Teddy the Community Donkey Animals at Work

Hey, everybody, welcome to Animals At Work,

the show that brings you... animals at work.

Around the world there are millions of animals that have jobs.

This is the show that brings you

the most extraordinary, bizarre and unusual animals at work.

Coming up next on Animals At Work...

Teddy the donkey trains for his first day...

Easy! Teddy!

..and has a lot to say about it.

TEDDY BRAYS

Border Collie cross Rocky sings for his supper.

ROCKY HOWLS Well, howls.

And this elephant causes a real stink at work.

ALL: Ugh!

Hi, and welcome to the show.

Now if you're anything like me you'll be a sucker

for home deliveries.

But my postman, well all I can say is hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.

He always turns up late

but in Britain's countryside

there's a brand new shopping ass-istant.

HE LAUGHS Ass-istant. Get it?

I don't write this stuff,

but four legs will hopefully be better than my postie's two.

He's a little donkey who's taken on a heavy load,

and Animals At Work is joining him along his dusty road.

First off, we're going to the village of Chalford in England.

Nearly 100 years ago, the villagers of Chalford

had their shopping brought to their front doors.

They didn't have cars back then to get up the steep hills

so they gave the job to a donkey.

Let's call him Ned. Ned the donkey did the job for many years

and when he retired, no-one thought to replace him.

In modern day Chalford, the hills are still as steep

and the invention of cars has not made the paths any wider!

The villagers still have to carry their own shopping

and they are sick of it.

They have decided it's time...

Bring back the donkey!

Step forward, Teddy.

This is Teddy.

Teddy's got a big job in front of him, yeah, to become

a professional delivery donkey.

When Anna met Teddy, he was living at the donkey sanctuary

after an unsuccessful career as a beach donkey.

Anna gave Teddy a new home and for the last five months,

he's been living the good life!

# Upside, inside out

# She's livin' la vida loca

# She'll push and pull you down

# Livin' la vida loca

# Her lips are devil red

# And her skin's the colour mocha

# She will wear you out

# Livin' la vida loca, all right!

# Livin' la vida loca. #

KISSING

Come on.

Teddy's really landed on his hooves with Anna.

She sees to his grooming...

Just groom him in the direction of his fur

and make sure I do his legs as well cos they get muddy.

..his food and drink, and generally waits on him hand and hoof.

What you've got to do with one of these is

pick out all the mud that gets stuck inside the hoof

and he also can bite you while you're doing this.

It's not an easy task.

But all this is about to change.

Teddy is in for a rude awakening when he finds out that soon

Anna is going to turn from his maid to his manager.

His new job is delivery donkey to the village

and he has to learn to wear saddlebags

so that he can carry the townspeople's shopping

up the steep hills to their home.

But Teddy has really kicked back while he's been living with Anna,

and her plan for his new job may not go as smoothly as she hopes.

Teddy can be quite unpredictable. Ow. Stop it.

He's only four, he's got a lot of energy so he will get, you know,

a little bit unruly, yeah.

Come on! Because he's a teenager.

Oi!

So, yeah, it's really important that we train Teddy and get it right.

That is going to be the challenge for us.

When Teddy came to live with Anna, she soon realized that he needed

a playmate for all those lonely days frolicking in the fields.

So, she introduced him to Chester.

They bonded like brothers and this new job

will be the longest amount of time that they have ever been apart.

Chester's the little brother who follows the big brother around

and he will do absolutely everything that Teddy does.

They hate being separated.

Although there's no denying that Anna is Teddy's biggest fan,

she does struggle when it comes to managing this pampered mule.

I'm training Teddy pretty much from scratch.

When I got him first I wasn't sure if he was up for the job

because I didn't know him

so the character's really important and that he'll get on with people.

So it's really still early days with the training.

Physically, he's strong and also character-wise,

he's a wonderful donkey.

Munchy, munchy.

But he's got a weakness... he's a pig.

He is quite food obsessed.

He's not fat but he shouldn't put on any more weight. Good boy!

Later, we'll find out if Teddy can leave his pampered past behind him.

He might not get much further than this, to be honest.

And make a success of his delivery days.

Now we're off to St John's on the east coast of Canada.

This is Rocky, a two-year-old Border Collie cross.

He lives in St John's in Newfoundland,

with his co-star Damian.

Damian and Rocky are local celebrities.

I think I recognise your dog.

-You've probably seen him on TV.

-On TV.

Have a great evening everyone and we will see you again tomorrow.

Take it away Rocky.

When Rocky is not singing for his supper,

he goes on local TV to raise awareness for animal welfare.

ROCKY HOWLS

Rocky's special talent is singing along

to Damian playing the harmonica!

I think it definitely makes a difference.

