Training Without Conflict® 팟캐스트 에피소드 23: Jenifer Zeligs

conference um I'm sure I'm sure there you know like your book The the late book mindfulness fits right in in that same thought process um then the power of relationship and like like every single one it sounds very interesting and um like you're genuinely interest in the animals and the interaction and the behaviors kind of comes secondary as something we do but but it's not about getting the behaviors like this you know cut and dry training first of all thank you so much that was such a gracious and um well very kind uh introduction and I have to say really likewise you know your name has been floating around um my mind and experience from trainers that really admire you that have talked to me about you for years so I feel really privileged and excited to get a chance to talk to you I was thinking about this interview thinking I wonder if I can interview him you know I'm always after I wrote this animal Training 101 uh book which is really that first book is a is really a textbook on animal training and I try to be very um uh unsentimental and unbiased towards my presentation of the Full Art and Science as much as I could find it across the industry in all the different places where people and animals uh work together so that it's got it's sort of a practical um uh textbook yeah that's organized according to goals and then I looked at everything as a pros and cons kind of analysis and I I think you and I um might see that pretty similarly um at least as I as I understand it but I'm always looking to collect um more uh changes to the to the book because it's a living breathing thing and people are inventing people like you at the top are inventing important uh techniques and um deeper understanding uh all the time that needs to be incorporated so take this as a as a invitation to edit the book I'm going to do another Edition so i' be happy to collect things that are missing anyways it's it's AAL adoration Society here in this podcast so that's that's whatever would said yeah I think we we definitely will go back and forth I I I would love that because um yeah I I don't really want this to be a one-sided interview I think I think we have so much to talk that hopefully I I keep some sort of track and don't forget some important things but um I think you asked me um uh about my school so I I started running a um a Animal Care Center at Moss Landing green Laboratories at at California State University I teach at csumb Cal State montere Bay and I still do that now um but during covid the center um got closed down so we had animals at this Center we've had you know domestic animals like horses and dogs but we primarily had

exotic animals seals and sea lions a lot and Birds um and previous to that I worked at like big zoos and I go and consult around for zoos so I have quite a lot of um different Toes or irons in the fires of of different animal training communi so what has happened is the actual Center itself has closed the online animal Training Academy associated with animal training and research as a community is still open and I have students all over the world that run their own programs of different um animal types so I'm still teaching workshops and I'm teaching online um but I'm going into a sort of a semi-retirement phase trying trying to I'm moving to the UK actually I'm moving to Europe where where around do you have you thought about it yet or I'm going to Oxford uh less than a month from now actually my I'm living in an empty house I'm right now I'm in California but I'm in an empty house all of my stuff is making its way through the Panama Canal oh wow to Oxford and if I'm lucky I can I can get a at least a part-time teaching position there um using connection I so if I if I have to see you I have to come to UK now I thought well or we can arrange some kind of uh collaborative Journey on our various because I know you travel all around you never know we could end up in a workshop someplace together so that would be fun wouldn't it very true um how I know this is like almost a a cliche question but it it's always an interesting one because uh everybody has a little different path of how they got involved in in so how how did all started for you like what did the whole animal love it um it's actually a pretty good story I um and I tell the story a little bit in my new book mindful Partners but uh I'll so I'll be brief um but it started for me very very young I got really lucky and I think it it helps because I um I took well what happened was I I was a young girl who loved animals so let's say I was age eight or something and a lot of times when when that happens and my family didn't have a dog okay so that would have been the natural place but what often happens and I think you probably know is is that you get into horseback riding right little girls get into horseback riding if they if they love horses and that's what I did and you know the the instructor tell you how great you are and how you're natural and all this kind of stuff so I thought I was going to be the next Annie Oakley or whatever you know I thought I was I was headed for you know a career in this and then I developed a small allergy to horses it was really minor like I work with horses today but my mother was an immunologist and she

wouldn't let a young girl go through she wouldn't let me because I was young and my immune system was developing she didn't want me exposed to the horses so cut me off and there was a big fight between her and me cuz I was pissed I was going to be the next greatest horse trainer right and uh so what she did she was so loving she found we were part of what's called friends of the National Zoo I lived in the east coast and the Smithsonian National Zoo had a program for the public and she found a course being taught by that was right when animal training was hitting zoos in fact I think there were something like five zoos in the entire United States that had a real formal animal training program and they had just hired a head trainer who came in from scripts um in San Diego who had been working with marine mammals and she was teaching this course on animal training and it was basic bridge and targeting which at that time so this would have been like uh 1978 79 something like that so it's a long time ago and uh that was revolutionary at that time I mean today everybody knows about it but that in 1979 that was revolutionary and especially to take it into the Exotic Animal World and especially zoos aquariums were a little ahead of zoos and so um I took this class with her and I was young and I was I was pretty precocial I was you know I was able to take in the information and I just loved it and I was like the best student even though the class was designed for like um High School schol students and you couldn't volunteer technically until you were like 14 or something like that but I was so C and so I said what can I do you know please let me do something um at the zoo and she she was she was trying to be kind and I think she thought I would just naturally go away and so what she did was she assigned me the job of doing research notes on different collections of animals so she sat me down in front of you know one day it would be the spectacle bears and then it would be the wolves and then it would be the otter and and I I sat there and I took you know 9-year-old person's notes just just you know useless kind of animal observations but I did that for very dedicatedly for like six months and I had to take two Subways and all this to get to the zoo so I was really really dedicated and I think think it it made this um big difference watching collections of animals for hours at a time interacting with each other um I think in the end was like learning to read body language you know how when you're younger you have more of a facility for language learning in general so this was like a different form of language learning this is my

hypothesis about it anyways because the being able to go between species enabled me to kind of become a good listener or you know how they say reading Behavior reading the behavior of what's Happening um was a skill set that I learned kind of by accident and I learned it going between animals anyways I I know I've made this into a long story now like uh but you said uh uh from or or or your Mentor was from San Diego but everything happened on the The Coast or she had been hired yeah she she came over from from the aquarium industry and had just been hired at the zoo in Washington in Maryland and eventually she let me start to volunteer like I can remember I I was able to clean my first bucket sh you know before you were supposed to and and throw fish to the animals and stuff like that you know and help out cleaning up after bears and things and I just stuck around and then they allowed me to be the primary trainer on a bunch of animals because I was dedicated and hardworking and so I worked at the zoo as part of my junior high and high school um curriculum we we my parents helped me to get the school to allow me to have uh some of my courses some of my hours I could go to the zoo to work so I worked at the zoo for seven years and I started going to professional meetings when I was like 14 years old I was making presentations on conditioning secondary reinforcers and secondary reinforcer preferences with different animals and yeah I I started quite quite young so I've been just doing it a long time yeah I guess it's a really lucky to have a somebody to kind of take you and and bring you in like this it's it doesn't happen I don't know if that's even possible today to allow somebody at that young age to to even have any access things are very different um I agree yeah do is a um I'm now curious like if I don't think I would ever know the name but people probably would uh like the your mentors uh like her the my primary the first person this this lovely lady who taught me was called Casey cover she's still a trainer today you might recognize her name oh I know she got her own community yeah I I I do know Casey yeah yeah I actually oh wow oh wow that's so far long ago oh look at that okay so wow yeah cuz I yeah she does a lot of interesting things with dogs with dog on dog aggression and yeah we so I um well I don't even know how uh how did I meet her but I know that after we met we went together to one U to one uh workshop with um uh what was their name t tadl chin and oh fadas he used yeah so they they had a some some Workshop here in Clearwater which is you know Florida where I am and yeah me and Casey went together to that

workshop and then um she brought a dog of hers so we we kind of played around a little bit but that's crazy how wow that's totally crazy um oh wow yeah I know both of those people that is a good friend of mine um guess that was a positive reinforcement Workshop he would have been yes yes very much so yeah I I I mean you know how I I am very much like you I'm very open to anything and and um yeah uh and and anything that there is something that I can get an idea or get inspired definitely going there um it seems like it's working you're very successful yeah yeah I mean just like you I mean trying trying to to stay there and and um um tell me tell me with the book The the second book cuz it's a I guess it's more of a how how we said the the animal training one-onone is really very much kind of the book that I wanted to make and by the way I never did it so that's why I never send you the book I know I promised you but uh yeah I I we basically um I hired somebody to kind of help me with my businesses and they said don't do the book open a school for training based on the book and so we I because I had it ready at the time it was just ready to pretty much ready to be published and that's kind of how it that ended but I'm very happy to to have the school and have the what I collected throughout the years as a the curriculum and that's kind of how it ended but your second that's very much how I wrote my book um I mean I taught animal training at University to the people so I went from Maryland then I went to University at University of California Santa Cruz and um I very quickly because of a connection that Casey had with the this was a marine laboratory I um I ended up uh being responsible for large collections of animals there even as an undergraduate because I had I came in with like 10 years experience and they had graduate students people who didn't know anything handling their animals and so I I basically developed a whole program of training training the trainers and then I needed material so I started teaching these courses and going to conferences and that kind of stuff and I just over 20 years or something like that I collected all these noes right from essentially from um trying to teach other people so that they could care for the animals that I was taken care of and eventually I wrote into a book when it got to a certain point but you know it it it like never stops you keep collecting more information so it's always going to be the book that was good enough at that that was that was the right book at that time but it's not going to hold up because it it is going to keep changing that's that's I think

an important thing my second book is I don't know how you got to like I I I did one book late 90s and I don't know maybe I just it was just too hard for me and I I don't think I can convince myself if I do another book I have to have a I have to have an you know co-author or an editor that's really really on top of things to make it very easy for me otherwise I I just don't know like like you I mean you you had a good break between the two books yeah yeah yeah I did it's hard right it's very hard yeah and I I mean the reason I'm moving to Oxford is because I went to use there was an academic relationship between California State University and Oxford that allowed me to use their Library System that's Harry Potter's Library by the way just to be deep oh wow and so it that helped enormously but it took me years even even though I had been working on the material for 20 years it took me maybe five years to write my first book something like that a long time time a long time my second book is people a lot of people don't want I mean someone like you at a very very top level wants a textbook on animal training and someone who's very very serious about animal training wants a textbook on animal training but a lot of people said could you give me the more simplistic um form uh you know maybe just select some techniques that would be more straightforward um so and and people asked about stories they wanted stories of my life stories with animals so the second book is more um focused on uh you know a kind of every person's experience with animals it's it's a it's many it's not all the techniques it's just a you know the the sort of the principal foundational um viewpoints and also what happened to me was I I got involved in mindfulness I started meditating and um I'm really interested in mindful psychology and I was incredibly impressed with the parallels between effectively these wisdom contemplative Traditions that have taught people how to improve their their mind their behavior through their mind and how similar that that psychology is through all the psychology I mean these are all basically um the origin of wellness and and how to get there um and that's really what we what we do with animals as well in a sense we're looking for um trying to find a way that both beings in the situation can get what they need in the most um you know kindly and wholesome manner possible um but understanding the complexity of that situation that both parties are bringing to the table so yeah so this has got a heavy mindfulness wisdom contemplative uh Viewpoint as well as a lot of Jennifer stories in there so so is it again kind

of animal training or is it geared towards more um horses animal it's always animal it's called the Zen Art and Science of working with animals it does it does take you on the full Arc you know I talk about the Bridge stimulus and I talk about the ABCs um and I talk about all of the basic operant techniques and um the gift of fearlessness you know those kinds of things but I do talk about it from uh yeah a less sciency I mean it still has a lot of science but it it's got a more a softer um oh I mean tone perfect perfect approach with you know mindfulness and and kind of the same Simplicity of hey this is this is what's about it doesn't have to be complicated um yeah that's right the core principles people like you who are really interested in I've listened to some of your podcast who are really interested and nerdy about all the science that's out there you know probably the animal Training 101 is you know is more the book uh or that direction and and and I'm sure for sure it's it's a how how when you I mean how is that book because you're in a in a special circle of of you know like just just with the with all the different including exotic animals and and from horses to dogs and and who knows what else but when you wrote the book and and as as you said you you really you you had to make it as a textbook and you had to say and present uh all around picture of what learning is and and what are the different nuances and so like this is where I get a lot of um yeah negativity comes out anytime I try to talk about negative reinforcement or some form of using of Av verion and it turns on into a big uh uh arguments of being Humane retical and so on like I'm curious did you did you get any negative feedback because you had to go that route and you didn't just touch on the positive side I definitely experienced the negative feedback yes I mean we all do you for one thing I mean I I think I waited to publish my book for a long time because one of my um uh friends who's a dog trainer actually tanil Williams in Australia she she said to me this phrase which I hear is out there um but I've been using it a lot now the only thing two trainers can agree on is what the third one is doing wrong right right and animal trainers are are oddly um bickers some in that way very very critical I think because it's always been more of an art than a science but even the people who are interested in the science tend to wield it as though somehow it's an absolute um science is not absolute like that science is always percentage and probability and only based on how it's been tested and you know it's very difficult to test animal training

strategies in a laboratory setting that apply widely to um our conventional and practical usages you know like one of the things for example in in the science side that is always very difficult for me and I wonder what you think about this the first thing they do in scientific investigations is cut out the relationship between the trainer and the animal that is the number one thing they control against yeah yeah you even with dog studies they have in some random person comes in for 20 minutes and do shelters or like you know it's not it's not true to what I think a lot of the major stuff imagine you were doing it that way with human beings right that doesn't compute of course trust and comfort is a huge part of psychological [Music] um that's where it's we we're you know this is a one big part where we still kind of stuck in the Skinner box so to speak where it's like a light and a click and a sound and a and and that emotional interaction is completely disregarded from and and it's so well lately everybody's talking about emotions and relationship but it's almost almost uh um becoming a like a just talking salad like it's not even you're not even putting a meaning of what you what you're just saying the words because everybody talks like that but um relationship I mean I I cannot imagine what do you do without and and even when we say relationship people don't even pay attention because it's been said so many times and what does that really mean but ah right there I have an answer but we need we need in a relationship we need trust we need cooperation we need willingness to interact together we need all these things it's not just very a a blank word relationship right and once we have all those in place then the the way uh the the whole learning interaction happens is very different than if you don't have that so I I'll let you give me your experience on this yeah well I'm a very relationship focused person in fact it's one of the ways that I contemplate how I'm using um how what techniques I'm using when and to what extent uh I think about um the relationship like a bank account uh this this comes from Human psychology um but with yeah you talk about this the mindfulness book I remember this y I talk about it in both of my books because um but I do talk about it like a scientist so here's how I would look at a relationship the relationship from the perspective that we're talking is not how you feel about the animals let's put that to the side let's assume you're a grownup and you can deal with your own emotions the relationship that we're talking about is the motivational potential that the animal

