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Animal trainer

Early 20th Century animal trainer and a leopard.
Occupation
Names	animal trainer
Activity sectors	social science, busking, circus, show business
Description
Competencies	skills, manual dexterity
Education required	see professional requirements

Animal training refers to teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Training may be for the purpose of companionship, detection, protection, entertainment or all of the above.

An animal trainer may use assorted forms of reinforcement or punishment to condition an animal's responses. Some animal trainers may have a knowledge of the principles of behavior analysis and operant conditioning, but there are many ways to train animals and as a general rule no legal requirements or certifications are required.

The certification bodies that do exist (in some, not all, countries) do not share consistent goals or requirements so it can be difficult to tell what kind of training a trainer has had to do his or her job. The United States does not require animal trainers to have any kind of certification or psychological screening.

The type of training is often determined by the trainer's motivation, background, and psychological makeup. An individual training a seeing eye dog, for example, will have a different approach and end-goal than an individual training a wild animal to do tricks in a circus.

However, any attempt at training any animal, be it wild or tame, should consider the natural behaviours of the animal and aim to increase desirable behaviour through a basic system of reward and punishment.^[1]

The most successful form of training combines positive reinforcement (follow a desired behavior with something worthwhile to the animal and the behavior will increase) with negative punishment (withdraw something the animal wants when it performs undesirable behaviors). Other trainers may rely on positive punishment (follow an undesirable behavior with a punishment to reduce the rate of the behavior) and negative reinforcement (withdraw an undesirable stimulus when the animal performs the desirable behavior).

Service animals[link]

Morphy, an Orangutan with his toy, a horse, on a walk with his keeper in a traveling circus.

Service animals, such as assistance dogs, Capuchin monkeys and miniature horses, are trained to utilize their sensory and social skills to bond with a human and help that person to offset a disability in daily life. The use of service animals, especially dogs, is an ever-growing field, with a wide range of special adaptations.

In the United States, selected inmates in prisons are used to train service dogs. In addition to adding to the short-supply of service animals, such programs have produced benefits in improved socialization skills and behavior of inmates.

This section requires expansion.

Film and television[link]

Organizations such as the American Humane Association monitor the use of animals such as those used in the entertainment industry, but they do not monitor their training. The Patsy Award (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year) was originated by the Hollywood office in 1939. They decided to honor animal performers after a horse was killed in an on-set accident during the filming of the Tyrone Power film Jesse James.

The award now covers both film and television and is separated into four categories: canine, equine, wild and special. The special category encompasses everything from goats to cats to pigs. One famous animal trainer, Frank Inn, received over 40 Patsy awards.

Patience and repetition are critical components of successful animal training. Inn's most famous animal was Higgins, who came from the Burbank, California Animal Shelter. Inn began training animals while incapacitated due to an automobile accident. Higgins starred in the Petticoat Junction sitcom in the 1960s and the first two Benji films in 1974 and 1977.

Lifetime bonds are often made between trainers and animals. The ashes of Higgins were buried with trainer Inn when he died in 2002.

Companion animals[link]

Dogs[link]

A trained dog competing in dog agility.

Basic obedience training tasks for dogs include walking on a leash, attention, housebreaking, nonaggression, and socialization with humans or other pets. Dogs are also trained for many other activities, such as dog sports, service dogs, and other working dog tasks.

Positive reinforcement for dogs can include primary reinforcers such as food, or social reinforcers such as vocal ("good boy") or tactile (stroking) ones. Positive punishment, if used at all, can be physical, such as pulling on a leash or spanking, or may be vocal ("bad dog"). Bridges to positive reinforcement include vocal cues, whistling, and dog whistles, as well as clickers used in clicker training, a method popularized by Karen Pryor. Negative reinforcement may also be used. Punishment is also a tool, including withholding of food or physical discipline.

Horses[link]

The primary purpose of training horses is to socialize them to be around humans, teach them to behave in a manner that makes them safe for humans to handle, and, as adults to carry a rider under saddle or to be driven in order to pull a vehicle. As prey animals, much effort must be put into training horses to overcome its natural flight or fight instinct and accept handling that would not be natural for a wild animal, such as willingly going into a confined space, or having a predator (a human being) sit on its back. As training advances, some horses are prepared for competitive sports, up to the Olympic games, where horses are the only animal athlete that is used at the Olympics. All equestrian disciplines from horse racing to draft horse showing require the horse to have specialized training.

