Seminar Weekend: General Thoughts

2 days of Kathy Sdao. 2 days of Ken Ramirez. Throw in school and work and out-of-the-area friends and I’m absolutely exhausted.

I took so many notes. My hands were hurting (especially the day I didn’t have my super fancy pen!). By the end, we sounded ridiculous in some of our attempts to make sense of what we’d been learning.

But now Megan is on her way home, two exams are done, my dogs are exercised and semi-clean and only about 1/5 of my notes have been typed up.

General thoughts from Kathy’s sessions: There are no good reasons to not do husbandry training. We need to remember how important classical conditioning is. We need to be smart about how we use operant conditioning. We need to have a plan and keep records. Vets need to step up in making husbandry training happen, little changes can be made without much change in time and with little cost. NILF concepts need some reworking and can potentially harm the human-animal bond. We need to watch for triggers and prevent meeting them outside of a training context.

General thoughts from Ken’s sessions: There is no good reason not to do husbandry training. It’s part of good animal care. Enrichment and training should not be optional. We need to make training plans and use them. Animals in a group is no reason not to train the animals. Though it’s often most simple to work one at a time. Most of aggression work is prevention and redirection, and then we need to put in the training. We need to be clever in our problem solving, as well as clear. We need to look at the big picture. Secondary reinforcers are under appreciated. When people are not willing to go with a training plan. Give options. Consider that change might not actually be a priority.

I learned too much even though I’ve seen some of these talks multiple times before!!