has to how the animal perceives the human or human beings in the situation and what is that um based on it's based on the cumulative value of all the interactions between the person and the animal that is to say it is constantly accumulating and um it is constantly modifiable we know this also from human beings and it is formed by the mechanism of classical conditioning so what you're associated with rubs off on you highly valuable things rub off highly negative things rub off and and the question the reason a bank account works as a as a as a um manageable way of thinking about it is to realize it's not just um one deposit or one withdrawal makes the whole thing right it's it's it has to do with do you have enough in the bank to make withdraws which you're going to have to make um you're going to have to do things that the animal doesn't like it's not possible in any relationship not to do that and the question is do you know at what point do you do that and how do you do it and how can you skillfully do it and how can you compensate and so that it's the balance on the account that really matters um if you have a high balance uh you can you can generally um first of all weather a lot of uh bad you know negative experiences but also you end up being valuable yourself you know on your own you show up this is something dog trainers take almost for granted because dogs have been largely bred if they have not my experience anyways is that if they have not had an abusive or problematic relationship with people every dog you meet walks up to you and and you're automatically a reinforcer you don't realize in the dog world how different that is than everybody else that's not true to horses it's not true to exotic animals you you are a built-in reinforcer and all you can do is build up or down from there but it it makes dogs like you know that's why they're man's best friend quote unquote because they you know basically you come preloaded you got preloaded software of positivity there um question is what you do after a way it's also like uh like kids at school you know they they we always would have a a preferred teacher that we looking forward to go to that class instead of another class and and the reasons are quite similar and when you have that kind of interaction with the teacher that you like to be around now you get their they get your attention that's right and and you're much more interest interested in trying harder now we go somewhere and if you've got someone you trust you're more you're more willing to go through scary things or work harder um to try to figure out what they want I mean everything about so to me

when I originally started teaching people to train animals I said if you you break this into two simple things this goes back to like Plato or Aristotle one of those two I can't remember but uh there's two basic things when you want to get somebody to do what you want them to do the first is you need to be able to explain to them how to do it there's a whole bunch of grab bag techniques of that this the second is the more important thing you have to convince them to care you have to convince them to want to do it they want to that's the motivational side so communication and motivation are kind of the these two two parts of this equation the the game is one and lost in motivation because an animal who wants to do do what you want it to do will figure it out even if you're crappy at explaining it yes you know the classic like clever Han story clever Hans could do all this magic you know you know that story counting horse and the the reason was that the horse wanted to do what the owner wanted and he was trying to figure out all the little subtle cues it's just like that the animal will work to try to figure it out if they care so motivation in terms of a relationship is just such a valuable resource of course you can also add in all sorts of other you know motivators uh and they those can be positive and negative motivators um positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement motivators yes we we definitely want to go there too but uh I I just some something just came into my mind comparing like the sea lions and the dogs what how how different they are because every time I go to like I tell you the extent of my knowledge is going to any of the Marine World parks and watching them before the show how they train I didn't care much about the show but going right before the show and they do the training and of course it it's a training it makes sense but I don't have that oneon-one interaction that you have how different are the two dogs and sea lions I'd say they're awfully similar in many ways um I mean for one thing just biologically they have they're they're very closely related through the wolf ancestry so wolf goes to the ocean becomes sea lion sea lion is the closest thing to a wolf SE and in fact they're called Sea Wolves in many cultures um um so they have a caned lineage I mean if you look at the skull morphology all sorts of elements even the barking noise the a lot of their social elements they don't hunt as a pack quite the same way as a as a wolf pack does they don't stay quite as close in that sense but um but they definitely have a very sociable nature and they're playful right they're yeah very playful

so I would say they're they're peas in a pod I mean I it's the you know obviously a wolf and a dog also you know don't have uh some things in common but if you've talked to both you notice the similarities and um I would say that whole group um that those close to the the wolf-like ancestry caned ancestors feel very similar they feel intellectually similar they feel curious um they're more um yeah I think they're more confident playful um they they're I think they're more I feel they will be my choice if I got to pick a uh that type of animal to to work with that for sure that would be my choice you're right I mean well it was mine right that's kind of my most famous for working with sea lions um even working with sea lions out in the open ocean free relasing them back into their wild environment um and they they stayed with us and and I think of that a lot like how the wolf became the dog you know they tell more about this say say tell me more about the the open ocean and the rehab and sending and and when I was in graduate school I was doing two projects one was on looking at um diving physiology where we wanted to add some depth um um we had the sea lines trained to do um control Dives in and out of Chambers and wearing heart rate monitors to to look at their physiology so part of the work was to was to study them in that context but the more famous One was that we put uh video cameras on the back of them this was before there was digital cameras so it was really difficult so these giant VHS and then we got the like the first generation digital cameras huge things Critter camps we were that that's how I was working with National Geographic and um the idea was that the seaons would go out and study aspects of the wild environment particularly whales just to do a um circumnavigation of the whale so that we would know what sex it was um as well as to place like tags and and things like that so we were working right here off um montere with sea lions that we released least um and they would be wearing this equipment uh wow following animals it the equipment was just it you know if we had held out for another like 10 years and now these little lipstick digital cameras but the equipment was so big it was just this this huge encumbrance we do have great footage of them chasing dolphins and chasing whales and um but it was it was too expensive and problematic uh to make it work at the time that we did I think we could do it we could do it now but yeah so how did you get them once they're in the water how do you get them back well what happens to your dogs when you let them go why do they come back to you okay

amazing I mean you have you have an added bonus that they are domestic animals but they can run away you know that as well as me right so they make a choice and thato choices based on and informed on their relationship it's it's based on a pros and cons analysis that they make about um whether it's uh whether it's better to stay with me or it's better to go out into the wild and and actually that's always been one of the things that I have pointed out to people in terms of of the importance of the relationship bank account is that you know look I could take the animals they would meet other wild sea lions who who they hated by the way they were so angry to meet the wild sea lions because they thought the wild sea lions were going to get in on their action or whatever you know like these are my humans oh my God that kind of thing but you know we didn't we didn't take brand new animals from scratch and release them back out into the wild we we conditioned them and trained them and developed language with them and developed bonds with them and slowly slowly moved them out to see and um and we did it in small approximations exactly how I bet you could do it too I bet you could imagine how you would do it you do it in small bits it just the the the whole idea of uh when you say open ocean you know it just kind of it's a little more extreme at least it sounds like because um I think it was even last night I was watching something you know how you get in on YouTube and just from one thing to the next acent so there was a there was a guy that rescued a a baby squirrel and he fed and raised it and finally it's like I'm going to try to get it to go out and leave its own life and it just kept coming back and he's like okay well then you're going to stay as long as you want but at any moment you want to don't come back that's your choice and and so he still at least now he still has the quel going in and out and it's like the same thing um so yeah um it's just that whole idea of a dolphin or a sea lion or any of them in the open ocean it's just a little bit it just sounds very like something more there which it shouldn't be it it's still well I mean let's face it it does I think it's a testimony to right to how you train them and I don't think you you know if you were using a lot of negative uh work with them I think that would that would uh I remember I remember dog trainers that would they will bring a dog on a training field and they will be looking at all the gates make sure that everything is closed because the dog did not want to and it's like that picture is still in my head so fresh but um you go there is that it's not it's

not as common anymore but it's still there and and who cares if you can train an animal when it doesn't want to be with you it just doesn't want to be with you like it's like what what are we doing you missed the big the biggest picture world really and horses are horses are very different because again like a I mean they prey so they they're more Twitchy right to to begin with now when you do I guess uh um I was thinking about condition reinforcers because I mean you've done dogs and horses and Marine World and and tigers and who what I don't know what you have not trained so I'm sure you have used a lot of different from whistles to clickers to verbal how what where do you stay with like how do you see all the different condition reinforcers are they any particular for particular species or what do you thoughts and beliefs are on that gosh that's a great question question um I think it's a matter of personal choice I think so here I want to pin you down because condition reinforcer is a big term and I think you're meaning in this case to to talk about it as a bridge stimulus right not just yeah so conditioned reinforcers could also be like for example with exotic animals petting is a conditioned reinforcer right or eating ice cubes or something that's not normal or or you know play could even be a condition reinforcer something so um but in this case you're talking about it as a communication stimulus a very specific one right okay so uh as a marker um I think the properties of a marker need to be it needs to stand out from the environment clearly and not end up being uh showing up all the time accidentally obviously because then it would be blurred in its conditioning um and this I'm pointing out because it depends on what species you're working with what noises are going to be in that animal environment um and then it you know depending on what species you're working with um how loud does that sound need to be like how far away are you going to be I was working with animals where you know I might be hundreds of yards away from them I needed something that was going to carry a lot of times plus the the um the water land interface you know just think about like splashing next to your ears you you needed something that was going to was going to pull up but there's other situations where they need subtlety what they need is no one hears the sound you know because you're in competition or um or there's some kind of performance element to it and it's inelegant to be making uh those kinds of um really dramatic uh yeah markers so I think it really has to be according to the need um but my bottom line is I like uh

I would always want a verbal um Bridge stimulus with any animal I worked with if I also had but I often had more than one um and and pretty much yeah I think I always have more than one uh Bridge stimulus conditioned so that I can work with a variety of scenarios there are certain animals that hear better like dolphins are famously hearing better in this really high frequency range and so people have a tendency to use whistles with them but it's really obnoxious because if you're if you're just scan and capturing if you're free shaping something and the animal does something beautiful and you want to um you want to bridge it at that moment you don't want to have to grab the whistle and put it in your mouth because there there's a latency there right so a lot of even even the best dolphin trainers will learn to L whistle by mouth so that they have a backup um in case of whistle malfunction or they lost their whistle or got their whistle I just don't like gear that I don't have to have if I can just you know it doesn't get dirty I don't have to buy it I'm not going to lose it the animal's not going to you know [Music] um strangle me with it or take it from me or swallow it or but I work with a lot of different kinds of animals where that is a real possib ability you know where where you know I've watched people some crazy sign Trucking I've watch people drop clickers and animals snap them up and swallow them um so it depends I mean that wouldn't happen with a chicken right it probably wouldn't happen with a dog but um it might happen with a wombat or a sea lion or you know so it's it depends on what you're training okay um yeah like I what is your feeling about that answer how do you feel yeah I I mean probably similar if if anything I would add to this is that um I like I I I also like verbal but I I feel like there is a bonus point of adding some feeling to saying good versus good versus like something extra comes out or like there is levels of good right and and the at least the dogs I think they are very keen on oh you really like that one right um so to where um I I mean I in in my school I am current and we we train with clicker and and um you know but I always see it as a a little bit of a downfall like the good sides we know yes it's it's sent yes it's it there is all this but uh it kind of almost forces the trainer to stay in that Skinner box and focus on behaviors and Mark behaviors without personality and feelings in there it's like okay you touch I click you get paid you do I click you get paid but that moment of wow that's my boy right that that's goes a long way yeah I've never seen a clicker trainer a

really good one anyways not respond with a secondary verbal bridge when they're in that jackpot moment that I mean that's one of the reasons I I actually think like clever Hans that clicker trainers in general almost always have a also a backup verbal Bridge whether they intentionally uh conditioned it or not and this principle that we're talking about that you're talking about very elegantly and I completely agree with I call this differential reinforcement stimuli so the reason the one of the reasons I use a verbal bridge is because you can um modulate a verbal Bridge into a variety of even more nuanced meanings that you can condition to um as long as you do condition them now you know it's not by Magic it still has has to have the same kind of associative implication so I think of it like uh like on a grading system you've got like good very good and excellent and they pay accordingly so you might have your kind of your basic good and then you have your a little bit better good and then you've got your jackpot good that that is associated with the jackpot and and that that level of finesse where you can provide that information as the behavior is happening helps the feedback loop for the animal understanding exactly how profound that moment was and it it seems like it does provide um a lot of encouragement a lot of Joy um to the animals who it's conditioned to so I I think it's really um it's a tool I wouldn't want to live without I guess the clicker has you know it's a pros and cons situation it's got its greatest strength and its greatest weakness are kind of linked together it's always the same so it's quite precise that makes it easy to condition um and a lot of people feel self-conscious about using too much verbal with their animals or they're in competitions and that's not working for them um so I understand it and some people are like really um uh good with their hands like they're like video game players or something so maybe they learn the clicker easier than they learn using their voice in terms of timing wise and so when you're teaching people I've heard that 100% yeah I've heard that but I'll tell you what the people in my school they learned on clickers and verbals and had no trouble um yeah and people say um oh sorry one more point on this this is this is a really interesting topic I intended to do a research project on this that I never completed but I'll give you a little data that I did get on this because I trained some baby sea lions on both the clicker and the verbal oh simultaneously training baby SE Alliance oh my God it's just like puppies they were like puppies you know and so they were