A human with a trained horse and a trained Peregrine Falcon

Unlike dogs, horses are not motivated as strongly by positive reinforcement rewards as they are motivated by other operant conditioning methods such as the release of pressure as a reward for the correct behavior, called negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement techniques such as petting, kind words, rewarding of treats, and clicker training have some benefit, but not to the degree seen in dogs and other predator species. Punishment of horses is effective only to a very limited degree, usually a sharp command or brief physical punishment given within a few seconds of a disobedient act. Horses do not correlate punishment to a specific behavior unless it occurs immediately. They do, however, have a remarkably long memory, and once a task is learned, it will be retained for a very long time. For this reason, poor training or allowing bad habits to be learned can be very difficult to remedy at a later date.

Birds[link]

Typical training tasks for companion birds include perching, non-aggression, halting feather-picking, controlling excessive vocalizations, socialization with household members and other pets, and socialization with strangers. The large parrot species frequently have lifespans that exceed that of their human owners, and they are closely bonded to their owners. In general, parrot companions usually have clipped wings, which facilitates socialization and controlling aggression and vocalizations. Some birds of prey are trained to hunt, an ancient art known as falconry or hawking. In China the practice of training Cormorants to catch fish has gone on for over 1,200 years.^[2]

This section requires expansion.

Chickens[link]

Chicken on a skateboard

Training chickens has become a way for trainers of other animals (primarily dogs) to perfect their training technique. Bob Bailey, formerly of Animal Behavior Enterprises and the IQ Zoo, teaches chicken training seminars where trainers teach poultry to discriminate between shapes, to navigate an obstacle course and to chain behaviors together. Chicken training is done using operant conditioning, using a clicker and chicken feed for reinforcement. The training of chickens has become a popular event for dog trainers. Trained chickens may be confined to a display where they play Tic-Tac-Toe against humans for a fee.

This section requires expansion.

Fish[link]

Fish can also be trained. For example, a goldfish may swim toward its owner and follow him as he walks through the room, but will not follow anyone else. The fish may swim up and down, signalling the owner to turn on its aquarium light when it is off, and it will skim the surface until its owner feeds it. Pet goldfish have also been taught to perform more complicated tasks, such as doing the limbo and pushing a miniature soccer ball into a net.^[3]

This section requires expansion.

Wild animals[link]

Wild animal training[link]

Wild animals may also be trained, such as bears, lions, tigers, leopards, or other big cats. The Ursari Romani people were specialized in bear training, although they sometimes also used Old World monkeys. Later on, the German animal merchant Carl Hagenbeck, used brown bears and lions in his shows.

The wild animal training used for lions is called lion taming.

This section requires expansion.

Zoological parks[link]

Animals in public display are sometimes trained for educational, entertainment, management, and husbandry behaviors. Educational behaviors may include species-typical behaviors under stimulus control such as vocalizations. Entertainment may include display behaviors to show the animal, or simply arbitrary behaviors. Management includes movement, such as following the trainer, entering crates, or moving from pen to pen, or tank-to-tank through gates. Husbandry behaviors facilitate veterinary care, and can include desensitization to various physical examinations or procedures (such as cleaning, nail clipping, or simply stepping onto a scale voluntarily), or the collection of samples (e.g. biopsy, urine). Such voluntary training is important for minimizing the frequency with which zoo collection animals must be anesthetized or physically restrained.

This section requires expansion.

Marine mammal parks[link]

Many marine mammals are trained for entertainment such as bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, belugas, sea lions, and others.

In a public display situation, the audience's attention is focused on the animal, rather than the trainer; therefore the discriminative stimulus is generally gestural (a hand sign) and sparse in nature. Unobtrusive dog whistles are used as bridges, and positive reinforcers are either primary (food) or tactile (rub downs), and not vocal. However, pinnipeds and mustelids (sea lions, seals, walruses, and otters) can hear in our frequency, so most of the time they will receive vocal reinforcers during shows and performances. The shows are turned into more of a play production because of this, instead of just a run through of behaviors like cetaceans generally do in their shows. Guests can often hear these vocal reinforcers when attending a Sea World show. During the Clyde and Seamore show, the trainers may say something like: "Good grief, Clyde!" or "Good job, Seamore". The trainers substitute the word "good" in the place of food or rubdowns when teaching a specific behavior to the animals so that the animals no longer need constant feeding as praise for achieving the appropriate behavior.

This section requires expansion.

Methods[link]

The Ursar, drawing by Theodor Aman

Animal training is generally performed in adherence in some form to the concepts of operant conditioning, although modern training methods frequently utilize tools not included in the original Skinnerian conception.

