It is very interesting to see how some trainers take actions to behaviour that solves the problem at the moment. What works now works. This means that at that moment in time the problem is solved. The question is will this actually be a solution for the future?
Short Term Solutions With The Vet
A perfect case scenario of such situations is when we have to go to the veterinarian. We just want our animals to be healthy again is our main goal. The challenge comes when the animal isn’t trained for such procedures. What happens is a scenario where we need to catch them, hold them down so the veterinarian can do their procedure. The future for the behaviour of the animal in that environment will be very negative. We all know how classical conditioning works. The action you’ve done right now is going to be more difficult later on. Which effect on the behaviour of the animal will this have in future situations? Do we even think about the effects or are we complacent of this situation because we’ve done it always this way?
When we train our animals for a variety of behaviours we teach them skills to cope with the environment we place them in. We train them for the future. Reinforcement makes behaviour come back in the near future. Punishment decreases behaviour in the near future. Each of them with their pros and cons.
The Easy Way Out
This means that we can plan what most likely will happen when we respond to a behaviour that currently occurs. It sounds all very simple and easy but in practise it is different. In my career coaching and helping trainers to become better with their animals I’ve found that many trainers choose for what they think is the easy solution. Such as described above with catching the animal to bring the individual to the veterinarian. Another situation is when a dog pees in the house. At that moment we want to cary him outside or in some cases owners punish the animal of doing so while they have missed important behaviours that predicted this outcome.
What the owners do forget is that if they had observed the dog and trained the dog for urinating outside instead the problem wouldn’t be the same. picking up the dog and put the dog outside is a short term solution. Training the dog to pee outside is a long term solution.
As a coach I always try to look at the long term outcomes instead of the short term outcomes. Don’t we all want an animal that participates in their own care? Not just once but all the time? One of the first things we do is looking into the pros and cons from short term actions in the future vs the long term actions in the future to eliminate specific ways of dealing with a behaviours the animal shows us.
Long Term Solutions Are Worthwhile
Especially in cooperative care behaviours this is important. I mean we can train this behaviour very fast when we use continuous feeding or we can take our time and we have a solid blood sampling behaviour we can rely on all the time. Continuous feeding in this case is a short term solution which can help when the pressure of time is present. It is always better to train for the long term and in case of the blood sample, taking your time and repetitions of approximations makes your behaviour only stronger and more reliable. Training this behaviour for long term success is therefore a lot more valuable than training quickly because such a behaviour also breaks down very quickly. So either you add more time training the behaviour and get a strong outcome or you do it quick and need more time to retrain a behaviour. You decide. All I can say is re-training is a lot more difficult than training it properly from the beginning.
Scaling Animals Is Trained To Excel In Their Care
Carrying for animals all comes down to predicting the future. If it is for giving them the right nutrition, habitat, enrichment or training. Coming from the marine mammal world we are all to busy with this process. Take for example the scaling the animals. Knowing how much their weight is isn’t only important to see if they are overweight but it is important to find out the differences in all the seasons of a year.
Let me explain, we could give a sea lion the same amount of food every single day. Which would be fantastic. Unfortunately this doesn’t exist. Sea lions change their fur, get in breeding season (males can loose up to 100kg in this period of time), outdoor temperature changes, water temperature changes, pregnancy and so on all have a direct effect on the food intake and the weight of the animals. This means that for a sea lion it is impossible to keep their food intake at the exact same amount each and every day. We have to plan accordingly because if we know the male is going into his breeding season we have to put his nutrition intake up so he can easily loose enough to still be strong and healthy after losing so much weight.
Zoospensefull has been working together with Namsskogan Family park in Norway for 2 years where we help them apply a behaviour program in their facility which changes the management of their species completely to increase their welfare. The first goals we have set is getting animals trained for the scale. This allows us to make sure if the animal is on a good weight. Body scoring is somewhat a grey area and therefore we are looking for confirmations. Easiest way to get these confirmations is the scale behaviour.
Zoospensefull is a World Wide known behaviour consulting company. With creativity and success they change the way you manage your animals based on best welfare practises.
The biggest change has been made with the reindeers. We’ve conditioned each reindeer to go onto the scale. At the moment they are scaled every other week. Thus far the keepers discovered great fluctuations in their weight the keepers got worried about these fluctuations. Which is normal if you had never seen their weights before. It is actually a very normal process for animals to change in weight. The trainers are discovering that they can’t give the reindeer the same amount of food every day anymore. The reason is just like the sea lions that a reindeer changes his fur, grows horns, drops the velvet, becomes pregnant, etc etc. Through having the reindeers on the scale we can now plan for the future and help the reindeers going through these periods with giving them more or even different food types to help the process they are going through.
How Should We Think?
Training our animals is all about predicting the future. To mention punishment, essentially this is a short term process which does give success when we want to decrease behaviour on the short term. Therefore many are still using this method. BUT… The long term will give you an animal that becomes afraid of you, decrease is relationship, learned helplessness while we think the animal is so calm, the animal has apathy, and so on. The question for you is would using punishment be your best choice? Don’t we want to have a bright future with teamwork and mutual respect? I’m sorry but a training program focussed on punishment does not fit in here. Reinforcement practises is always a better outcome for the future of the animal and behaviour.
The whole point of the matter is that when you think about what will happen in the future is when you start to make different decisions as a trainer. Decisions which changes the welfare for the better on the long term. Thats exactly what we want.
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