Trainer Academy|by trainers for trainers!

Who is the best trainer in the world?

You only have to look in the mirror to find the best trainer

When somebody asks this question, for sure a couple of names will pop into your head: maybe the people that have published a couple of books; your boss; a co-worker or even a friend of yours.
OK!
Those are all possibilities and of course make sense, but did you ever think that it could be you?
Yep!
Maybe you do not have that many years of experience behind you or the other way around, you have lots of experience but nobody knows your name. Sometimes, to be the best, it isn’t necessary to have either of these aspects because to do our work properly we need passion, therefore:
The best trainer in the world is the one that has fun doing what they love.
We need to grasp the meaning of this because if we just read it, we might think of “having a party with the animals” or “partying like an animal”, which is worse, and believe me, that’s not what it is about!
To make it clear I should start from the basics:
Humility
To succeed in any field, being humble creates an opportunity for understanding. By not just reacting to uncomfortable situations or lack of progress, it enables you to listen and be open to different options, gaining new perspectives from others. It gives you the opportunity to improve yourself, enhancing communications with your co-workers and therefore being able to maintain the highest standards for the animals under your care.
Ego is not a tool that is useful to our work, but a Smile, definitely - YES!
Being humble is a premier quality in interacting with co-workers and it is a core competency in working with animals.
Do these phrases sound familiar:
“My dolphin is too lazy today!”
“My sea lion is not paying attention at all!”
“My dolphin did not want to come out from the holding pen!”

It is at this point that we need to be humble. To admit that, actually, it is not the animals that are failing, it is we the trainers who are failing the animals because we are no longer providing them with the right communications, stimuli or even the tools to motivate them so that they can reach the proper criteria.
We might even say:
“There are no difficult animals only stubborn trainers!”
Each animal has their own likes, dislikes and has different moods as well. There is no difference between a young calf and an animal with years of experience in training. We need to understand the scenario and read the body language at that given moment, to understand what is going on.
Not having a clue as to what would happen and pushing an animal to do certain behaviours or reach a criteria can become frustrating and therefore, removes any element of fun, with the result that your animal will fail as many times as you ask for the Sd or whatever you are working on.
• Observe the scenario, including peripherals.
• Read the body language, what is the animal showing you,
• Work with a variety of reinforcement schedules and use different stimuli to lead the session to success.

Mom and calf Dolphin Discovery Cozumel

For instance:
I was working in Dolphin Discovery, Riviera Maya, Mexico and I had under my charge a female dolphin named Venus (12 years old) and she just had a baby, Audry (3 months old). At that time she was in a holding pen big enough to hold another female, Athena (15 years old), and her calf, Frida (3 months old).
Venus, who had many years of training at that time, was really fun and even easy; she could learn a new behaviour in a really short period of time. I must say at this point that she had fantastic trainers before me who had worked with her in a really positive way all the time, therefore TRUST was a main component of the relationship with her.
The facility was undergoing a few changes and a new holding pen was being built specifically as a maternity pen. Once the maternity pen was completed we needed to move all four animals into their new home.
A plan was made and everything went really smoothly, each mother did their work in bringing their calves through the gates with them. Edgar Urbina was in charge of this operation and during the whole process everything was perfect; fast, clean and smooth!
Once we had the dolphins in their new home we were ready to do the first session on the submerged platform. Venus was already aware of this stimulus and would not be a problem at all, that’s what I thought!
Starting with myself on the platform, asking for station, Venus was cruising twenty feet away from me and only occasionally peeking at me.
Having this scenario, I had decided to bring a target pole to motivate her to come and also did a couple of hand slaps on the surface of the water. No response from her, not even one foot closer and, of course, having my boss standing behind me, this was not exactly what I was expecting!
Throwing fish to her or swimming out of the platform was not the proper plan to follow, Venus was experienced and doing that would be taking too many steps backwards - that was my thought-
Having this on my mind, I clearly remember Edgar’s voice telling me:
- Remember, you should do all sessions positively. Look at the scenario, which is new, and use a continuous schedule of reinforcements, with good and nice approximations, and you will have success. Swim out for her!

And YES! It worked as if by magic!
I swam out, hand target right in front of her, a continuous schedule of reinforcements, swimming all the way back to the platform, and she came with me, no problem at all. As soon as we reached the platform, I gave her a jackpot and we finished the session on a positive note.
The next session in the new area with her was very smooth and easy, like she’d always done it.
Factors that may have caused this avoidance behaviour by Venus in the new area:
• New area, protecting the calf.
• Stress from the session before, gating.
Solution:
Work on trust with Venus by swimming towards her and using a continuous schedule of reinforcements, with small approximations, making the new area positive and safe for her, and therefore for her calf.
With Venus, in this particular case, Venus responded quickly due to her background training and her personality, but with another animal it might take a little longer but just as effective!
My point being that the best trainer in the world lives inside every trainer; it’s just a matter of understanding the path that you need to follow, according to the animal that you are working with. Maybe these points might give you a better understanding:
• Learn to read your animal’s body language.
• Beware of any changes in the scenario and make it work.
• Always work on positive approximations.
• Do not push, do understand the scenario instead.
• If something goes wrong, be cool and do not draw attention to it.
And most important of all: be humble at all times in order to see what you are doing wrong and next time, do it easy and make it clear for the animal, in a positive way, in order for them to succeed.
ABC of Animal Training will guide you to find the best trainer in the world inside yourself for sure.
And I would like to steal the phrase,
Happy Training!
That word means a lot if you really think about it.