and could be you have the overshadowing problem you probably know this like whatever Bridge you learn first is the one true God right it's the one ring that rules them all and if you if you're too late in adding in the second bridge it will take a while because the animal isn't listening for it they know there's a bridge and it's not that one so um so it really helps to to condition multiple Bridge stimulus or reward markers it it helps to put those in kind of early on and like a child learning two languages they learn it no problem right yeah or learning skiing you you make a left and a right turn right away you don't just make two lefts okay very good yes and I'm sure you could come with a lot more of those examples too because yeah that's that's right so we did this with the clicker and the verbal and the problem was just the practicality now working with um Exotics there's a lot of safety issues there's a lot of gear you know you're carrying buckets of food it's so having something you have to have in your hand is incredibly annoying um and especially in those early phases where the animal you know like they're all over the place and you're really you need to bridge at the right moment you can't have to be looking you know but also you have to be protecting yourself and stuff like that so it um it very quickly became clear also that the the clicker just didn't carry enough um loudness to to reach the animals in certain circumstances I mean we just we just had to back it up over and over again with the verbal Bridge even though they learned on the clicker um so we and then I did test a a little bit of trained Behavior where we trained certain behaviors only with the clicker and certain behaviors only with a verbal Bridge um now mind you I don't use a base I don't use only a basic verbal bridge I also have these different differential reinforcement stimuli right which you can only get on the verbal right but you won't be surprised to know that the um given that that's the case they learned much faster on the um on the verbal because I could give them all this other information I could tell them not just great but wow and I could tell it to them right then at the moment that it occurred yeah wow very good I you know like I you mentioned jackpot and clicker and um to me there is always a a need issue with you know I mean exactly like how the verbal and the the levels like if you the moment you you make the same sound for average behavior and then you want to give a jackpot and you have the same sound and now it's a jackpot in in some ways the the at least the dog he like how come this time is this and this

time is this and it's the same sound and I I feel that when when you have verbal jackpot you're naturally signaling marking in a very different voice that it announces that this is a big deal to where uh uh The Click is so dry at the moment and it's like okay I'm probably going to get a cookie and all of a sudden I get a lot of cookies and now I I feel feel dogs are like okay it's almost like a they get confused like what am I going to get and why it's not you know even though we're thinking well we're jackpotting therefore you're going to come to the conclusion the right conclusion but the the announcement stays the same for an average reward and a big reward and that's not easy yeah yeah it's almost like it somehow clouds the the point a little bit right because when you think of Las Vegas you know like you yes you get the little coins but then when it's the jackpot the whole hotel the whole Casino just goes nuts right yeah exactly and and I agree I think the clicker if if anything it has to have this option like a like on the other side maybe you have a jackpot click you know something but why not just use your voice you have it you didn't have to buy it you don't have to get it in your hand now you have two hands you didn't have it and you're so one of the things people say is oh the animals won't understand because people's voices are different I had a school of people that had 200 people come through worked with our animals we they let you know they worked with and developed relationships and trained our Fleet of animals which might have been you know somewhere between five and 10 animals of at a time and we never had this problem we never had the problem that because people's voices were different the animals couldn't understand much as you understand a different person whether they're speaking with an accent or whether you know I mean it's it animals are adapted to um pick out meaningful information they're looking for that right they want to know where where things pay more when they want to know yeah 100% And I'm very glad to hear that U like like your your take on on clicker because uh again I I'm not against it but it's there is sometimes just like a um you know it becomes a a a statement I I am using science to train and therefore I'm holding a clicker you know what I'm saying it's like well that's a very um what is that it's like a signaling yeah it really is yeah kind of like it's about the wrong reason of course it's science either way and based on the exact same principle your condition a voice Bridge exactly the same now one thing that people can do wrong is that they'll use many different you know one

moment they're saying good boy and the next moment they're saying only good and the next moment they're saying uh fantastic or whatever so that is that is where the Blurred Line can be um less precise that you know the value of the clicker is that it it is um an identical reproducible sound that helps in the conditioning process and I think it might also be important to realize there's a difference between the moment where you're um charging up the clicker and getting or the or the bridge because I'd really rather talk about it as a bridge or reward marker if you prefer and and the the clicker has somehow become the word for bridge stimuli but I want to push back on that because I think that's like just a brand it's like saying Hoover when you mean vacuum cleaner or something it's not or English to mean language there's lots of languages all languages aren't represented by English and there's lots of bridges and they're not all represented by clicking so while it's a it's a powerful and um valuable tool that's been spread and it it is based on science the science that it's based on is just associating a pure tone with an outcome it's not there's nothing magic about the clicker itself it's not like the one noise that unites all the animal kingdom it's just a noise that um that works yeah there there are few studies like I I've been lately working with a uh one of the canine science labs with the um Dr by wi and and an Marie Johnson they did a they did a study on clicker and yeah I mean the find the finding was exactly that they did not find any difference between uh and and in fact it almost uh is like U like pulling back a little bit with the clicker than than accelerating the the process um I don't experience and then I think I think if someone really did a fair study that's what you'd see although it might depend on species it might depend on individuals a lot of times animals are afraid of the noise of the clicker at first I mean I work with but yeah very true and and it's so hard as you said it's so hard to make a study any study when you don't have the report with the animal and and I mean I'm sure with any animal that you you spend enough time you can and this is what I when I teach at my school like I'm like okay yeah we can we can teach the basic communication we can have a a keep going signal we can have a release signal and so on and so on but eventually this is like your basic this is like hello my name is Ivan and I can say this in bunch of languages but from there on I can call my dog like this I can call my dog like this I can I mean in hundred ways and my dog will come every

single time because now we are in tuned and we're paying attention and we're speaking above the basic language of signals you know and now yes I mean that's what you were hoping for right that's I think most animal trainers that's what they're looking to develop is such a complexity of um of all of the I mean it's going to be that they will the animal will have seen the physical cues that the person is using associated with the early conditioned information and they're just layering in new SDS and and um they'll see like I keep going back to clever Hans but they'll understand the nuanced um elements that that are associated with that antecedent Arrangement that leads towards that um I mean I'm going back to the science but while in complete agreement with you it's not that it's magic what happens is over time um the the communication richness because your whole body is what the animal is paying attention to exactly um becomes uh yeah becomes a component of your of your communication and that makes it so much more interesting exactly I was just going to say way more interesting and and a lot of times do trainers are afraid to to open that door and and stay within okay now I have to be just like with the clicker very mechanical okay I have to mark this I have to release now I and and the the like you're not expressing your feeling of the interaction it's just lost and then you focusing on the behavior only and then of course ultimately you're paying the price for for having that other level of interaction um yeah I agree you lose some of the um there's something about this it's a little bit like cooking you know it's like you've stuck to a recipe but you have no um finesse with your uh all the different ingredients and and flavor profiles and all that you know it's like painting by numbers actually right with this little yeah you can get somewhere but it's just not quite as magical if you don't have um plus I think if the person is working really hard to control themselves and keep their kind of everything boxed up um the animal is not prepared for the you know anyone else for one thing who isn't going to necessarily be quite so sterile and um The regimented Experience uh I think doesn't uh properly prepare the animal for life like there's something where they're um they almost become institutionalized in those kinds of two you see this in animals that have have lived in because I'm in a research environment you see animals that have lived in research protocols for very long periods of time having you know problems with sort of stereotypies or with um with uh changes um small changes like size of food reward or something

like that kind of throws them off because they were they never got smoothed out in their early development periods learning about you know maybe the broader experience of Life which involves lots of noise and lots of movements and lots of sounds and you know just just more um especially I would think for dogs it's very important they're out there with people so when you do like uh like back to C lions or or you can do I mean I'm interesting in in other animals that you've done but is it primarily food reward that you would use with with the exotic animals like or would play have any role like for me I'm very I'm like huge proponent on play interactions cuz this is just what I can do with dogs and there is a lot of value in that um I don't I don't know if you can go that in that kind of deep plate to where you can have a sea lion really want to play with you to where you can have some rules absolutely really yeah I think you can with almost any animal um so my basic position on this is you you have to start with whatever you've got which in the case of dogs is a lot so you you're preloaded right you have a lot more reinforcers at your disposal but the idea of of limiting yourself to um to a single category of consumable reinforcer seems absurd to me um or it's not absurd that's maybe a flippant way of putting it but I think it's um it's a limitation it's restrict it's like painting with one color so what you're doing what you would be doing is sure you may have to start there with a lot of exotic animals you probably have to start there that's all you have and in fact you're probably pretty offensive to them when they first meet you because they you people have been handling them whatever that may even be true of horses I mean it's it you know and that can be true also of dogs right abused dogs in so you start with what you have but right away you'd be training other conditioned reinforcers this is why I made that um that distinction earlier so we would be conditioning them to enjoy petting to enjoy praise and and then to enjoy object manipulation and then from there to enjoy play with us with that object um and those things then take on a life of their own the more comfortable the animal is the more they kind of come out of the box and be interested in play on their own and then you can engage with that so actually in the mindful Partners book I talk about you know I worked with one of these animals out in the ocean and she was in research it's often like a hurry up and wait kind of situation so she sitting in the ocean free swimming around and we were waiting on something you know like the other researchers or

whatever and so she get bored and she go down to the seafloor and find um we we happen to be over top of um a sand dollar uh communities and she would find these little frisbee shaped sand dollars and bring them up to see if she could get the button going to can we just start this please I'm you know I'm bored here and and um and so we would play Frisbee with sand dollars we would play Frisbee um type games retrieval type games with our sea lions all the time I do think that's part of their um their link back to dogs but I've had this with horses I've had this with all kinds of other animals dolphins are really playful too some animals naturally really get into massage like like being petted um you can get that going with horses quite a lot I found lofas I found smells like if you're working with big cats smells can be really reinforcing for them um the sky the limit and in the end the biggest reinforcer and this gets back to the earlier part of our conversation I'm hoping to develop myself as the biggest reinforcer which means whatever happens between me and them is enjoyable because it involves like this deep friendship just like it is with your friends you know it's like wow we get to be together I get to work I get to learn right that becomes some of the strongest reinforcers you have and that has a kind of play element to it you know I mean work and play are are linked together right play is about learning life skills um that help you forage typically you know you you you know the the dog training world is quite divided right of of you have the purely positive trainers you have trainers that use aversives you have and any gray in between a lot of times uh when when there is a discussion or debate it will be brought up that well if you can teach a lion or a elephant to to draw blood from then without using any form of aversive then you really shouldn't be resol ting to train a dog ever with using an a St it's a it's a one of these arguments that comes up very often and I I find it very misleading because um yeah they're not inside with the lion and the and the Elephant like we we we're in a two separate worlds and asking for very different things and there is not much that's competing with you and but I just kind of want to hear because I know you're master of of both so it would be very interesting to hear your thoughts on this well my first thought is I have a lot of sympathy empathy for people grappling with this problem and I think that the um the heart of the discussion is about everybody on both sides of this wants to be kind and wants to do well with their animals and what what fails is is a sense that um one

side cares more than the other about that I don't believe that for a second I don't believe that for a second um I think depending on what your training goals are well I guess another thing I would say is I've never seen a program that actually didn't use uh all the quadrant I I I think it's impossible um so for example in the dog training worlds um are these people who are purely positive reinforcement trainers quote unquote are they using leashes because if they are game over a leash has it one purpose what happens when the animal gets to the end of the leash control there is pressure on their body that pressure by definition is negative reinforcement I mean I'd call it manipulation based negative reinforcement if I wanted to C categorize it perfectly and I understand it's not exactly what you're talking about but it is because this is the thing of these terms is that actually nobody's not using both there there the idea would be to try to use the minimal possible aversive that's necessary relative to whatever it is that is um the you know a a wholesome and good outcome for both parties and um you know because I'm a relationship based person I am trying to focus on positives and I have no doubt that you are too oh yeah but there are some things where you you have to keep the animal for the animal sake or for the person's sake I mean I don't know a lot about um the uh the world that you're in but I do know you know you train dogs that attack people right that under certain circumstances have to do that and that has to turn on and off at exactly the right time or very serious problems will will come up um and that level of of training um is very different than the average uh dog walker so is there is a sophistication associated with that um even the people with the uh you know the a lion or an elephant collecting blood which it's true is the actual blood collection side of things would always be done with positive reinforcement but those people don't go inside they're working through offence um they have no uh risk to them and is it ever the case that they use negative reinforcement to move those animals from one place to the next I'm going to guess probably so or probably has happened um or if not that they might use for example anesthesia um you know when they have to do some kind of major procedure with the animal they may use a dart to knock them down um it's one of these weird places where what category is is that but that's pretty aggressive it's pretty aversive um or they'll put animals they'll train the animals to go into crushes you know restraint devices and they'll have them trained for voluntary

restraint but restraint is still pretty train yeah it's still it's still aversive and I you know you start to get into these really gray areas where I think what's laudable and what's good is that people are trying to be as positive as they possibly can and realize that there is a lot that can be accomplished that way I actually think a lot of the positive reinforcement dog trainers don't train their dogs to give voluntary blood samples how do they get the blood sample on the dog they grab the dog and hold the dog and hold the dog's neck and tell it it's a good dog and somebody's you know surprise taking yeah that is that is not positive reinforcement yeah it's uh yeah there is now um the whole um the fear-free clinics and I mean we we're getting somewhere and it's not a bad thing for sure it's not a bad thing but no matter how much we talk like you're familiar with the fear-free movement right with the dogs and the cats and just the veterinary clinics and and um I think it's also you know I me it's a good marketing it it definitely like if if I'm bringing a dog and I have a choice well there is a fear free clinic and there is a regular Clinic which one do you go to most likely we go to the fear free but sometimes I think well no matter how many cookies you're going to give to a dog there will be a a dog that is just not social there will be a dog that is way more shy than another dog and there's pretty much nothing you can do when you take that dog to a vet clinic for that dog to convince him to feel comfortable just because their genetics are not that strong and they just trust you and after one I don't know some some kind of surgery or something goes you know like there is a a negative experience in the clinic which is not that uncommon because some some procedure had to be done being being whatever and then then there is a setback and just to to to have this well we're going to you your dog's not going to be afraid when he goes to the clinic and and say that as a just like a overall statement for every dog is a nothing but uh a is actually misleading because you you know you will have dogs that will go the the the most dogs that will search to go to a fear-free clinic will be the dogs that are either very unsure very shy very just uh concerned about the environment or any other people and going one time to the clinic is not going to help to to convince that dog to feel better no matter how many cookies you're going to give it most likely they would would that kind of dog wouldn't even want to do anything with treats at this point it is very interesting how we we always put into an extreme something and and like

