[00:00:00] Kyle:
You just have to completely walk away from that mentality and that, it’s hard
for individuals like us that have that as our first order of learning. That was
deeply ingrained to us as the first thing we held on to. And so, to have to create
those new pathways in our brain to how we look at situations, and how we
approach things, it, it really does become fun because I tell my team all the
time now, ” I don’t live in the box and think outside the box. I’m
constantly running around the box. That’s where my solutions come from is just
living outside the box and trying to think of off the wall things that you
wouldn’t normally do.”
[00:00:31] Allie: Welcome
to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality
of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie
Bender…
[00:00:48] Emily: …and I’m Emily Strong…
[00:00:50] Allie: …and
we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what
enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your
lives. Let’s get started.
Thank you for joining us for today’s episode
of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating,
reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.
The voice you
heard at the beginning of today’s episode was Kyle Hetzel. Kyle Hetzel is the
assistant curator of the Children’s Zoo at an AZA accredited zoo on the West
Coast. He has been an animal trainer for 12 years, working with a wide range of
species, from birds of prey to walrus, giraffe, goats, and everything in
between.
Throughout his
career, one of his passions has been finding ways to uniquely connect guests
with the animals in his care. It is his belief that the animals under his care
serve as ambassadors for their wild counterparts. Kyle loves to highlight the
intelligence and personalities of those ambassadors, all in hopes of inspiring
the public to want to care more.
He has utilized
the constructional approach, training animals for the past nine years,
specializing in assent with disabled animals. At his current facility, he leads
training teams that are designing training programs with assent focused
behaviors. Being a part of training teams where various backgrounds come
together to help grow and learn is one of the parts of the job that brings him
the most joy.
I always love when
we have awesome zoo folks on the podcast because I get to live vicariously
through their stories working with these incredible species that I don’t get to
work with. I learned so much about different species from guests like Kyle, and
he, of course, was no exception. I learned so much from him.
I also really appreciated
him talking about management buy in, because so much of the work we do is about
buy in. It could be management buy in for shelter staff or volunteers. It could
be a client buy in for professionals, or just pet buy in for all of you awesome
pet parents listening. And what we talked about with that can be applicable to
so many different situations. In this episode, you’re going to hear Emily and
Kyle talk about just because you can doesn’t mean you should, how training
saved 24, 000 dollars and got management buy in, a giraffe that loves to be
right, and giraffe hugs.
All right, here it
is, today’s episode, Kyle Hetzel, New Alternatives to Old Solutions.
[00:03:22] Emily: All right, tell us your name, pronouns, and
pet.
[00:03:26] Kyle:
So, my name is Kyle Hetzel, my pronouns are he, him, and my pets are a 13 year
old pit bull named Rocky, who has been by my side my entire animal journey.
[00:03:37] Emily: I love that. Okay, so tell us your story and
how you got to where you are.
[00:03:41] Kyle:
I grew up a huge fan of The Crocodile Hunter and waking up every morning,
watching him on TV, seeing the excitement and the passion that he had, I wanted
to do that. I wanted to be able to get close with animals and share them with
everybody else. And so, every step since I was in third grade has been slowly
trying to take those approximations towards that ultimate goal.
And I went to
college at the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. And there I started
as a zoology major, but I hated the classes. I hated the coursework because it
was just about memorize this skull and know the scientific name and be able to
spell it perfectly, and that just didn’t jive with me.
When people go to
the zoo, they don’t care about the scientific name, they don’t care that I can
spell. They want to learn about the animals there, and so it was important for
me to find a major that had a much more hands on approach, and that’s what led
me to animal science. Because in that degree, I was formulating diets, I was
writing health protocol plans, I was learning how to be able to work around
animals safely, understanding, flight distance, stuff like that from a really
early time. And it got me into the farms and into working with the beef herd at
the college, and working with the equines and the pigs, so it was much more
hands on.
And while I was in
school, I got my first internship at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, which is
in Center Point, Indiana. And at the time they had over 250 rescued big cats
from all over the country. So, lions, tigers, leopards, mountain lions,
servals, bobcats, and it really opened my eyes to… the desire and the need
for people to get in and start working with animals more.
