Podcast Episode 12: Peter Amelia

May 16, 2022

#12 - Peter Amelia: Enrichment in a Multi-Species Household

Download the episode – Download the transcript

In this week’s interview episode, we are joined by Peter Amelia to discuss enrichment in a multi-species household. As you’ll hear, Peter gets to share their home with a wide variety of species and does a wonderful job of meeting all their needs. We talking with Peter because they remind us that there are so many more species out there in people’s homes than the ones we typically work with, and we love getting to see how they work with other species so that we can take those ideas and apply them to the species that we typically work with.

In this episode, you’re going to hear Emily and Peter talk about:

The disparities of quality of life metrics between different species
What a day looks like when your pets hit the double digits and you have a lot of different species with different needs
Keeping everyone safe in a multi-species household from management, to training, to selecting the right species
Bunnies are shell-less tortoises

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

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Meet the Guest

Peter Amelia

Peter Amelia(They/Them) is from Seattle and started working with birds over 15 years ago. Peter’s goal is to improve animal welfare by creating choice and encouraging voluntary participation from learners in as many situations as possible. They began training early on and started the journey toward positive reinforcement based least restrictive methods. Since then, Peter has trained all kinds of animals from parrots to crows to hoofstock to snakes and lizards. They live with parrots, pigeons, goats, dogs, ducks, snakes, lizards, tortoises, fish and tarantulas. Along with consulting locally, Peter travels and provides virtual consultations. Peter is joined at the hip with Carrie Davis, another reptile trainer and co-founder of Reptelligence. Together they teach virtual reptile training courses and run a facebook group called Reptile Enrichment and Training (RET). When not training animals Peter trains people as a contortion and trapeze coach at a Seattle circus school as well as freelance performing.

You can find Peter at FB/IG @takingwingconsulting and FB/reptelligence FB group/Reptile enrichment and training(RET) IG/reptileintelligence and reptelligence.com

Meet the Hosts

Allie Bender, CDBC, CPDT-KA, SBA

Allie Bender is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, Certified Professional Dog Trainer- Knowledge Assessed, and a Shelter Behavior Affiliate. She has been in the animal welfare industry since 2006 and professionally training since 2012. She is the founder and co-owner of Pet Harmony, co-author of Canine Enrichment for the Real World, and a national speaker.

While in the animal sheltering industry, Allie realized that her passion lied in helping pets with maladaptive behaviors. Specifically, she wanted to help prevent animals with rehabilitatable problems from being euthanized. She loves working with dogs and cats displaying stranger danger, resource guarding, and leash reactivity. Her favorite thing about working with pets and their people is seeing relationships grow and seeing harmonious households develop.

Emily Strong, CDBC, SBA

Emily Strong is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant and Shelter Behavior Affiliate. She has been in the animal welfare industry since 1990 and has been a behavior consultant since 2008. She is the co-owner of Pet Harmony, co-author of Canine Enrichment for the Real World, and a national speaker.

Emily started working with animals at a young age and struggled with the notion that you have to hurt, scare, or intimidate animals to help them. When she discovered the behavior sciences and learned that it wasn’t necessary to do so– that we can care for emotional, mental, and physical health simultaneously– she plunged headfirst into animal behavior. Emily loves helping current and prospective behavior professionals and working with pet parents through our in-depth services. She enjoys working with all species.

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