the it's very hard it doesn't like what I'm saying is it with one or two visits you cannot convince a dog not to be afraid especially a weaker temperament dog they will be afraid and sometimes they just they have to the the veterinarian has to do what they have to do um I've been to a vet clinic like this where it's like okay yeah we give him treats we do this and then they put the leash and then take the dog inside now when the dog comes out and it's running to come and just Clines on you you know the experience wasn't that great but you cannot blame the veterinarians for being great or not they have to ultimately take care of the health whatever the urgency is that they need to do um but there is this marketing of we we can do it better without actually saying that it cannot work better for every dog dogs that are confident they can go in and they can you know like I I would love to take my dog to this kind of Clinic because I know they will be friendly and my dog will respond fine but that's not every dog and and there is a little bit of I wouldn't even say that it's dishonesty there's something that we don't talk about about these specific dogs that I'm saying that they still going to if they're aggressive they they have to be sedated or they have to be muzzled and there's going to be a process that will not be done I think it's similar with with different you know just like how you said well if if you have a leash on the dog you you're controlling it and and at some point the dog gets controlled because the dog wants to do this and you will restrict it from doing it and so um and and there will be different levels of that like if you say um you like I I know a lot of trainers and I'm not sure like when you train especially at the exotic animals or old animals that you train do you like like is said do you trained by trial and error do you tell the dog or the sea lion that they are on the wrong path do you say no or something to disapprove of an action or do you just focus on the the good side of things um first I boy this is a there's a lot in here I know I just went too far pick it apart I'm going to pick it apart because there are some things that you said that um that are very important to me so the the fear-free veterinary work regardless of the term and I agree with you that you know there's marketing which I'm not good at personally either because I think the reason you know the thing about behavior is it's very nuanced and it's not it's like the rest of science it's not an absolute you you don't get some this isn't a motorcycle this is a being right right right right it has um it's Shades of Gray okay but

there do I think it's important for this movement to be developing so that people don't just I think the mental health of an animal is more important than the physical health I'm going to say that radical thing I think it is more important for us all to feel good because actually you your a your experience of something is only about how you think about it it's not actually the rest so I care at least on equal measure I make a big point of this in my current book I care on equal measure the emotional health and a lot of the stuff that we do with animals I'm talking about non-emergent situations is that we have not prepared them for their basic life needs and their basic life needs is going to a veterinarian so right from the puppy phase we should be working in that direction so that we don't get those traumatized animals that are blown out the way you're describing yeah so those clinics are working towards the whole life of the animal not just that moment through approximations where they're not where they're thinking about more than just the procedure they're thinking about preparing the animal in a POS positive way for all of the future Veterinary visits which by the way people should do with human beings and children as well you know like the dentist where you go and you get your lollipop that should be your experience so I think it has I mean one thing I would say is don't make Perfection the enemy of the good you know just because you can't get it right a you know where every dog is perfectly fixed on one trial doesn't mean you shouldn't be moving in that direction you should be moving in that direction the marketing side you know advertisings and things like that I'm not going to get into the discussion about whether advertising is you know too strong or whatever that's that's true if everyone sort of claims and maybe people like you and I who are used to the Nuance of how difficult it is to actually get Behavior probably we undersell a lot of what we can do because we know there every every individual animal is different and it will depend but I will push back on something you said which is that I do not think any animal because of genetics cannot be moved towards less fear if you take the approximations that are correct and this is not just about using counter conditioning using reinforcement this is also about systematic desensitization and the analysis of the variables associated with the fear and remembering that there's a lot of reinforcers you have to lessen the aversive environment the relationship between the owner and the dog is one how quiet the environment is one the demeanor of the the uh

veterinarian is one like whether they go in and grab or whether they spend some time you know lowering their posture there's a lot of things that that that are very subtle about how you can break down the experience and take it slower so you don't get over the threshold of the animal and the question is to what extent is this an emergency or are you building towards a future thing you know like if it's just a rou procedure like a checkup or um maybe it's even a vaccination but they don't necessarily need to get that vaccination right now maybe you you put in some trials do it every day for a week or something like that before you get to the point do some work at home you know those clinics can also work with the owner to to have dummy needles that they that they work with at home this is the bread butter of what I do my my a lot of my trainers are running these kinds of clinics and so but that would go to education of of I mean as you point out there is a lot of homework that needs to be done and and a a lot of the I I guess that that is where a problem is because when when that homework is not emphasized on and you go to a fear Fe clinic or you go to a normal clinic and a procedure is [Music] done there is a a uh um you know you a dog that is shy you will Rush the dog there is just no no time and if it's a again like if it's a vaccination problem then hopefully the vet says well let's do this take time Come Again Come Again a lot of people will do that some veterinarians will actually and again and I I I cannot speak for everybody because obviously there is different different clinics with different intentions but the the places that I have been to the fear free is is a like I I don't I don't think they have even done much work to to understand what it is it's like like okay the dog is coming there is a bag of treats on the counter let's give him some treats if he's not taking it that's fine if he's taking it that's okay and then we're going in and we're doing procedure and and then the dog comes out and at that point everything is done and nobody pays attention how the dog feels at that moment um doesn't sound like a really um that they have a psychology background here but I guess that's what I'm saying like a lot of yeah like a there there is I think it's becoming popular trendy and not everybody has gone through through education how to do a fear free and it's like okay we we call the clinic fear free but um um maybe maybe it's just a new thing still and and it's going it will get better um yeah yeah one would hope that they'd have so I guess if there are listeners

who are thinking about this it it sounds like it's a buyer beware thing just like every other type of service out there people advertise themselves whether or not that's true that depends and and I think if it's a really legitimate Clinic like some of the clinics that my students work in and this would be your students too I mean this is a great opening industry that that has a lot of potential the idea of Veterinary work and behavior work getting together started in the um the zoo and aquarium industry and should expand into the domestic industry it is really amazing if you develop this Partnership of the whole welfare of the animal but it does mean that qualified trainers have to be involved in the entire plan of how the clinic works and it has to be a component of their um their big picture uh so that would that would have a lot of levels to it it would have it would have the analysis of the rooms and and a whole plan of training for particular animals that have been blown out um and then uh different strategies of according to emergency there's even ways of administering um anesthesia that is more mild versus less you know like we we would have an emergency protocol where animals would get into a cage and we would do what's called a a chamber induction on them where you infuse the cage the cage is masked and you infuse the cage with anesthesia so that nobody's grabbing them so they don't experience the Panic of being held down um now in either case they're being anesthetized but in one case they're being kind of their last memories before they fall asleep or somebody's like holding them down and it's pretty terrifying and there is training though I mean they have to be trained right yeah people like the people you're training when they have this skill set they can go in and start working in these veterinary clinics as the behavioral consultant and really get in there and make a difference I think that's the direction of the future the word fear free is a little misn misnomer because well I'm a Buddhist and we say um that you know that fear fear is one of the basic things you're trying to guarantee it's it's it's also necessary so the idea of having a completely fear-free life this is an illusion and if someone's trying to sell that to you I've got to bring bridge for you that I I'd like to sell you for for certain you know that old anal that old joke I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you or something like that right right okay so there's no such thing as truly being fear free but you can have degrees of it where you keep the levels down to um what we want is not to traumatize the animals so that we're

trying to to um work work on these animals that have had such extreme experiences that uh that they're just completely sensitized that's what we want to do we want to keep you know this psychologically we would say sensitization minimal clinics or something like that but I don't think that will sell as well as fear free so um so you know you just I think you have to take it with a grain of grain of salt and there was something else you asked me and I I can't remember because I was so interested in the the story of of um yeah this is a lot of my work and it's a lot of what my second book is about actually we're getting we're getting there I mean reducing fear I I guess my point is with it's it definitely is a work in progress It's not a you know um no not every Clinic that claims it um yeah but when you said that you were working with with like fearful animals and and you like you have success what tell tell me a little bit more about this because that's definitely um of Interest like what kind of approaches what do you approaches well I imagine you know a lot about it as well since it's a big part of the industry isn't it but sure sure my my and I'd be interested what your answer is first of all I would not give up on any animal although I do agree that um some animals will have had sensitizing experiences I think it's more about their sensitization than it is about their breed or their genetics although I agree with you that by by uh by birth some animals will be more um inherently either because of their species or because of their breed um will be more inherently um phobic um to use the term more uh more afraid of new experience um but I think that's always mobile we can always change it neuroplasticity is true throughout your life throughout their life so how big the Gully is in terms of the traumatic experience and how we have to work with it depends but the the so there's two sides of this one is if the animal is already been blown out been sensitized and the other is how can we stop how can we get enough information into the public and into people to understand how to prevent this from happening in the first place so th there there's two sides there's like in your world it might be puppy training and and then what to do with the um with the fear biting dog or the you know the already the already sensitized animal and and um you know I work a lot on trying to get people to understand that that in the end it's so much better to prevent the problem from setting up than it is to try to fix it once you've got it because sensitization is a horrible problem when when animals have these kinds of beer biting habits or runaway

habits um you know there's it's a lot harder to uming break that down then it would have been to just be careful about the exposure in the first place so that is you know that's a background that I want to make a big Point yeah better not to blow the animal out and do what is necessary slowly the but in either case it it it does involve the same bag of tricks counter conditioning using positive um attractive uh elements to reduce the stimulus uh value of a negative experience um and then the second part is the big one which is systematic desensitization analysis understanding what variables associated with a novel stimulation will cause fear and how to reduce that um and breaking the the stimulus experience into small bits so for example I've worked with you know dozens and dozens of exotic animals doing incredibly painful scary procedures like voluntary tooth removals on carnivores that are standing there with their mouths open getting 19 injections around a tooth oh and then having the tooth surgically cut out of their mouth no leash nothing on the animal holding it there so that's the level that you can get to and if I can do that with an EXO animal you can definitely do it with a dog but what I had to do was I had to um approach that very slowly and systematically so what are some of the elements that make a Veterinary procedure scary there's the whole setting scene the smell in the environment so I'm I'm trying to think dog like here so you've got all the other dog smells and Cat smells and you've got the smell of um you know alcohol and all the things alcohol anal glands I mean everything so you can start with this breaking those bits down um and thinking about them um there's also the um the experience of being grabbed held forced um poked and prodded there's the physical sensation of like needles and that kind of stuff um there's the person in the white coat with its uh with it the stethoscope um so there's all that visual it's all the antecedants basically and manipulating the antecedants to a level that uh are not signaling a panic yeah or even reversing it so we have all of our veterinarians come bearing gifts so this I mean you know in your case it would be cookie but it's not just cookie it's also get down on the floor it's also a way for the dog to approach you it's also using a soft voice it's also not grabbing them right away um it's also uh the the um the room that they experience in you know uh the posture that the dog is in are they in a place where they feel confident or are they in a place where they feel you know subordinated um how much time have they had to acclimate to the room

and uh so so one of the extremes might be like um we used to say oh the yummy yummy fireworks fireworks very often scare animals no no matter what kind of animal right and um what we did was we conditioned the fireworks to be a a jackpot Bridge stimulus and we would start with we started with the sound on recorder so we could modulate we could control control the stimulus strength so stimulus strength is like how big the stimulus is and you've got volume movement duration to the animal I list out all these things duration of exposure is a really important very big yeah how long so so it's very important when you're starting with the variables to um to break them down but not make the animal have to endure them for very prolonged periods of time just small not not feeling trapped you know so that you don't get that adrenalized reaction to it not feeling trapped in it yeah that's it so um so you take all of these elements and like number number of people number of moving things around for some animals it'll be colors and you start breaking it down and you do the simple ones first you know you just start wearing around stethoscopes and white coats and going for walks you start uh putting some alcohol on your jacket each day before you put out the food you know you start making you you start counter conditioning all those cubes so that they're actually the opposite of what they seem to indicate you take walks to the vet clinic and there's a jackpot there and then you get to go play Frisbee and get a free frisbee play or whatever is your story this where it's not like the the majority of the work is done by the owner as a homework and not so much at the clinic the clinic is is the The Next Step well I'm thinking the clinic guides the owner to understanding these steps so it's like in a in a well-run clinic um they should give this kind of training plan when they go to a puppy shots or something right when the first visit or something that would make sense yeah and I'm sure some of them are exactly exactly this way um but you said you have a you you would have success with even with noise sensitivity by by manipulating the environment and and desentizing and counter conditioning so noise sensitivity um the way that I would work with that is you know obviously first there's is a two-prong approach one would be at home in a comfortable environment on recorder um you know where you can control the volume and the distance so another thing I haven't mentioned but distance is huge in in fear-based reactions in every reaction space space and duration is FAL right right exactly so the further away then this occurs as long as you can