So, I actually had
a little bit of a back and forth with my boss at the time, like, “why do I
need to go to college and get a degree to be able to tell the difference
between feces and rocks? I can do that already. I don’t need a college
degree.” And they were really adamant about, ” Go to school, get a
degree. It’ll make you stand out more. It’ll help you throughout your
life.” And I went back to school, and I got a job at a little rescue
sanctuary nearby, and started out as just your normal kennel tech, cleaning
cages, stuff like that. And it just so happened that the vet tech at the time
had quit and left this little, tiny spay and neuter low income clinic with
nobody.
And being the
longest person who had been there, the vet kind of tapped me on the shoulder
and said, “Hey, do you feel like learning how to be a vet tech?” So,
at the time there was no schooling, it was just birth by fire, learning how to
be a vet tech, understanding what my vet’s needs were, doing records, all that
stuff. And training the kennel technicians as well.
And from there we
had started working with a dog training company to help us with some of our
problem dogs and how to get them placed in homes better. And it just so
happened that they had a opening for an internship, and so I transitioned from
vet tech to this internship, working with working police dogs, personal
protection canines, cadaver dogs, really high end dogs, and the dogs that had,
really severe behavioral issues. Some that I point out is, I had a lab that
would resource guard a shadow because, the family had picked everything up off
the ground, and so this lab would literally guard shadows.
So, that was my
intro into training, and the part that I always try to be really honest and
open with people about is my introduction to training was compulsion training.
So, there was an element of positive punishment in the beginning of my training
knowledge and foundation. And from there, I moved out to California, and after
I graduated from college, and got a job at a small little rescue sanctuary
called the Wildlife Learning Center in Sylmar, California.
And the
opportunities and things that kind of took off or just really kind of stuff you
wouldn’t imagine being able to go to do speaking engagement at Disney
Imagineering Studios and being able to do huge presentations in front of
college auditoriums. And through networking, I was able to meet an individual
who knew that Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Northern California was hiring,
and they were looking for somebody that had a little bit more of a diverse
background, not species specific.
And that’s what
brought me to my first really large institution. And that’s where, I feel like
my training life took off, is at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. At the
time I was just an entry level trainer, just working with whatever animals, and
I heard that the giraffe training mentor was coming in that day, and I said,
“Is it okay if I just watch the session, if I take my break and watch you
all work?”
And they said,
“Absolutely, that’s fine.” And in rolls up Lisa Clifton Bumpus, who
many of your listeners remember, and she saw this weird individual in myself
that had this really huge ego, but this really big hunger. And she was able to
tap that ego down a little bit and say, “There’s a lot that you don’t
know, but I can take what you do know and really build off of it.”
And from there, I
worked really hard to join the giraffe training team, and I was tapped based on
my dog abilities to raise the gray wolf that we had at the time. And that led
me to an amazing opportunity to network with the marine mammal team, because
the wolf that I was raising turned out to be heavily vision impaired, and need
eye drops and eye exams.
And I knew that
the sea lion team had a ton of experience training for eye exams, and eye
drops, and all those things. And I networked with them. I would ask them to
come watch my training sessions. I’d ask for feedback and an opportunity opened
up to join them. And usually in the animal field, you have to pick your track,
right?
You either are
going to be on land mammals or you’re going to be marine mammals. And I thought
to myself there’s never a time that my resume is going to support me going to
marine mammals. So, I should jump on this opportunity and join the marine
mammal team. And that led me down, three and a half years of working with
seals, sea lions, otters, and walruses.
From there, had an
opportunity to join the current institution at a large AZA facility at the, on
the West coast. And it was being able to work in the Children’s Zoo and working
with domestic livestock, and the way that it was presented to me was,
“Let’s work with these animals the same way you work with the sea lions.
The same way you’re not going to pin a thousand-pound sea lion up against the
wall and give them an injection, you’re not going to do it to a goat or a mini
horse just because you can.” And from there, I’ve worked with a lot of
different species at this institution and currently the assistant curator over
the Children’s Zoo. So, that kind of brings you up to speed to where I’m at
today.
[00:09:38] Emily: I love your whole story partially because you
and I actually have a lot in common. I also started when I was very young, and
started in vet clinics and wildlife rehab, and so I’m, we had we started off
the same, but then you got to go in this really cool direction with zoos. And I
stayed with domesticated animals, which I love them too. Like they’re amazing.