Him being on the air singing, again it encourages people

to get involved, to donate money.

Howling is a way of communicating over long distances.

When Rocky howls along to music,

he is interpreting the sound as another dog howling

and he is talking back.

But howling is not always a good sign.

If a dog howls with no accompaniment, it could be a sign that he's lonely.

But this isn't the case for Rocky!

His radio and TV performances

have been going so well

that tonight, for the first time ever,

Rocky is going to sing with Damian in his stage debut at a local pub.

This is the big time!

Very nervous for Rocky, extremely nervous for Rocky.

I never get nervous but this is nerve-racking.

He's a bit wary, there's such a crowd of people.

APPLAUSE

As he takes to the stage for the first time

it looks like Rocky has a touch of stage fright.

DAMIAN PLAYS HARMONICA

The pressure is too much for Rocky and he's forgotten his lines.

Damian needs to do something drastic to get rid of Rocky's stage fright

and get him to perform.

Come on, Rocky!

THEY HOWL: How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?

Looks like rock star Rocky is a born performer,

and he's not leaving tonight until he's given his fans an encore!

We've been surfing the net to see what animals get up to

on their days off.

Take Sharky the pit bull and his dinky duckling mates

from Texas in America.

They like to relax by the pool on a hot summer's day!

Friends come in all shapes and sizes!

We're heading back to England, to the village of Chalford.

Teddy the teenage donkey

has been living a perfectly pampered life

since moving in with his adoring manager, Anna.

That is, until she signed him up

for a heavyweight job delivering groceries.

His hooves will go where wheels fear to tread.

Today is the first time Teddy will wear a trial saddle

and attempt to climb the highest spot in the village, Rack Hill.

It's time to introduce Teddy to his two newest helpers.

Elle and Mim.

Elle and Mim live in the highest house on the tallest hill

so they are very keen for Teddy to learn his trade and save their legs!

He's not used to this so what we need,

do you want to pick it up and just let him smell it.

Accepting any burden will be new to Teddy,

so his training involves

adding weights to his back gently and evenly and not all on his spine.

Place this on his back, and what's really important

is that it's done evenly so that it's not off balance.

When properly distributed,

this diva donkey can carry weights of up to 50 kilograms.

That's over 100 bags of sugar!

Sweet!

It would be great because it would save...

It's always very hard to bring a veg box up. It weighs a tonne.

Good boy.

I've always wanted to have a horse or donkey

come to my house cos I've always loved them.

Yeah, she really likes them.

So we're gonna lead Teddy down to the village, down to Chalford

and I hope we're gonna take him up Rack Hill.

-That's where you live, isn't it?

-Yeah.

He seems a bit nervous already,

but like any teenager, who knows what's going on in his head!

Bye, Chester. Bye-bye.

Don't get too upset. He'll be back.

Good boy.

In three months, he'll be, like, perfect.

I think he might do pretty well.

It's a long walk into the village

and it's a long time since Teddy's tender little hooves

have trotted so far!

If it rains, the game is up.

Donkeys hate the wet as their fur is not oily enough to be waterproof,

and Teddy will stay stubbornly undercover until it stops.

Or even worse...

If he sees other horse poo on the floor

he'll have to stop and sniff it.

He's really interested to see who's been past here before?

Who is it?

It's time for Teddy's ultimate training test.

So up here is the path that we will be taking him on

and this will be part of his training programme.

I'm gonna try and get him to go up there

but I'm not sure he wants to go right now. Come on.

Do you want to give him a pat, girls?

He might not get much further than this.

The training was going well.

Let's hope there won't be a waiting list for deliveries any time soon.

He's fed up. He wants to go home.

Will Teddy's first delivery go according to plan,

or will he make a fool of himself?

Teddy? Easy! Teddy!

People often complain that their careers stink

but get ready to meet an elephant that might say the same thing.

Mind you, he might have some choice words to say to his career advisor

because his job is literally toilet. TOILET FLUSHES

And if you don't believe me, get ready as we travel to Thailand

to meet an animal at work you're never gonna forget.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go do a really big job of my own.

Now we're going all the way to Thailand in Asia.

Address books, bookmarkers, photo albums,

all goods made from paper.

But these aren't products you can pick up in any stationer's.

Because they're all made from...

elephant dung!

This is Some Sei Ouu

and he lives here in the Thailand Elephant Conservation Centre.

The centre was opened almost 40 years ago

to care for sick and injured elephants.

Constant eating meant that the elephants' poop

was creating more than just a headache for the workers.

Their digestive systems are very inefficient.

Maybe 40, 45% what they take in goes into their bodies.

The rest comes out undigested.

PHRRRT!

We've got 50 elephants.

We get an incredible amount of dung every day,

to the point where it was becoming a really serious problem.