um as long as you can process it the better it is the other thing to to consider is also companionship especially for dogs like if you have another dog that you know if you've got in in horses we use like Pace horse racehorse because race horses tend to be very um high energy you know excitable animals and they put like a you know a May that is Bomb proof in there so if you have a bombproof animal to be with the with the um the frightened animal this can help as well um so there's a lot of reinforcers at your disposal it is not just food right but so so that would be uh one thing but also the um yeah the the volume and the duration just a little bit on recorder and then um uh some reinforcement whatever works for that animal um a lot of encouragement I would think from the owner and then you know short duration many trials at home and then try to set up an appointment at the clinic that is either um very beginning of the day or or very end of the day quiet time just you know you if you've got a veterinarian that does not care about this get a different veterinarian find a veterinarian you can work with who is respecting the needs of the dog um at least somewhat and and work with them on um when is The Quiet times how can we you know how can we set this up for the success of the dog oh yeah alarians will come it's like with do training you have doct trainers and different kind of dog trainers and um yeah it's it's a it's a very interesting one um the I I'm where what I'm thinking is about the playing the the tapes for the sounds and stuff I used to do that cuz I I breed like I've been breeding marinos for for like long long time and when the first those cassette players came I don't know it was like early 90s or late 80s and I was like oh yeah I'm going to play this to my dogs and um I I never found that they really I I I think the dogs never connected the the sound that plays from the the music box to the any lightning or any other sound and and even if they get Des synthesized to some level anytime a sudden loud noise com the the reaction that a lot of dogs will have it they it almost in my experience has been unavoidable um well that's true because there is a hardwired reflex so there's What's called the novelty effect that none of us can avoid no matter what if you get startled but I'm going further with that because the we we all can get startle but then it's the recovery goes quickly to where um certain dogs or animals will that they cannot function I wouldn't say they're shut down because they're but they're definitely in a flight kind of mode and and really the best thing to do is to give them space and take them out

instead of trying to to do anything else point and I have not found U um any solution to this um to overcome that kind of genetic uh predisposition to and I think it's a genetic predisposition because like um I know I've worked like when I worked at guide dogs in San Rafael I lived in in California in all over the bay area in the '90s and um the the one thing that will do is when the breeding program the puppies get tested and then they will come at 15 14 months old for training and the very first thing will be a gunshot on a on a distance and some dogs will just not be able to recover some dogs will get startle some dogs will not and of course there will be in a group we will have let's say 20 dogs and you have that one that really says okay I need to get out even though everybody else around them feels comfortable um and the only way that I have found to to try to make a dog overcome that kind of sensitivity would be when they it can be they have to override it with something and that something typically has to be some action um and if if there is no action and there is no like I can say okay there is a loud noise and that can trigger it to go active into doing something as a signal and this can work and it has worked for me and and for many trainers but at the same time if we present the noise even the dog that's already learned that that signals action now there is nothing we don't we don't start to play or we don't start Protection work or anything and we do that few times and now the dog starts to stress just as as they did before because uh um you know it doesn't lead to to it becomes it's an Extinction now the it doesn't signal that kind of reinforcement there is nothing to override the fear with and I I cannot find a solution that can really work with certain genetic problems like I don't um and I even even like with little puppies I I feel that sometimes we do the wrong thing by you know playing this kind of tapes and and trying or or exposing them to so many different environmental stimuli that if a puppy is genetically weaker we may be actually instead of helping them we may be pocking at it and make amplifying the problems and that young age we cannot see it and we're watching all of them as a package eight or nine of them right and thinking okay well everybody is happy but uh um I don't know sometimes I think that um when we have that good intention to to make the dog more resilient and we add stimuli but we are

not really yet understanding who that little puppy is as an individual ual we may be making the whatever is under their need making it uh come out stronger than than by by actually thinking that we're helping you know what I'm saying that's kind of like what my mom was worried about with my immune system only on a behavioral level yes yeah yeah and that's true um so a few things that I pulled out of your story is um first of all if you're trying to pay attention to nine individuals at once you're going to be missing a lot of the subtle data that you need to here because you need to pick up on the small signals you know the the point the way that desensitization works is you take a baseline of how the animal is behaving comfortably and then you very slowly introduce the stimulus below threshold right The fullon Gunshot is not the place to start what is there that's between a gunshot even at a distance and um you know maybe you don't like the recorder but something something that can be like that but is less right right and and also where you're watching each individual animal you know it's one thing to take an animal in a pair or something like that you say you have a very Advanced dog you know this dog doesn't respond to the gunshot so you know that animal is a good partner to your puppy that is going through this so you can ignore the the dog not ignore but you can you can take for granted the dog who is bomb prooof and they can be there as a reward and as as a you know a calm space for the animal who may or may not have a reactive tendency that you don't know at Birth um but you still and this is still about prevention before um training it out because you're right if you overexpose someone early on you will get sensitization and you need to know if you've Overexposed them but the but the the key is then to is to do it so gently that you find out when you're starting to stimulate them and it's not correct it's not just to throw them into a circumstance so I mean that's how we would do it with our animals is that we would assume by default they would have a reaction we would take the we would take the conservative view that they that the worst case scenario is they're going to have the reaction and we're going to treat it as though they're going to have that reaction and we're going to train right through that by very very carefully taking small approximations um and we're going to watch their eyes their tension level their breathing their willingness to engage with play and I'll tell you something else I'm big about communication so I usually warn my animals this is a weird thing but I usually uh start telling them so

in my earlier phases in the Lesser version of The Gunshot whatever it's going to be so maybe it's just maybe it's a um uh a popping noise that isn't like a gun but it is similar to a gun okay um a lesser noise maybe it's somebody in the distance going pop or something like that it's something I can control it and I'm going to take it to its smallest point maybe at first they're going to go pop and then they're going to go pop you know and then whatever so I'm gonna I'm gonna start teaching them this incident is going to happen and I'm GNA set that up with a cue I'm gonna like I completely agree with you by the way the animal should have something to do something to do that you're reinforcing so sitting or you know whatever you think is the right thing for them to be doing stationing in some way standing on a stand those are classic things and they they're concentrated on doing that and then you inform them this thing is going to happen something's about to happen I want you to look over here right pay attention over here it's gonna happen it happens and you go as it's happening you go wow that was the best of that you must have made that happen you pay the animal for it before they even have a chance to spend too much time processing maybe you repeat that three times leave it alone come back another day do the same thing increase the stimulus strength very carefully now the dog starts to realize through the learning process okay he's pointing to something something's about to happen there it is okay look at me I'm so proud I'm so big I'm so good and you build up a resilience around the fact that they can trust you I mean the suddenness of something is one of its biggest problems so that is part of its stimulus strength the suddenness and the and also God forbid it happens behind the animal or over their head I mean those are also really bad so controlling all of those variables in a very very careful way in a very respectful way that helps set the animal up for success that's how that's how you can I think you could prevent any animal from getting sensitized if you did this now if you're trying to do it on eight animals at once unless you've got eight watching no what what the the reason I'm mentioning eight or whatever is because um typically this starts that kind of deenz begins much much sooner with the idea that the the sooner I I mean as soon as you know the the the puppies are not even hearing yet they're just feeling vibration so when you start doing this to that early age you you're certainly Having Eight together but you cannot recognize they don't give you that much signs of what's happening yet so so

where I was going with this is like when you go that early thinking that you will prevent something from happening so let's say seven of the puppies are totally cool but there is that one that has that predisposition to sound and at that early age if we try to desentized we have nothing to go yes we don't have anything to to judge are we doing too much are we doing enough are we should we stop or not because there is not that much that that little thing can tell you but they definitely can experience it right but they can definitely experience it and and if and this is where I I am uh reluctant to do that kind of stuff with with little puppies if the puppy is already yeah whatever I mean it's walking it's eating solid food it's it's definitely all senses are fine and then we recognize that there is a problem then I I'm definitely going to try to help open to the things you're saying but um I I I would at least wait until that moment I wouldn't assume that if I do this as a prevention to very little puppies that's going to help me I think that's where I'm saying that it will the puppies that have problems we're really playing with fire there and may may make it worse I I think that follows the same principle that I'm suggesting which is the most important thing is preventing sensitization so sensitization is an increased response to the stimulus associated with learned exposure right that's what we don't want that's what you're saying happens to some and I totally agree with you and it's and that sensitization occurs anytime you experience a stimulus at a stimulus strength that is above your felt potential and that is individual specific right it's individual and life history specific so um and you can't know what that is so so it's very important to watch walk in gently or or be very cautious I'm extremely cautious about exposing animals to stimulus prematurely um maybe one of the more cautious people as far as that goes because I would rather take many small steps and take a little bit longer than run the risk of running into sensitization sensitization can be a 20 or 20 to1 or a 200 to1 more trials than if I did it in a nice stepwise approximation when the animal was ready for it I don't train my baby sea lions for blood sampling right I train them to do that once I have developed a solid understanding of them and they have a solid understanding of their environment and they have all kinds of behaviors know how to do and all sorts of uh trust that is associated with it and if I was to have to do blood sampling so what I do train them to do is I do train them to get into cages very very early in

their life and I use that backup um method of chamber induction if I had an emergency procedure I need it to run I Infuse the chamber with anesthesia they never experience any restraint they never experience any trauma and we do it that way and that's how I would do it um with a dog it's easier because they don't mind being handled you know a sea line you can't even touch it to teach a sea line to touch it takes weeks you know you you start out just waving your finger next to it and then and then you poke it briefly and then you you know you vaguely stroke it I mean it's a very big deal to um just to even touch the animal so uh so it's quite different but you use what you have at your disposal the other thing I would say is I get a lot off of of young animals if you have them in your lap so you can feel them you can feel the vibration in their body a lot better right I don't know how do you feel about that you know if you put the I me yeah no no that's I I I would rather at this point where I am I I would rather wait and make sure that they have I mean they're not for sure not living in a vacuum bubble they experience normal life but I I I try to avoid this bigger stressors that I know that they can really have some uh um more more strong reactions to for for a later time to where I can I can judge it very well and decide how to play as we said with space and duration and so on um but um yeah I don't yeah in the meantime you can always do low-level stimulus you know I mean just get them used to somebody going pop pop pop and not it being a gun the ones that that I always notice that domestic animals get blown out on that people aren't paying attention to hair dryers vacuum cleaners Clippers so those are the I mean gunshots is not usually the one that I'd pick up but um you know obviously uh you can you can run into that problem but um I I think it's important for for them to start seeing the Clippers lying around and keep the door closed when you're doing your your hair drying and just be respectful of the potential to sensitize the animal to those stimulus that are naturally going to be the environment that you're ignoring but that might blow them out and then you'd have this problem so those are some things I then there is that other one when when they are um like let's say for example with when I was at G dogs you know like you will have the puppet there will be well there you will have the volunteers that will be every every day having this nice playgrounds with a lot of enrichment and they will play sounds and they will do like they will do a lot of very nice things all the time and very controlled very decent way of

exposures but even then when the dogs grow up and come back for training and with test you still have dogs that now not not as puppies but now they have a reaction and and this is sometimes um another interesting uh situation where it takes some level of maturity you need to grow up to finally realize that oh this person's looking at me kind of wrong or oh this is whatever that trash can is actually can fell down and it can hurt me like you know so so the things that is a little right so when when you're really young you may not see it yet as the danger that it could be so you're a little bit oblivious to it but that doesn't mean that you're going to be resilient as you grow up because of the like things can change right um well the I I know exactly what you're talking about and you're completely correct there's a critical window in everyone's development where as an as a young infant you're you're pretty much bomb proof because you're just a blob in some to a certain extent and that's where you're getting all your software loaded up about what's normal and what's not normal and again you're trying not to do the above felt potential then you get to an adult phase and the adaptation is survival it you know real things out there can kill you so you're no longer in the protection of your parents and you need to be more um alert and awake and you do get into these with sea lions it was like from age two to seven they'd get really spooky and they would have been fine or maybe it's like three to seven or something they would have been fine for a long period of time or or months years or months years years because they live a lot longer than dogs so they'll live into their 30s um so maturity would be eight years old so where a dog you'd be thinking what two what would you think two to three years maturity yeah yeah sure depending on the breed so so make that seven to eight years with sea lions wow so so you've got this this window um and I completely agree with you I've seen the exact same thing with dogs and the the things I think is um so I wasn't able to prevent these uh when when the animals hit adulthood and they started to realize whoa life really does have some problems um there would be a few things that will have been in play one is they will have gathered life experience and they will have realized trash cans fall over right and that is true so that that that actually was learned to them you know or or in a case um you know some some medical procedure had to happen um the second thing is genetic disposition you know some animals are just more nervous like you said so both those things are true you

can work with the um the learning part very judiciously and I spend a ton of time very carefully growing up during that infant to adulthood period I you know it's not just about a oneoff they went to puppy school and they're done they need to stay in puppy school until they're adults yeah um and that means you know a small systematic exposure on a regular basis very carefully done throughout the entire early development of the animal in order to be sure that that conditioning lasts it's not a oneoff um but of course there's there's a range of individuals and and everyone isn't going to be good at the same stuff and and some animals aren't going to be suited for or any particular task you're going to apply to them but that doesn't mean they have to be basket cases either it's not like you just write them off I mean maybe they wouldn't be a good competition animal for you but they're not you know they shouldn't just be nothing right very true very true that that's the the genetic and environment nature nurture it's always a interesting one um I I there is one that I cannot miss to to ask you about and that's a schedule of reinforcement like what like when you train dogs or sea lions or horses where do you lean more to like is it random continuous like where where are you with schedules of reinforcements and and how do you and how do you decide on it oh a great question I want I want your answer too um I'll give you mine and of course I can I can give you mine yeah I can go ahead so I um I tend to like continuous schedule but the reason and again I mean depending what we're teaching and what we are maintaining um a lot of the like the dogs that we train for competition they're you know you know some of the behavior harly we we are asking a little bit more of their natural like let's say if we want the doct to down they can down or they can like really down but that that kind of very flashy response can come very natural for a border col but not necessarily for a German shepherd and in that situation I find that continuous reinforcement helps to maintain that high level than the random um so so in in a lot of places I like unless I'm concerned that the behavior may go into Extinction then for sure I have to put it on random schedule but um I I seem to to do a lot of continuous schedule of reinforcement and that doesn't mean again that it's a one type of reinforcer but the behavior is always attended to there is there is a consequence that's kind of where I am at least for right [Music] now that's a very uh astute and nuanced answer and I like your um I like your caveat there at the end because you know

