt and was in pain,” Alanah said. “But taking care of them and watching them get better felt really good.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Alanah got to feed the sloths and take them on walks. She helped teach baby sloths how to climb and get food.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Sloths are such loving animals,” Alanah said. “This was such a fun trip that taught me a lot.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alanah Buss, 20, travelled to Costa Rica to take care of injured sloths at the Sloth Sanctuary for two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":12349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12348"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}