The elephants live on a healthy vegetarian diet of leaves and plants.

An elephant eats about 5% of its body weight

every day in fresh food.

After all that food, the two and a half tonnes of poop

that was produced every day used to be a big stink.

That is, until they invented a system to turn the poop into paper.

For anyone thinking this is a new idea, it's not.

The idea was discovered in France in 1841 and Napoleon III

made paper from the dung of the Royal horses

in a factory at the gates of Paris.

Nothing so regal here in Thailand.

Some Sei Ouu is one of the centre's best poop providers.

At full elephant maturity he weighs in at an incredible

4,500 kilograms.

That's this many school children.

And he eats 250 kilograms of food each day.

That's this many kids.

And he poops out the equivalent of this many kids - 50 kilos!

Which if you count all 50 elephants amounts to the weight

of this many school kids, plus our soundman!

Paper is made up mainly of cellulose, which comes from plants.

And elephant dung is 80% cellulose,

which makes it a perfect starting point for paper!

Most people's first reaction is either mild disgust or snickering

or whatever but then when you stop and think about it,

it makes great sense because what is paper but fibre?

And what part of the elephant dung do you use?

You use the fibre.

So what is the recipe for turning poop to paper?

To start with, first collect some freshly produced elephant poo.

A few shovelfuls should do it.

Mix with water to make a smelly liquid slurry.

And remember, make sure you mix it well.

On the first day it's a bit gross

but after a while you get used to it.

Then boil - we don't want any bugs left in it!

Though it doesn't look any cleaner.

Once well boiled, it's bleached to give it a better colour.

Then we need to break it down.

The thick soup-like mixture is then poured on to screens

and checked for any bits and pieces...

Sometimes when I do this I find watermelon seeds and pumpkin seeds.

..before finally allowed to bake for three or four days

in the scorching sunlight.

And it's very popular with the children,

who can't quite believe that it's made from poop.

Just like paper, it doesn't have any smell.

It's just normal like paper.

But it's all in a day's work for Some Sei Ouu.

We've been looking out for your home videos

of what your animals get up to on the weekend.

Take Elsie the sheep as she gets a mutton make-over.

# I love the way she fills her clothes

# She looks just like them girls in Vogue

# I love the way she plays it cool... #

From frumpy to fleecy.

Good show, Elsie!

Now, we're flying to Switzerland in Europe.

These are the Swiss Alps, famous for some of the world's best ski resorts.

And this is not a new European fashion in scarves

but Yukon, a five-year-old American-Canadian White Shepherd.

He's one of the best mountain rescue dogs in the world.

He's one of the only dogs ever to dig out a living avalanche victim.

This is an incredibly important job, as avalanches

in the Swiss Alps alone claim around 150 lives per year.

Yukon works alongside Peter,

and like most Shepherds he makes a great companion.

He has all the qualities a rescue dog needs.

He's intelligent, hard working and has a great sense of smell.

And at 27 kilos, about the weight of four bowling balls,

Yukon is also portable - and that's very important for their work.

Every day, Yukon and Peter scour the mountains

to check that the tracks are clear

and the snow is firm enough to ski on.

But their main job is to save the victims of accidents

on the mountains.

They are on call 24/7.

Each year in the Davos area, there are up to 1,500 accidents

and our purpose is to get them to hospital quickly.

This is no ordinary job for Yukon and Peter.

The bond they share means that working together

is a treat for both of them.

-TRANSLATION :

-The relationship I have with my dog is very close.

Yukon is like the best working partner.

Outside the job, I can say he's a very, very good friend.

We're always together, day and night.

In the four years Yukon and Peter have worked together,

they have survived 14 avalanche missions.

Avalanches are one of the biggest mountain dangers to humans.

They can be triggered by snowfall, the sun and people.

Avalanches can reach up to 300 kilometres per hour -

that's faster than a high-speed train

and can contain over 10,000,000 tonnes of snow.

Survival rates in avalanches are low.

If you're caught in one, it's unlikely that you'll get out alive.

But one rescue mission in particular stands out -

their search for snowboarder Lukas Lohner.

One sunny December morning, Lukas had been snowboarding for a few hours

before he realised that he was late for an appointment in town.

He then made his dangerous mistake, he decided to take a shortcut.

As soon as he left the marked trail, Lukas entered avalanche territory.

Lukas didn't even hear it coming down the mountain.

Suddenly the ground was pulled

from under his feet.

Lukas was sliding down the mountain

on a huge boulder of snow.

Lukas was buried under five feet

of snow and still conscious.

All he could hear was the sound

of his own heart.

It was another 15 minutes before the alert reached Peter and Yukon

back at the rescue centre.

And by the time the helicopter touched down,

30 minutes had already passed.