when we say continuous these are terms that are are established in science right and in science in the in the laboratory that meant a very particular thing it meant an aloot of food but in real life and we this has been a theme in the conversation there are all these reinforcers and one of the subtle things that is very hard to um decide about is like you know I've been making a big point of the human being becomes the reinforcer you're almost always by definition associated with with the behaviors and anything you do whether you smile or you praise or all of those things are reinforcers especially to dogs for Christ sake so right it's a little bit difficult to not be in a continuous system in it you know from a purely uh absolute standpoint you know that that you'd have absolutely no reaction to um to behaviors is pretty rare um so I I'm I'm with you in in that in that point of view so what I tend to say is and this is you know I'll go back and forth between science and the art the science says continuous uh and you probably know this but for the listener I guess continuous um schedules um are best for uh perfect uh identical presentation of behavior that's what they so so like you're describing very well with the down if you want the down to be exactly the same and totally precise continuous schedules will will help maintain the crispness of that right um on the other hand intermittent schedules um will maintain effort they will enable um you know because if you promised a payment you know a all the time there's a little bit more uh tension I suppose in case you don't you miss your reinforcer or um yeah the promise of payment is something that can trip up the continuous reinforcement situation in real life and you can get more modification and more um more effort towards getting the behavior you can get surge effort on random schedules plus uh or variable schedules variable schedules also help you you know um just with uh extending out your reinforcers uh from a practical standpoint like sometimes I'm working with animals for hours at a time or I'm working with them in open ocean or something like that where I can't reinforce every single iteration of the behavior by because of the practicality of the situation literally the animal has to do you know and I can create chains and things but there are there's just a practicality to what the scenario allows so um I like the I'm I'm not in either Camp I will say I use continuous when I'm training a novel Behavior so if it's new to the animal I am using continuous reinforcement acquisition yeah there there's no there's no question there in my mind I'm

also using continuous reinforcement if this is a behavior that the animal finds inherently quite challenging yeah you know that the behavior is difficult to perform or the animal doesn't like it or it's painful anything that that ranks hard for them you know Fair pay for fair effort basically where I tend to go into variable is when the animal has an establish repertoire it's back of their head they you know easy for them to do and I want the flexibility of not having to pay for every single thing I want them to be not so tight that if I miss the reinforcement and also just the flexibility of my work environment I want to be able to have the animal keep going for long long periods of time like horses it's really important to have variable schedules because you're riding horses you know you can't be um it it you can't be paying of the same temporal frequency all the time um so you you inherently need to stretch things and and and a lot of the paradigms I worked under I had to do that so I kind of go back and forth and I think some of it is I'm watching the motivation of the animal but if I'm in some situation like you're describing that's a competition where I need perfect performance continuous is your best friend no question there is one more that just uh came to me and and and this is um like I I also would pay attention and basically not not disturb a behavior that it's already self rewarding by throwing another reward on top of it because now uh uh I I would make the dog expect my bow or cookie instead of enjoying what they're doing at the moment which they already were doing and uh so sometimes the the reward or the reinforcer that we are adding takes out the the enjoyment of Performing like like if I like to I don't know play soccer I just like to play soccer and I get now money because I'm playing soccer there is that question now am I still liking to play soccer or am I looking for the money and and and there's a lot of interest in this you gosh that is a Hot Topic question and it is really difficult because it gets into if it's trained Behavior it gets into where it goes from extrinsic reinforcement to Intrinsic reinforcement right how do you know and when do you hand it over and I mean that's an art form with people like yourself who have to you have to sense this the shift and then you can also sense that it can it can um it can shift back too the animal can get burned out if you overuse um a conditioned reinforcer so it depends on the situation um I think you have to feel the ratio strain set in for you know you can feel sort of the slug if you're if you're going to use anything you know if

you're going to stop reinforcing something you have to you have to feel where that where that um Value Point is at for the animal um but it's true if it if it's got its own uh intrinsic um self-confidence in there then of course interrupting it with extra reinforcement as a as a weird um Sid trck it doesn't necessarily have to overshadow it but it can overshadow um I mean you think about people who uh who are professional soccer players to use your example um professional soccer players get paid to do it but they still enjoy the game so we know it can happen that way um but then there is a lot of example of of there being some uh some kind of um it's different incentive right it's not like it's not like the kid that can play endlessly like the the professional player plays and likes it but expects the the reward for playing to where the kid just wants to play he doesn't expect a reward for it um no right um I'm not sure I would agree and I think well we don't have a professional athlete here but I I can kind of feel the professional athletes on both sides of that story arguing back against that I think you know Michael Jordan still plays basketball they people people who love this love the sport and got into it at that level they love it love it um you you know I agree though the basic principle how long are the training sessions what do you like if with if um with a with a normal young animal you're starting some basic training what is like a how long would a training session go for yeah it's a good question that so depends um on the species and the individual and their level of um you know obviously in the beginning their level of ability to focus their attention is very small whereas you know the more advanced animals it's almost a punishment to end the training session for them because they're so into learning and interactions so what determins when to stop let's go there in in the beginning I would say the default answer is many small training sessions empirically that's what is clear many small training many short training sessions there is another problem with this question which is to say that so my perspective is training animal training is behavior modification brought about through human interaction good one and that definition you'll notice especially with a domestic animal like a dog involves all the Interac actions you're doing they never stop learning just because you've you've turned off your you know you're not doing any trick training you're not trying to train a behavior doesn't mean classical conditioning and other uh Associated um phenomena the animal still picking up on reinforcers in its

environment all the time it doesn't clock in and clock out the way that we're describing quote unquote training sessions so it's really really important to keep that in mind as an animal trainer that the the animal is not clocking in and clocking out now in terms of the intensity of working on a given Behavior if you want to if if that if that's the capsule that I think you want to put around training session um many short training sessions to begin with then when the animal has the joy of learning it's almost a punishment to shorten the training session and I would start extending them out Accord according to their um you know their mental aptitude and interest and I always try to end before you know I feel that coming on or right in the very beginning you know if I start to notice there's a sluggishness maybe we'll switch to another thing because you know you get tired of some some basic um approach and maybe they still want to work but they want to do something else so that you know I said sometimes we work on multiple things in one session it it'll just depend on the animals um appetite for the encounter um even more than the appetite for the reinforcer um it it it's a it has a lot to do with their this gets back to a relationship it has a lot to do with where they are in the learning process if they've learned to love to learn which is what happens in time I'm sure you would exper you woulde with right then um then that animal can be worked much much much longer but I still think um and and there's a lot of situations where I have to in the in the end my goal is I have to work with the animal for hours so I can't you know limit their training experiences to always just tiny training sessions because I'm going to have to get somewhere and I'm gonna have to take approximations to get there so that might be one of my reasonings and I think that depends you know really what your goal is with the animal how how are you going to use this behavior and and what is the duration cap on that what about break and I'm not talking break like the small break within the session but actual days of no work do you do you use any strategies with that because sometimes I I would and it happens almost by default with me because if I I'm gone like I was just for like two weeks in Hong Kong and I come back and I work with a dog that's already season a dog it's so in know very early stages 5 months old and I think breaks I find them sometimes when the dog is in the right place in the break are very very beneficial for motivation like it really skyrockets for me but what what is your take do you notice the difference

between the seasoned animals and the um Greener animals in terms of that um yeah um probably yeah probably the seasoned one is a little bit more uh um more motivated I would say um but I mean not by much for sure I think uh um the younger one and young meaning like like let's say if I have a three three months old puppy and we barely can play fetch for 2 minutes it doesn't affect it but once that puppy already understands that he has that Joy of playing fetch to the point that can get tired and and really feel good about it already that break uh uh you see you see them looking expecting and being highly motivated and excited that oh we're going to do this again so um yeah once once the the actual games are already established a break I find that really can can just skyro motivation if if needed do you have a sense of um how long a break is like is there a difference between a break of a day and a break of two weeks and is there any duration of break that is too long in your mind like is two months too long of a break or is that you know what I mean like how do you look at that so I've I've gone probably as far as two months and again just because it either the dog is injured or I'm gone or something and up to that point it's always been a a very beneficial thing um as a trainer I feel like okay I should be doing something I'm behind but every time there's been a break like this I always find that I start exactly where I've been where I left at with a very nice uh new charge new stronger motivation stronger desire every time um sometimes even with dogs that let's say unexercised or behavior that got got a little confusing and the dog doesn't quite understand the answer and the way out and how how to make it um I also would take a break at least from that behavior But ultimately I would take a I I would take a a break from everything and then start with the favorite behaviors when there is that desire of high motivation I reevaluate what was the confusion and hopefully I have the answer so now I can to the right uh uh repair um but yeah I for me again it's very hard to give breaks this kind of break because you you see them they want to train and I want to train so it's almost forcing each other not to do anything but when it happens when it just happens because of Life schedules it's always been a a very productive comebacks always that's really interesting so you've never seen a a disadvantage of the length no which I always think that

I should I'm almost like sometimes in a panic oh I mean I maybe I have a competition or I need to I'm behind my training for whatever reason and um yeah I it's a interesting one and for sure just as you said with the relationship when when after a break I'm also coming with the excitement that is very clearly noticeable from the dog it's like well he's back and he really wants to do it so I know we're fitting from each other and but it's a very good moment and I always pay attention to it because it's I I use it all the time when when it happens I I rip all the benefits like I I don't take it lightly that's yeah it's got me think well we had always um a principle we called it a rest day um built um once a once a week for each animal so we took a day where we didn't do formal training sessions um every week so you know my basic yes yeah we do the same we do the we do I I all just like with us I I think we we all need a break and and and but the one day break or two- day break even I I don't know how many more days but for sure one or two days doesn't create that kind of motivation than than two weeks of of not doing it so I I notic when you were describing um that it you know especially if there's a problem I I often did do exactly you know would maybe I would try to solve the problem and I would find that we're just getting deeper into the problem so taking a long break under those circumstances shelfing the behavior for weeks um and coming back to it it was definitely something we did um with with the same kind of success although that's not to say that we shelf all training uh for our animals my animals would have felt um yeah I think almost like a kind of depression if we went for um for weeks without any training with them and I I think this may be again about the definition because presumably somebody's walking your dogs you know right so from my point of view that's still they're still engaged they're not like locked in a kennel somewhere just get yeah yeah that I have to make that clear they're not staying in a crate like they they're still having the run of the house and my wife and my other dogs are they they're have 10 acres to run every day it's just that that one-on-one interactions missing yeah yeah yeah where you're just like focused on this goal um and and I think that's very domestic animal kind of situation whereas in an exotic kind of scenario where often we have to move the animals around we have to take care of them so it's not as possible to just completely uh walk away from that that is kind of the you know them being in the house with us that's uh that's a part of how they they are effectively

doing that all the time shifting moving so there's always this kind of thing but novel behavior training might not occur certainly wouldn't occur um necessarily uh each day and and might be weeks in between any given with a lot of our animals we might have many behaviors they're working on and they and and there could be you know weeks in between any given behaviors trial um and I did see uh I I do recognize the effect of what you're describing I can say I think that that's the case that there is a certain amount of um uh you know refreshed interest freshness or something like that um the other side of it is and I think the reason that I would tend to not go for months at a time is that you know the life of the animal is finite um especially for dogs and you're losing months at a time and in particular if that's in a critical window like the learning that that window we're describing up until adulthood where they're establishing who they are I wouldn't so much want to walk away from them for you know those would be very significant chunks of their childhood that I'd be losing important formation time so I would tend to not do that in the younger animals and I would tend to feel more confident doing that in animals that you know where their growth uh curve is not so dramatic at that point it's not so critical that I get those foundations into them while they're in that that moment you know I wouldn't it's okay not to be in school as an adult but as a child you might be losing some important moments of learning your letters and you know learning how to socialize or or you get yourself in trouble doing you know displacing all the energy into the wrong things but yeah I mean again like I I I know that it helps me but I have never done it on purpose like I just cannot say oh we're not going to do anything for two weeks that's just like not not possible as a trainer you know your dog is looking at you it's like like well how how can that happen uh um anything that you do as far as uh like like I don't know I mean I I didn't mention but like do you let's just start there like would you tell do you have a cue of disapproval in training oh that was the thing I never got back around to um so I don't have a no reward marker the way you're describing it um but I have something that's very similar so the the downside of a no reward marker is it's completely associated with punishment it means that's it but I really value being able to tell the animal they're on the wrong track I don't know why you'd only want to tell the animal when they're on the right track that's in fact I I often play this game with people where I I say okay you

can either play just hot only or you can play hot and cold and which would you prefer and and I've never had anyone prefer hot only because you need the information the the thing is is that you want it to be informative and not discouraging so you're you need to take that cue um in my mind this is how I how I worked with it I needed to take a Quee that can inform the animal as a piece of communication about when they were doing something wrong and yes the implication of doing something wrong is at least negative punishment it's at least you're not going to get paid um uh that's how the queue gets its value right but um but it needs to not be so discouraging that it suppresses all effort so the Quee that I created um is called the redirection stimulus and it's a stimulus that says on this P it it it sets up a a two- Choice um Paradigm for the animal if you continue to repeat the same behavior you will not get reinforcement you will effectively get punishment however if you change behavior when I cue you with this redirection stimulus change behavior in any way you get um on a variable schedule reinforced so it's a cue that says change Behavior to get to reinforcement so it it uh it helps reduce the uh supressive effect effects of the Punisher what's that but but it's not asking it's not suggesting to do that behavior it just saying uh um uh um it can be a one two so you certainly can and I often did no sit would be a good example um here's what I want that's how you can help it conditioned along um the condition one of the problems with this Quee um this cue has a lot of value in a in a sophisticated person's hands but it's tricky to condition properly because um because people like to just say no and if you say no a bunch of times um without realizing that you need to reinforce for the change of behavior you can become quite suppressive um you know no no no no no it's not it reduces the motivation of the animal a lot um but I found this to work very well in a lot of paradigms paradigms that might actually reflect some of the type of work that you do there are many times where I needed to stop an animal on its tracks you know if it if it was about to do something that was dangerous to me or to it I needed to let them know that there was going to be a repercussion of that um of that action and I really wanted them to pay strong attention so the um the flip of it is like one of the classic ways I would show this off is I would start to hand the animal a fish a food reward and I would use the redirection stimulus so they would be Reaching Forward for the fish I would say nope and they would pause or they