Cheers Mates.

Happy Training!

We have shared the earth with animals since Homo sapiens walked the planet and in the beginning, like it or not, we viewed them solely as a source of food. As time passed, we saw them as tools to help make our tasks easier and then finally, we have domesticated them for companionship.
When we talk about marine mammals, and specifically Dolphins, we find a multitude of stories about these creatures, for instance;

As noted by Bearzi and Stanford (2008, pg. 18). “Intelligence, consciousness and compassion were among the words used by the ancient Greeks to describe their ‘companions of the sea’. The philosopher Plutarch regarded them as the only creatures that seek friendship for purely altruistic reasons. Greek myths portray that culture’s fascination with dolphins: the sun god Apollo assumed the form of a dolphin when he founded his oracle at Delphi on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, and Orion was saved from drowning by a sociable dolphin and carried into the sky, riding on his back.

Dionysus the Greek god of wine and mirth, who once booked passage on a ship from the island of Ikaria bound for Naxos. The ship’s crew was actually a band of pirates posing as merchant sailors, whose secret plan was to capture their passengers and sell them into slavery. When Dionysus discovererd their conspiracy, he used his divine powers to punish them by causing the ship’s mast to sprout branches, the men’s oars to become snakes and a strange flute to play. To escape this divine madness, the pirates cast themselves into the water where the ocean god Poseidon change them into dolphins and commanded them to serve humankind forever.

A century later, the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder told the story of a peasant boy living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea who befriended a solitary dolphin named Simo. Everyday Simo used to take the boy on his back across a stretch of water between the child’s home and his school. Tragically, the boy fell sick and died. Upon the boy’s death and for many days thereafter, Simo kept returning to the place of their meeting until he too died of a broken heart. Simo’s story is one of the countless legends of friendship between children and dolphins that were popular during the Roman Empire. As it was with the Greeks, the Romans were fascinated with these creatures.
Leaving mythology aside and getting back to business, I should make mention of Germany’s Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913), who is considered the father of the modern zoo, and who in 1875, trained animals for display in circuses throughout Europe and the United States. At that time, training was done in whatever way they felt like doing it. Carl Hagenbeck always dreamed of a permanent exhibit where animals could live without bars and in surroundings much like their natural environments. His vision went on to become the basis of today’s zoological exhibits and was even considered the beginnings of the cinema experience!
Starting in 1943, B.F. Skinner pioneered a theory of behaviour modification utilising a technique called Shaping (hand-shaping), which is generally known as Operant Conditioning and is stated as: - Behaviour is a function of its consequences; consequences are what follow a behaviour.

And this has revolutionized animal training!

At Dolphin Discovery, the ABC Animal Training program is based on this technique and using it, we are able to achieve very impressive co-operative behaviours from our animals.
Some examples being;
• training manatees for voluntary blood samples,

Jackie gets a hug at ABC Dolphin Trainer Academy

• facilitating Tamarin monkeys’ ability for recall,
• interactive programs and diving with sea lions
• the best interactive programs with dolphins.

People dream of petting dolphins and in enabling them to do this, we ensure that all of our interactions with the animals are based entirely on positive reinforcements.
Therefore:
• Each interaction with the animals should be interesting and mentally stimulating, even fun.
• Desirable behaviours must be reinforced with primary and secondary reinforcements, not drawing attention to undesirable behaviours.
• Relationships are built based on mutual trust and respect, not only must the trainer trust they will not be harmed by the animal, but the animal must also trust that the trainer will not harm them.

A few years ago, I was in charge of the Anguilla, B.W.I. facility; a beautiful and fantastic island in the western Caribbean.
The dolphin population consisted of four boys and three girls. (4.3 dolphins)
One of them was an awesome dolphin and the sweetest girl ever named Ayla. She was eight months pregnant and I was doing some cleaning in the lagoon. After I finished, I forgot my snorkel at the edge of the pool, and with waves washing over it, it sank all the way down to the bottom.
Once the snorkel was there, Ayla found it and took it underneath her right pectoral flipper, becoming the best treasure ever for her.
She would not give it away even for two pounds of herring!
We worked out a plan with all the little details involving doing successive approximations until she gave it away by herself. With this whole experience, we found the best secondary reinforcement to use with Ayla.
The plan was really simple:
#1 - Hand target with the snout/ then primary.
#2 - Hand target with the snout and presenting left hand by right pectoral fin/then primary.
#3 - Approximation # 2 plus having the hand closer to her flipper/ then primary
#4 - Approximation # 3 plus touching her flipper/then primary.
#5 - Approximation # 4 plus touching the snorkel/then primary.
#6 - Approximation # 5 plus holding the snorkel for a sec and giving it back to her/jackpot
#7 - Approximation # 6 plus holding the snorkel and moving two steps either way/jackpot and snorkel back to her
#8 - Approximation # 7 plus coming out of the water with the snorkel/jackpot and snorkel.

The schedules of reinforcement that we used was continuous with each step and the reinforcements were primary, starting the next session one step behind the last one.
As Karen Pryor (1994) states “Positive reinforcement training constitutes an exchange of deeds for goods in which a pleasant communion arises a salutary sort of equality between animal and trainer, one cannot work without the other and both must do their part. That is reinforcing in itself, for both parties.”
At this point, I must state that “tamers” are history and we at Dolphin Discovery, we are real trainers.

References
Bearzi, M. and Stanford, C.B. (2008) Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Pryor, K. (1994) On Behaviour; Essays and Research, Waltham, Mass., Sunshine Books.