Certain subfields of animal training tend to also have certain philosophies and styles, for example fields such as companion bird training, hunting bird training, companion dog training, show dog training, dressage horse training, mahout elephant training, circus elephant training, zoo elephant training, zoo exotic animal training, marine mammal training. The degree of trainer protection from the animal may also vary. The variety of tasks trained may also vary, and can range from entertainment, husbandry (veterinary) behaviors, physical labor or athleticism, habituation to averse stimuli, interaction (or non-interaction) with other humans, or even research (sensory, physiological, cognitive).

Training also may take into consideration the natural social tendencies of the animal species (or even breed), such as predilections for attention span, food-motivation, dominance hierarchies, aggression, or bonding to individuals (conspecifics as well as humans). Consideration must also be given to practical aspects on the human side such as the ratio of the number of trainers to each animal. In some circumstances one animal may have multiple trainers, in others, a trainer might attend simultaneously to many animals in a training session. Sometimes training is accomplished with a single trainer working individually with a single animal.

Other important issues related to the methods of animal training are: operant conditioning, stimulus control, SD (discriminative stimulus), desensitization, chaining, bridge, and the s-delta.

One form of animal training is to combine positive reinforcement (follow a desired behavior with something worthwhile to the animal and the behavior will increase) with negative punishment (withdraw something the animal wants when it performs undesirable behaviors). Other trainers may rely on positive punishment (follow an undesirable behavior with a punishment to reduce the rate of the behavior) and negative reinforcement (withdraw an undesirable stimulus when the animal performs the desirable behavior).

List of notable animal trainers[link]

Known for their influence on the circus:

• Nadezhda Durova (1783–1866) founded the Durov family of performers in the Russian circus.
• Anatoly Durov (1887–1928) Russian circus animal trainer and founder of the Durov Animal Theater in Moscow.
• Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913) a merchant of wild animals who introduced "natural" animal enclosures.
• Gunther Gebel-Williams (1934–2001) trained animals for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
• Mike Baray, (born 1938) animal trainer, performed with Sarrasani, Jean Richard, Bouglione, occasional performer with E. Raluy's Circus Williams.
• Martin Lacey, (born 1947), animal trainer, owner of the Great British Circus, trained most of the tigers used in the ESSO TV advertisements in the 1970s.
• Martin Lacey, Jr., (born 1977), son of Martin, an animal trainer and performer with Circus Krone in Munich.
• Alex Lacey, also son of Martin, animal trainer and performer.

Known for scientific research:

• Ivan Pavlov (1849–1946) studied the psychology of animal training and described the phenomenon of classical conditioning.
• Karen Pryor (1932–), used applied operant conditioning with marine mammals and dog clicker training

Known for work in television and film:

• Nell Shipman (1892–1970) a Canadian film maker in early Hollywood.
• Frank Inn (1916–2002) trained dogs used in the Benji series.
• Brothers Frank Weatherwax and Rudd Weatherwax trained the collie Pal who portrayed the first Lassie.
• Ralph Helfer
• Dr. Bhagavan Antle, trained exotic animals for movies including Jungle Book, Dr. Dolittle and Mighty Joe Young
• Mathilde DeCagny trained Moose, best known as Eddie Crane on the television sitcom Frasier.
• Richard (Ric) O'Barry trained dolphins for the original 1960s Flipper television series, now opposes dolphin captivity

Other:

• James French, animal communicator and trainer, devised the Trust Technique.
• Felix Ho, professional dog behaviorist, international dog sport championship competitor and judge
• Warren Eckstein, animal trainer, author and radio personality.
• Victoria Stilwell, dog trainer, author and television presenter.
• Steve Austin dog trainer (particularly detection dogs), and television personality.
• Dave Salmoni, animal trainer, entertainer, and producer.

See also[link]

• Animals in sport
• Behaviorism Psychological theory under which operant conditioning falls
• Circus
• Cognition Psychological field antithetical to behaviorism. Cognition posits that internal mental representations and operations may affect behavior, unlike behaviorism, which is concerned only with the effects of external events (stimuli) on behavior.
• Dog training and dog trainer
• Falconry Raptors (birds of prey) trained to hunt or pursue game.
• Horse training
• Lion taming
• Mahout Elephant trainer
• Military dolphin
• Obedience
• Operant conditioning The development of discriminative stimuli (SDs)
• Reinforcement
• Shaping (psychology)
• Show (animal)
• B. F. Skinner founder of Behaviorism

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ramirez, K. (1999). Animal training: Successful animal management through positive reinforcement. Shedd Aquarium: Chicago, IL.
• McGreevy P and Boakes R,"'Carrots and sticks: Principles of animal training'". http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/sup/9781921364150. (Sydney: "Sydney University Press". http://sydney.edu.au/sup/. , 2011).