would look away or they would go into the water because I had conditioned this um and as soon as and they would do that with so much eagerness and and crispness it would make you proud I think and and and what do they receive in in response to having done that tons of fish right one fish on the one hand versus tons of fish on the other hand and so you get a very crisp response they're listening for that information because is a guidance yeah yeah it's a guide it's it's it's something that says the re you will not get reinforcement continuing this way you will in fact get punishment you'll get negative reinforcement or maybe even more than than that sorry you will get Negative punishment I said the wrong thing you'll get Negative punishment or even positive punishment if you continue down that track um but the other side is switch Behavior quickly reinforcement even if it's not the exact behavior I'm looking for we'll work on that in a minute right um You can always you can always cue the behavior you're looking for but what you want is this crisp reaction to the redirection stimulus and and in that sense as long as you maintain the reinforcement side of the redirection stimul um it worked very well it works very well for me and and my animals I actually did do an experiment where I I looked at training with only the bridge stimulus or training with the bridge stimulus and the redirection stimulus and the learning curve was so much faster I mean I I could cut more clarity yeah a lot of people don't like this because there does have to be a uh at least a negative punishment repercussion um to really crisp this this uh the information there has to be there has to be a consequence to not listening to the redirection stimulus which in my case was often walking out I would just walk out so like if you to make the distinction between being positive or negative Punisher and redirection is basically the your redirection involves a penalty but includes guidance to what's next is that the difference or are you asking about the um the initial training of it or you asking no not the training just the just yeah just the the like so we have a punishing Punisher which means you you you something whatever if it's negative or whatever but we're stopping a behavior in the one that you call um oh no now I forgot what redirection the reason I'm calling it a redirection stimulus is because it it's differential reinforcement of other behavior is what's happening but I I set up a contingency that says do anything other than that and you're going to get paid initially that's what it is yeah they're they have you have to you have to have a

consequence to if they continue because you could have differential reinforcement and never and and really just try to deflect the dog with or or the celion without ever knowing the tell them go ahead but that's kind of like like when when a lot of trainers use differential reinforcement the idea would be okay there is the undesired Behavior we're not going to tell you that it's a bad behavior don't do it that it's dangerous for you we just going to really focus on what else to do and that would be a a a form of typical differential reinforcement that's a lesser version of what I do as I would put it I mean I just add a yeah because it says hey this I don't like what you're doing or this is dangerous for you or whatever so you're really bringing a more well-rounded education to bad idea good idea yes right and I'm trying to make it clear in the in the exact second when they're doing it so I can use it when they're actually learning so they're they're in they're in some process of learning and I can go not that lift don't lift your foot put that down and then as soon as they start anything but lifting it they get paid so now you know now they're listening for the information I can tag the exact moments of the behavior that are wrong and if their mind is on the part of their body that I was uh talking about they're going to really quickly connect what the parameter to know how to do something you both have to know how to do it and what it isn't that's both sides of it yeah and It's Tricky though It's tricky to train maybe not for you I think it would be very easy for you to train or you probably use something that I think we are doing we're doing the same the same approach for sure um unless unless it's something that um okay well sometimes there is um I don't know like like sometimes there would be just a very natural way of how you do you you touch a hot stove and and nobody needs to tell you don't do it again nobody needs to tell you do this instead you just learn not to touch the hot stuff so there is there is situations and times where the dog could learn from experience which they do anyway without without redirection I don't believe that every single time we need to say don't do this and do this instead there is times where it can be very simple just as I said with the stove it's like just yeah don't don't do it do do whatever else you want to do and it doesn't need it doesn't lead to a a reinforcement necessarily but that's a bad idea but rather my kids don't get burned on stoves so my general strategy would be to explain right don't touch the stove and then when they touch the stove they won't be that surprised if they

decide they're going to touch the stove or they accidentally touch the stove they don't think oh the world has come to an end and actually that's how you know those animals that get random the worst type of punishment in the world because touching the stove is a punishment the worst type of punishment in the world is random punishment that's the one that's associated with all the bad outcomes non- contingent correct and this is where all the studies are done to to show this is the problem if you expect this if you have every reason to understand that there is you speed and there is a speeding ticket penalty or whatever that is you're not that shocked and nor are you that traumatized by that it's very similar to what I said to you earlier about the um the loud noise realizing that The Gunshot is effectively random punishment to that animal that is blown out by it the the better scenario is to go there's going to be a loud noise you know once you start to understand the more understanding you have about why things are happening the less random they are the less non-contingent as you said the more the more clarity the animal has they're armed to understand they won't find it quite so um uh traumatizing and that's that's what we're looking for we don't want to traumatize them there's no use of trauma traumatizing we want meaning in in the environment to be as clear as possible yeah that's how I feel no no that's exactly that's a super super good point um I mean know that that was perfect um what about the what about the list reinforcing scenario that's something in in your in your Marine World and then that's a a hot like people you must have a very high-end audience if you can throw out that term without without even explaining it Well Done listeners so it's basically okay for those that don't know it's a it's like a it's a what you would call like probably the most positive way that you will try to deal with undesired behaviors right and there is a so there is like a I don't know was it like two to 4 seconds of of uh neutral response and then you you know you kind of distrupt uh the rhym of of whatever the the the the reinforcement that the I I always think of dog but you disrupt then you wait for that break and then you thr Ro a reinforcer to to kind of re-engage back with you the um the the Criterion associated with it as as I was taught it or as I teach it um least reinforcing scenario two to 3 second period of no response from the trainer followed by reinforcement on a variable uh frequency for Comm default attention right animal it basic no response from the trainer becomes a cue for calm default attention

which is an important one you want to you want a Comm default attention and I like having no response be a Comm default it's not like a you're not really looking for eye contact or any anything you're really look that's the yeah Cal default detention does mean the animal has to be paying attention directly to the trainer and moving around I mean it will be different depending on the species for me with a dog it would be them having to make eye contact yeah oh yeah they'd have to be looking at me but putting that to the side do I use it yes um I I actually use it with my redirection stimulus so the the when I'm first training the redirection stimulus the problem with it is the animal has to notice you're doing it and and that's because it's silent it's sort of you know without a cue associated with it it's a little bit a lot of animals miss it um and also I think because it doesn't give them the positive opposite the um you know what I like about the redirection stimulus is it is like it's not like no you screwed up okay well we can go on it's like just shift you know shift now shift on the Fly you know my animals actually are looking to hear the redirection stimulus because it helps them get to their jackpot faster right right whereas nobody really wants to experience the lease reinforcing scenario because it always it you know it can it could come there are famous stories of killer whales doing this where you know they've they've just gone off on some giant chain behavior of three huge jumps and they weren't supposed to do that jump and then they come back and they get nothing they get told effectively um no by this method and maybe they'll get something for uh sitting with C default attention but still they've wasted a lot of energy if you could have interrupted the misunderstanding in the middle of that big jump sequence so they didn't waste all that energy doing something you didn't want right it would have been a lot more um uh coste effective for both of you is how I feel and and there have been some very classic examples of animals becoming really aggressive after getting lrss because they learn that you know they've just wasted it all their time so I prefer not allowing my animal to practice a big wrong thing at the end of which going right but it isn't it the lrs really the the the the whole purpose the reason is to avoid to say no that's the wrong direction yeah it is it is to but to kind of just uh manage it in some magical way that uh like i' I've tried to to see like like I I've seen it maybe twice uh um and twice is nothing so I'm going by pure logic of of how it would work and and it's just very difficult it's

you're living it to up to the animal to come to this conclusion that they may or may not come and most likely they will not come to that oh this is why this is happening I've been kind of stopped by doing what I wanted to do they come to I mean I I use this tool all the time so I don't want to I don't want to suggest I don't use it I use it all the time it's sort of it you know it's it's a reset button reset is a different yeah reset is a very different thing though you you I I will still say hey this is why we're resetting yeah well I'm a communicator too so I tend in that direction as well although not every single thing you did make the point that not everything needs to get feedback right earlier the touching the hot stove tells its own story and and this is maybe um you know to avoid I think some of some of this is about you can accidentally reinforce the behavior if you if you respond too much um depending on how much the animal gets out of the interaction with you so for example there's a lot of parrots and and a lot of animals that just by paying attention to them you're rewarding them and so it can be very difficult and that must be true also with dogs it can be very difficult to um work with giving feedback in the middle of an incorrect response that can actually sort of push that that response forward so uh it has to be done with I I think a level of sophistication I usually give people a kind of General guideline I think other people do I wouldn't use if you're finding you need to use an lrs more than three times in a training session stop and rethink what you're doing in fact that's true of the redirection stimulus too I don't want somebody overusing the redirection stimulus although I personally probably do use it more than three times in a training session um and sometimes I've done that unwisely but you know I think it's I think these techniques are useful to um to give a nice Edge to to the situation but the but the but the win is really in the anti-an arrangement setting the animal for for Success so that you know mostly mostly they're on the right track and then um the the lrs is maybe if you don't know what to do in your processing this might be a good first response um rather than inadvertently re reward the behavior by jumping into it and accidentally U miscommunicating to especially to a domestic animal that uh your attention um might be positive to them do you feel they do you feel they can start to to understand and well I I don't know if it's not a punishment but we can call they definitely understand it I mean they understand it enough that I've I've watched animals be violently aggressive

at the end of an lrs because they understand that they've just wasted their time interesting or or can it happen the other way also to where they they go to that almost purposefully so they can get that uh um reinforcement of for for neutral response would that happen too or no well would that happen or not that c that could happen and that's why it does have to be on a variable strategy um you know it's not it's not a continuous uh schedule so I think you have to decide on the basis of the motivational particulars in the situation whether that's something you want to reinforce for uh how regularly is the animal defaulting to the wrong behavior in order to get the just I prefer Comm default um also you have to train a com you should train a com default um as a as a foundational um go-to I mean that's that's what I want my animal to do if they don't know I want them to calm default so that we can both reset you know and that is a hard thing to train it also trains a lot of emotional kind of self-control so there's a lot of benefits in within that system that maybe we're not kind of giving it credit for a little bit it it implies training this this important kind of wait and you know look for more information from the trainer kind of attitude to the learning experience that I think is very good um I like giving precise markers because I'm I like communication yeah I would do I I'm kind of the same way like like I um like I would I I would have very hard time to do this Calo or neutral as a research as a reset for me will be I I'll tell you that we're resetting and let's let's come here and reset and I'll kind of guide you to a reset because I feel like by doing this neutral response I'm I'm really leaving you alone and I don't want to leave you alone when it's difficult for you I'm like come here let's start over right here you know yeah well there's something very kindly about that attitude I think and I generally agree but then there is you know in real time and maybe dogs are a little bit um easier this way a lot of our a lot of the exotic animals are so hyperactive that you really do need them to learn how to sit still um they need to learn how to sit still to get more information if you're constantly having to micromanage them you're basically doing it for them and they never become um able to uh wait for more information and waiting for more information is a very valuable attitude to take on for sure oh for sure it's it's actually Priceless to have because you you yeah like we I don't know when we train it's almost like the the whole training has a a beat a rhythm to it to where it's not all go go there is a

there is definitely a pose and then there's like okay what's going to be next maybe we don't know maybe we need to look at each other maybe we have to interact now and then the next thing comes instead of sit down come toy heal like all this like a big just action action action to where the moment there is no action there is a big concern all of a sudden like this is I don't know what to do I cannot function why are we not yeah like anxiety right right um interesting I had a I had a sea lion baby um who was really aggressive and uh she had been handled she had she went through rehab multiple times so she would have had lots of needles lots of traumatic early life medical experiences and so she just really did not like human beings when she started and she was all you know attack and Spitfires and everything like this and and the other side of this is that she kind of had that she just has a had a naturally um anxious personality when she you know once we had worked through all of that and she had um uh learned how great we could be and and she learned to um she learned to to train in fact she was one of the animals that really loved playing frisbee she would play Frisbee through the fence infinitely long no one could ever exhaust this animal she'd just do it forever um that was after you know that was when she decided human beings were okay and we had spent a lot of careful time being very respectful and kindly towards her anyhow um we used a lot of Comm default we used a lot of lrs and and basically um it became for her like an anchor where she would get so upset when she was not understanding what we wanted because she really liked to know and she really liked to learn and she liked to be the best at it you know and so if it wasn't exactly right and she wasn't you know getting the feedback that it was perfect and stuff like that she'd get frustrated and you could you know she would like Flip or stomp and you could see her just her breathing rate would increase and you could just feel the tension on the animal and leaving would not have helped that much because that would just leave her with this failure right so of course you could switch to something else and use you know behavioral momentum but she really did wanna be able to succeed and and so one of the best things that she she learned to do in the course of using this type of a tool was she learned that when she was frustrated if she dropped into the com def fault she was a winner and she could always be a winner um and she could be proud of that and so when she started to feel this is actually part of my mindfulness training this was the thing was that she learned