Speed is crucial at times like this

because survival rates drop dramatically as time goes on.

Peter knew the chances of finding Lukas alive

were dropping by the minute,

and the pair set out to work combing the area for a scent.

With built in four-leg drive,

a dog can cover terrain

eight times faster than a human.

Yukon searched for pools

of human scent

rising up through the snow pack.

50 minutes had passed

since the avalanche buried Lukas

when Yukon found a scent

and started digging.

With Peter's help,

Yukon found Lukas alive

and still conscious.

A miracle.

And that's why Yukon is

one of the best mountain rescue dogs

in the world.

It's back to Chalford in England.

Hello.

-Today is Teddy's first day on his new job.

-Come on.

Come on, it's your big day.

Pampered and plump, adored by his younger brother Chester,

his manager Anna has complete faith in him to perform perfectly.

So, today is Teddy's first proper delivery day

and we're really excited about that

and so we're gonna take him down to the village,

with his panniers on and get some groceries from the shop

and deliver them.

This is the beginning of the rest of your delivery life today.

What do you think of that?

Today is D-day and Teddy will be delivering at Elle and Mim's house

at the top of Rack Hill.

All these years they've been taking their shopping up

so they're going to get things taken up by the donkey this time

so they won't have to worry, will they, Teddy?

You're going to do all that.

Well, I'm a little bit nervous.

Umm, I hope it will all go to plan.

We might have a few little moments.

Come on, Teddy.

While Anna takes Teddy to get ready for part one of his mission,

what's Chester got to say about it?

CHESTER BRAYS

TEDDY BRAYS

Meanwhile in the village, Elle and Mim have done their shopping

and are waiting for it to be picked up.

So it's time for Teddy to saddle up for the job in hand.

I feel very proud about taking him out for the first delivery.

I think he's gonna do a great job, aren't you, Teddy?

Well, buenos dias!

It's time for Senor Teddy to conquer the hills

and fulfil his role as an eco-delivery shopping service.

TEDDY BRAYS

-He sounds enthusiastic enough...

-Walk on.

-..but maybe not.

-Walk on.

Still waiting.

You know what needs to be done.

Come around here.

Teddy? Easy! Teddy!

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Easy. Teddy.

Easy. Teddy.

-No. Teddy.

CRASHING

Whoa! There's a donkey on the loose and a job on the line

and Elle and Mim are still waiting.

Come on.

He's a bit nervous at the moment.

You don't normally do that, do you?

Ever forgiving, Anna manages to get Teddy back on track,

and with saddles reattached keeps him plodding on to complete phase one -

pick up the shopping.

I have to pull.

He should really be walking without any tension on my rope.

I don't think the weight's an issue,

it's just whether he wants to go or not.

Come on.

The girls have now been waiting so long for Teddy to show up

that they're starting to get suspicious about his whereabouts.

The path isn't that steep.

I think he'll be OK because the donkeys a hundred years ago

managed to go up.

With all her donkey training expertise proving fruitless

against Teddy's mulish behaviour, Anna resorts to bribery.

You'll like it here cos they give you apples. Yes.

Look who's here.

I got Teddy to come and deliver your shopping for you.

Anything heavy in one side we have to...

Part one of the mission is complete!

-Teddy has the shopping.

-Look at that!

Now he needs to avoid any more embarrassment

in front of his new customers and get that shopping up that hill!

OK, if you think the panniers...

It'll be fun for you to see him arriving at your door

with the groceries.

We're gonna go up the hill now.

This is the first trial of the steep paths.

He's not sure about that, he's not sure.

He's on his way.

Wow!

I didn't think he'd like the steps.

He just wants to eat something really, that's all.

Up we go. Come on.

Not far to go now.

Let's go.

-Walk on.

-Come on, Teddy!

-Good boy.

-There you are.

-Thank you.

-Thanks, girls.

Teddy has made it up the hill!

Well done, Teddy.

Do you want to give him an apple to say thanks?

-I think he was really good.

-Wasn't he?

I'm happy because I didn't think that he'd make it up there.

Now he's up and running,

this is one job that he will hold down for donkey's years!

Oh, Teddy, you're brilliant. Well done.

You get a big hug, big hug, yes. Well done.

Hey, Daisy, wanna hear a joke?

What do you call a donkey with one leg?

A wonky donkey.

Wait, wait. Come here, come here.

I got a better one.

What do you call a donkey with one leg and one eye?

A winky, wonky donkey.

What do you call a donkey with diarrhoea, one eye and one leg?

A stinky, winky, wonky donkey.

I know, I'm sorry. No, don't go away.

I'm not finished yet.

I thought those up on the hoof. DAISY BRAYS

Subtitles by Russell Morrison Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]