External links[link]

• Animal Behavior Management Alliance (ABMA)
• Changthai Elephants National Elephant Institute of Thailand
• Guide Dogs of America
• International Guide Dog Federation

This biographical article is written like a résumé. Please help improve it by revising it to be neutral and encyclopedic. (March 2011)

Victoria Stilwell
Born	(1969-07-20) July 20, 1969 (age 42) Wimbledon, England
Residence	Atlanta, Georgia Notting Hill, London
Nationality	British
Occupation	Dog trainer, Television presenter, Author, Actress
Years active	1995–present
Employer	Animal Planet, Channel 4, CBS
Known for	It's Me or the Dog Greatest American Dog
Website
Official Website

Victoria Stilwell (born July 20, 1969 in Wimbledon, England) is widely known as a dog trainer, author, and television presenter. Stilwell served as a judge on the CBS show Greatest American Dog and presents the Animal Planet dog training TV show It's Me or the Dog, counselling families with problem pets and solving their dogs’ behaviour problems.

Background[link]

Stilwell originally trained as an actress, playing roles in Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992, ITV1's The Bill in 1994, and onstage in London's West End theatre, as well as several commercials and voiceovers. She received a BA honours degree in Theatre from Middlesex University.^[1] In order to supplement her income as an actress, Stilwell's veterinary nurse sister suggested Victoria start a dog walking agency. Within a month Victoria was walking 20 dogs per day - 10 in the morning, 10 in the afternoon - and immediately recognized the need for qualified professionals to help her clients with the training process. She then expanded her focus to dog training by learning from some of Britain's most respected positive-reinforcement dog trainers and behaviorists. After moving to the U.S. with her husband in 1999, Stilwell co-founded several successful dog training companies up and down the East Coast. Born and raised in Wimbledon, England, Victoria Stilwell is one of the worlds most recognized and respected dog trainers, reaching fans in over 50 countries. She is best known for her role as the star of Animal Planet's hit TV series “It's Me or the Dog”, through which she is able to share her understanding and desire for positive reinforcement dog training by taming some of the world’s most uncontrollable pets as she counsels families on their pet problems.

Dog trainer[link]

Stilwell has become an influential advocate of science-based, humane and effective dog training movement. Stilwell rejects dominance-based, traditional training techniques, instead, promoting positive reinforcement techniques. These techniques, she says, increases the dog's confidence and happiness, and allows a healthy, co-operative and kind relationship to be maintained between owner and dog. Stilwell believes that positive training results in a dog who follows an owner because it wants to rather than following out of fear, while traditional training uses punitive methods to force a dog to behave, often resulting short term solutions which never truly identifies the root cause of the misbehavior while promoting insecurity and negative behavior.^[2][3][4]

In 2010, Stilwell created Victoria Stilwell Positively Dog Training - a global network of positive reinforcement dog trainers dedicated to spreading the word about positive reinforcement techniques^[5] Born and raised in Wimbledon, England, Victoria Stilwell is one of the worlds most recognized and respected dog trainers, reaching fans in over 50 countries. She is best known for her role as the star of Animal Planet's hit TV series “It's Me or the Dog”, through which she is able to share her understanding and desire for positive reinforcement dog training by taming some of the world’s most uncontrollable pets as she counsels families on their pet problems.In the early 1990s, Victoria began her career in pet training when she created her own successful dog-walking company and instantly recognized the need for capable professionals to help her customers with the training process. While pursuing a successful acting career (working in London's West End as well as in numerous films, TV series, commercials and voiceovers), she expanded her focus to dog training by learning from some of Britain's most respected positive-reinforcement dog trainers and behaviorists.

Charity[link]

Stilwell created the Victoria Stilwell Foundation, whose mission is "to provide financial support and canine behavior expertise to assistance dog organizations and small animal rescue shelters while promoting the concept of reward-based, positive reinforcement dog training philosophies in organizations and households throughout the United States."^[6]

With a particular fondness for rescue animals in need of behaviour rehabilitation, Stilwell devotes much of her time and energy to a number of animal rescue organisations around the world, serving as a behaviour advisor for shelters in Atlanta, New York, the UK, and Hong Kong while giving regular seminars on the subject of dog rescue, training and rehabilitation. She worked as a volunteer adoption counsellor for the ASPCA, and has been featured in numerous magazines and journals including The New York Times,^[7] USA Today,^[8] Cosmopolitan, the Daily Mail, MSNBC.com,^[9] Psychology Today and The Sun^[10]. Stilwell is a regular columnist for The Bark, Dog World, American Dog and Dogs Today magazines, and she has appeared on numerous talk shows, news broadcasts and radio shows in the US, Europe and Asia as a dog training expert.