how to control her emotions and she learned to be proud of that being being uh able to do it so she might not know but she could do this and you watch her and she'd go and then she go oh I know and she' do that with so much joy and pride it was amazing to watch her it was amazing to watch her choose how she could control herself so that's an example of um and that animal is still to this day one of the best Learners the most enthusiastic most motivated animals um and they went through this whole Arc you know of of being basically afraid terrified hating people so was it with one person was it like a did you was it one person that she warmed up with originally or or how how did you guys approach it like was it like really one one on one or was it few trainers at the same time that how did you gain the TR um because uh because an exotic animal like that is does not live in your house you have to have more than one trainer but we did have I mean I was her primary trainer yeah in the critical period extremely um so let's say 85% of her training would have been done with me and then there was one or two other extremely capable regular people uh my partner in particular who would have been working in you know you can also create a disability if you only make one person because then they don't flex to that next person so um so we did that but they would be doing lesser things they wouldn't be working the novel Behavior they would be working whatever I had kind of already set up or just you know come bearing gifts is one of my big strategies so with her it was a lot of non-contingent reinforcement pay first ask questions later it was uh keeping at a distance trying to keep our movements unthreatening we um we did not do any vaccinations we did not do any Force procedures um and we very quickly trained for the things that in case we had to do anything medically like eye presents we did in protected contact so she felt more uh safe we brought in the the veterinarians a million times just to do nothing but feed her and walk away people wearing all the dummy gear um for a very very long time I mean it just happened for long periods of time and uh rewarding all the smallest tries that's the other thing you know just really cherishing every moment she succeeded but we had to draw a lot of sharp lines there were many times I had to walk away on that animal um and there were many times I had to protect myself too so a lot of her initial training was was quite from a distance wow wow that's super that's like a I mean it's a interesting challenges how often did you have or she was like really one of the

most extreme ones so I mean is it often that that they they get aggressive or or yeah I would say sea lions in general are pretty close to closer to the wolf than the dog remember what I told you about how to touch them people have this idea that touching sea lions can't be a reinforcer a lot of professional sea lion trainers or professional Marine Mammal trainers will tell you no touching sea lions isn't reinforcing except I can show you uh videos of me with no food no training session just out there scrubbing my sea lions so how is that the case it's the case because um millions of of iterations of uh classical conditioning went into it um so yeah I they're pretty um they're pretty aggressive when you first uh get to know them most of them you know over 50% this one was particularly bad because she had been handled a lot um and uh I think what's very important is because you get a lot of fear biting in sea lions um and it's mostly from handling it's from people pushing uh the physical touching too soon um or pushing the veterinar procedures on the animals and them just having having these really early life uh traumatic experiences that that color the way they think about humans in general wow so they wow this is a u i I need to this I'm going to be thinking about this for four days I'm telling you this is just so an absurd amount of work I mean you know it took a village of people we're not talking about a dog at your house this is like me and 20 other people and it must be frustrating and sad at the same time cuz all of you are trying to make the thing feel good and and probably it's it's a you see a lot of progress pretty quickly like actually I have some great videos some so in our next conversation I I'll at some point I'll send you some videos you can see of going from like backing and biting to um you know to learning the bridge and learning the Target and once you start getting some sense of um communication going everything kind of shifts around because no longer is everything it's going back to this idea of the randomness if they can't understand anything they're suspicious of everything but once they start to have an understanding that there is Clarity in this individual that they mean what they say that they can trust the contingency so this is in a sense you know this is really where you want that um and then also probably giving them some some sense of of meaningful life like a purpose something so they're not just like okay what am I doing like you know giving them some some sense okay I I'm somebody I'm have a a purpose right fulfillment right that I think that's a very big big part of of

coming kind of together too I think this is one of the most important reasons why people should deliberately train animals training is uh mental health care right it gives it gives an animal in captivity and Managed Care gives them something to uh strive towards we've taken away most of their basic me you know the things that they would have had in the wild staying away from predators finding food finding mates we've we've eliminated all that we need to Supply something to do cuz they're still genetically have the need to perform all this things right but it's the same with the dogs it's the same with humans it's the same I guess with everybody otherwise we wouldn't have survived right that we're not we're not genetically um wired to uh sit around and do nothing that wouldn't have been a survival characteristic so that would be a dead animal yeah this is uh this is kind of my concern where where uh the like in in the dog training and dog just owning a dog it's becoming you know animal rights and I don't know who else but restricting and thinking that dog sports are you know all Dog Sports have an element of of you know not being fair and some some abuse but abuse can happen without without that but but I really think that if we don't have outlets for the dogs like a grain Hound not to chase a lure or a husky not to run or or a marina not to do what Mar not does but we still have them the shelters will be full with dogs I mean we will have so many problems without people not and and and on top of that when you when you train a dog for some sport being agility being flyball whatever you want but doing something with a dog the relationship that you and I have been talking all day long just goes on a very different place than walking on a flexi around the block and feeding at the best dog food that you can think of and sitting on the couch all day that that sense of of like like contribution even yeah I agree I agree completely I think that being able to continue to grow your whole lifelong is a very sad satisfying mental place to be and to the extent that you you basically stagnate um it's not good for a person nor for an animal I think I think that it's what keeps you young it's what keeps you engaged it reduces fear it helps you be resilient um I think finding a way to do that in a healthy way is one of the best I me there's all sorts of evidence of that in human beings you know doing puzzles challenges keeps your mind going and um the this is the same basic uh Hardware but that you know we're both mammals this is you know we're just two different branches of the same tree and um that sort of fulfillment um is really important it

involves critical systems that help your whole body stay in um in a good calm state you know yeah I don't know why why we're headed that way though to where um we we really think that a dog should just have you know have food and have place to walk and and they should be happy and and when you think about even I mean humans I mean the you my best friends are people that I do things with you know being Sports being being anything but um I don't know that that's a that's something that I I really don't know where it's coming from um I don't know how is it with the Marine World and like with like how much do you get like how how how much do they want you to stop doing what you're doing basically is there is there a pressure on you as a Marine World or or or even even if it's not for you know actually SeaWorld even if it's for a good cause is there still a pressure of just interacting and training with with animals or no I think there's a misunderstand about what training is again I want to point out that training is all of the interactions where the animals behavior is modified through interaction with person so can that be established um at an intense level in a competition 100% could it be in other ways other healthy ways can it can a dog be happy at home on on walks and things like that of course they can um but but I'm an advocate that we deliberately you know I think say something radical but I think it wouldn't be so terrible if people had to have like certificates to own pets and that they had to understand how to condition them for healthy happy lives like how to walk them without choking them and um you know how to make sure they have recalls and how to make sure they know how to go to kennels and that they're not barking like crazy when you leave the house and all the things that end up associated with kind of the companion animal uh problems because there's a lot of companion animal problems out there where people are just sort of um carelessly training their animals um they're flooding them they're doing all sorts of unhealthy training techniques um traumatizing them with sudden visits to the to the veterinarian that haven't been prepared for or vacuum cleaners or the you know there's all could be done better and that that's true of the uh common horse and dog owner and it you know it's less true of the professional because the professionals pretty much have this in their mind and so you know if I look at which sets of animals are healthier it's by far the animals in in Professional Care um the the the real problem animals are the animals that are coming out of someone's home where they've blown them

out and done stuff that or they've just left them to languish um in depression and separation anxiety or uh fear from um overexposure to imist and that happens a lot in both dog and horse so that's the place where people like you and I have to leverage our understanding of training and also explain that training is happening all the way through the life of the dog this is this is technology that we have to bring to bear all the time from the dog's point of view it's not distinguishing the competition from the dog walk those are the same they're engagements with the person and the question is I mean I'm not saying they're the same like the animal um has the same experience but they could be the same on the you know when I walked my dog I did all kinds of training in the park I was doing all sorts of agility and random requests of sudden downs and all this kind of stuff because I wanted that experience to be very alive and very um right yes exactly if you if you you can certainly do that but that's kind of what I what I mean by doing sports or or any kind of tasks is the giving the dog some challenges that that can and good good challenges exactly that they succeed and bring makes them excited makes them confident makes them yeah so so you certainly can do that going to a park absolutely um um yeah it's that sense a big push back on in our industry right I I never answered your question but there is a big push back and I think where really scares me is that it will it will harm the animals ultimately where we won't be able to um we won't be able to care for them properly there's a big uh feeling in general that only natural behaviors are what the animals should be exhibiting but the thing is is that they're not in the wild they're in yeah a Managed Care situation we've taken care of their basic needs what we need to do now is what we've done for human beings which is allow them to develop and cultivate themselves to a higher level and they can do that they can understand language they can understand very elaborate very complex behavior and they find it satisfying just like people do um because their basic needs are already met so this is where we can help them almost like evolve as individuals towards um their fullest potential and that is done through learning um it's not done through just leaving them alone and and uh disrespecting their potential by leaving them um kind of uh languishing in in uh nothingness yeah I think it's sad to have this attitude it's very um diminutive towards animals but I know a lot of animals and I know how incredible they are and how sophisticated they are and how much

potential they have and would hate for them to have that potential limited it reminds me of how people used to treat women in like 400 years ago or something you know like they were stupid or something and they couldn't contribute to society um I mean it's a weird analogy so no no no this I mean we can go with a lot of analogies like this it's like a there there is a potential and you're just letting it rotten because it's it's the worst thing it really it is the worst thing U and you're setting them up for fear and all this other stuff too and anxiety I'll tell you what most of the problems that people have with animals is because they're not taking care of their natural need to express species specific species relevant behaviors right um cats is the famous one where you see that all the time you know I mean because somebody's having a problem with a cat it's it's trapped in a house unable to do all the cat things he wants yeah you need you need to create a jungle gym of places to hide and jump from and all the things that you know that really stimulate the animals so that they can work that their their needs out um and with horses it's going to be like they're stuck in a little stall and they're cribbing on on the wood PE you know they sit there andw you know and with dogs you know I you can see it in their eyes in their expression which is just yeah yeah and I have a dog that lives next to me that just barks you know for four hours at a time when the when the owners leave because they've got terrible separation anxiety and you know that dog isn't being left uh for a better situation that dog going into a training program like yours would be a totally different totally different being right you know which one of the all the animals you have interacted is most difficult to get any rapport with like a like generally speaking well I mean definitely the the lower down the evolutionary Trail you go the the less that's going on there um animals that are not socially complex that that in their lives they they don't interact with others um they don't raise their young so reptiles um I'm not dissing All Reptiles certainly it's possible to train reptiles and people do and it depends you know like they those Galapagos turtles that live for 100 years those are completely different animals than you know than a box turtle or something like that um so those animals you know like or a snake that eats once a every two weeks something like that you know it can be much harder lower lower expect St too um I'm sorry say it again from from snakes we we yeah we have different criteria and expectations I guess too we kind of accept the fact that

they they you know they're snake they have a different interest in life um but I'm always trying to push the edge so I want them to learn to get in their crate I want them to learn to I teach them a bridge stimulus you know all of those things are possible with I've never met a species one of my first species I worked with was pray mantis insects um you know I don't know if we had a bond but we had a bridge stimulus we had a Target I came bearing beetles you know I had goldfish training a lot of negative reinforcement with goldfish run away from the pencil was a very straightforward thing you could do with a goldfish it was always my joke but you know if you look you can see very elaborate fish training going on but you your question was you know where the relationship was maybe not as important or you know it's harder to develop a rapport I think it's harder to develop a rapport with shorter lived um you know animals that don't have a lot of social uh interaction um and the more sophisticated the animal is you know you get up there with a with an elephant you know a wolf a um that kind of uh complex uh being the sky the limit I think you could you could do anything like I said I've got videos of asking asking animals to do voluntary 19 voluntary injections in their mouth so that somebody can come in and slice a tooth out you know I remember like when you when you gave me that example I remember Casey she she was telling me about something with a uh I don't know was it wild pigs or some kind of pigs or boar or something and they were doing um like the artery that goes to the heart some some some crazy blood sample yeah and yeah it was the ven or the um yeah Jill she was explaining she she made it like you know I mean made them comfortable and and pretty quickly it wasn't like a some month they really wanted the milk or whatever was in her she had a milk bottle that she used as bait okay and they would sit there and drink out of this bottle and then they just became desensitized to the touch and a lot of the fear in in the in the stick is not you know the actual pressure of the needle and stuff for animals that are used to banging into each other it's not actually the the pain of that the problem is mostly about the the rodeo that goes on to hold the animal down so um a few systematic desensitization steps very carefully prepared while the animal is happily drinking away yeah and she could do it with one hand she just crazy wow so once you're in England you you're still going to be coming back to the States sometime right cuz I I really would want to like like do some Hands-On stuff at some point somewhere well if you're

inviting me to your ranch or to one of your clinics you know I I I can see a future for that I think that would be really fun um I would love to understand uh more of your techniques and uh you can help me edit my next iteration of animal Training 101 that way that would be super yeah we can do so I will send you an invite we will definitely make this happen and um yeah I I know I know the um there will be there will be interest to do something like this because uh yeah this kind of collaboration is always like looking from from different angles and having different minds of observing and only good things come from that so yeah I feel like the the um movement that I do between train Training Systems between species has really helped me think outside the box for difficult to solve problems um it's amazing what people who are at the top of their game um are doing in terms of the art form and I'm sure uh without knowing very much uh but I have seen videos of you I'm sure you're in that category so I think we we would have a lot to share it's like the Blind Men and the elephant story you know each person knows their part and then the whole elephant is defined by getting as much of a different sense of of the different component thank you Jennifer this was a super conversation anyone tried this book if you don't have it um you find it on Amazon yes yeah it's one of my uh recommended book for for the school um so there there is um I have several books and this definitely one of them so hopefully all the the moving is smooth and and everything and um yeah I'll I'll I'll stay in touch will we'll organize something and and then probably we have one live one-on-one podcast after we do some training and working together that would be oh that would be so exciting how cool I really hope I really hope we do that I will make I promise every time I say that so thank you you and I could sit here and talk for hours and hours I don't know how much the audience wants to listen to it imagine imagine if when we start actually do that that's what's about okay Jennifer thank you and uh uh yeah we'll be we'll be in touch very very much appreciate you okay me too be well be happy thanks for listening take care [Music]