TV programs[link]

[edit] It's Me or the Dog

Since 2005, Victoria Stilwell has worked with unruly dogs on her TV show, It's Me or the Dog, which airs in over forty countries. The show features Victoria as she counsels families with problem pets and uses positive reinforcement training techniques to help them learn how to correct their dogs’ behaviour. Originally produced for Channel 4 in the UK, the show premiered in the US on Animal Planet in April 2007, and over 90 episodes have been aired worldwide. A typical episode involves a family struggling to cope with their misbehaving dog(s). Victoria initially observes the problems in situ, then presents the family with her opinion regarding the causes of the issues. Victoria then works with the family and their dogs to restore balance. After a period of time alone to implement Victoria’s positive reinforcement training regime, the family reunites with Victoria to check progress, get a few tune-ups and encouragement. Special episodes of the programme have featured overweight dogs, Victoria’s public seminars at an outdoor dog festival, her work with the caretakers of a wild wolf rescue park, and her training of out-of-control pedigree dogs on their way to the world's largest dog show.

[edit] Greatest American Dog

Victoria was one of three judges on the CBS show Greatest American Dog, in which 12 dog-owner teams compete for the title 'Greatest American Dog' and a $250,000 prize. The series debuted on CBS July 10, 2008.

Awards[link]

Victoria was honored with the prestigious "Excellence in Journalism and Outstanding Contributions to the Pet Industry Award" at the 2011 Global Pet Expo^[11] and was named 'Dog Trainer of the Year' by DogWorld Magazine at the 55th Annual Purina Pro Plan Show Dogs Of The Year Awards Presented By Dogs In Review.^[12] She was named among 2009's '100 Best & Brightest' in the dog world in The Bark magazine.^[13] Victoria won a 2009 CableFax award as Best Host in the Animals & Nature category. In 2009, It's Me or the Dog was nominated for a People's Choice Award in the US, and after its first season in the UK, It's Me or the Dog was nominated in the 'Best Factual Entertainment' category in the UK's TV Quick Awards. Her first book, It's Me or the Dog: How to Have the Perfect Pet was voted one of the 50 greatest dog books ever written by Dogs Today magazine.

Campaigns[link]

She advocates animal rescue and supports Paws Atlanta, "Atlanta Pet Rescue", Stray from the Heart (NYC), Hong Kong Dog Rescue and Greyhound Rescue West of England (www.grwe.com), Wisconsin Puppy Mill Project, the Waterside Action Group, Deed Not Breed (campaigning to re-write the UK's Dangerous Dogs Act to remove breed-specific legislation) as well as Vets Get Scanning, promoting mandatory pet micro-chipping and scanning by vets.

Books[link]

• It’s Me or the Dog: How to Have the Perfect Pet (Hyperion)
• Fat Dog Slim: How to Have a Healthy, Happy Pet (Harper Collins UK), 2007

Personal life[link]

Stilwell met her actor husband, Van Zeiler, while starring opposite him in the West End production of Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story. The couple and their daughter live in Atlanta, Georgia.^[14]

After many years without a pet dog of her own (due to work commitments), Victoria adopted a rescued chocolate Labrador named Sadie. In early 2011, Stilwell fostered a Chihuahua/Miniature Pinscher mix named Jasmine and decided to adopt her in Late February/Early March 2011. Prior to that, she had spent her time since 2000 fostering dogs due to be euthanised by local municipal shelters. Stilwell and her husband then gave the dogs a home while rehabilitating them and eventually finding suitable homes for the animals. She has explained that, until recently, owning a dog would have been irresponsible and not fair to the dog, considering how much the whole family travels. The couple has re-homed over 50 dogs and cats.^[15]

Qualifications[link]

Victoria is currently certified by the Animal Behavior and Training Associates and is a longtime member of the US Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT).

Bibliography[link]

• It’s Me or the Dog: How to Have the Perfect Pet (2005)
• Fat Dog Slim: How to Have a Healthy, Happy Pet (2007)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Animal Planet Website
• Victoria Stilwell on the Mother Nature Network
• Victoria Stilwell at the Internet Movie Database