But yeah, I see you hugging giraffes and feel just a little bit jelly the turn
your life took, and, oh, another thing that we have in common is that I
actually started off too with very coercive training methods,
and it was a whole
long journey for me to discover better ways of doing things. But one of the
things that I really love about what you were saying is that when you realize
that what is possible with an animal that you can’t coerce, then suddenly it
just opens up your worldview to what’s possible with animals that you can
coerce, and it doesn’t seem necessary anymore. You realize it’s not something
that you have to do, it’s not a necessary evil. There are actually alternative
ways to get the same results, or even better results, I would argue. And I
really relate to that because that was, I did not get to learn that lesson with
marine mammals, but I had that same learning journey. So, I’m really with you
on that.
[00:11:00] Kyle:
When you’re so used to seeing that coercive mentality with really big high end
working dogs, like a Malinois or a Cane Corso that, you can see some of those
things like a really aggressive correction. It’s like, “All right, I see
you. But I’m going to bring out this thousand-pound male sea lion who was
rescued from the wild after being shot in the face. You’re not going to throw
an e-collar, a check chain, you’re not going to smack that animal in the face.
You have a very different realization when you have a thousand-pound apex
predator who’s looking at you and asking you for direction and asking you for
feedback.”
And so, you really
just, it’s not even like you put it in your back pocket. You just have to
completely walk away from that mentality and that, it’s hard for individuals
like us that have that as our first order of learning. That was deeply
ingrained to us as the first thing we held on to. And so, to have to create those
new pathways in our brain to how we look at situations, and how we approach
things, it, it really does become fun because I tell my team all the time now,
” I don’t live in the box and think outside the box. I’m constantly
running around the box. That’s where my solutions come from is just living
outside the box and trying to think of off the wall things that. You wouldn’t
normally do.”
[00:12:07] Emily: Yeah, I love that. And I think that What you
brought up about like changing, it’s not just changing your beliefs, right?
It’s actually changing your neural pathways, and that’s such a hard thing for,
I think, a lot of people to understand because they expect somebody who’s new
to these concepts to see a new way of doing things and suddenly just be able to
do it and be on board.
And that’s not
actually how learning works at all. There’s so much muscle memory that you have
to unlearn. And like for years after I had embraced new concepts, every once in
a while, some weird little muscle memory thing would pop out in a period of
high stress or like panic, and I’m like, “Where did that come from?”
It took years to
unlearn all of that. And I think that’s something that as, we’re entering an
era in our field where there are more people who never experienced that
coercive background, that they just came straight into more ethical ways of
training, and it’s hard for them to wrap their head around how much of a journey
that can actually be and having a little more compassion for people who are on
that journey is really important because like you said, you’re, it’s really
about not just changing your mindset, but also rewiring your brain and how your
muscles respond to things, and it’s, it is a whole journey, right?
All right. So, a
lot of our listeners don’t work in zoos, but they do either work in an animal
care facility themselves, or they consult for, or volunteer for, or otherwise
support animal care facilities. And this can include things like shelters,
rescue groups, animal sanctuaries, dog daycares, boarding facilities, training
centers, stables, all of that.
And of course,
each of those kinds of animal care facilities faces different challenges, but
there are also common challenges that they all share. And one of those
challenges is making sure that everyone on their team is on the same page and
is working together for the good of the animals in their care and doing so in
the same way.
At Pet Harmony, we
like to say we’re all on the same boat rowing in the same direction, right? So,
can you talk about how you build a cohesive team that maximizes the wellbeing
of your populations?
[00:14:24] Kyle:
Yeah, absolutely. I was really thinking about that today, about the different
teams that I’ve been a part of. And, growing up playing team sports, the team
is really important to me and who I am. And so, I love being a part of teams,
especially training teams. And thinking about that, the one common thread that
I’ve always seen pull through is, is the support at the top. And a lot of
people, I think the mass of people who we’re always talking to and who we’re
trying to reach are the ones who are stuck somewhere in the middle that are
reaching out and trying to get more help. And what I have found is that when
you have buy in at the top, it’s easier to push everything that we’re looking
from, from behind.
And rather than
automatically assuming the top leadership role because we are the ones who want
to make the change. We need to look at creating buy in before we look at
creating teams. And so, I think that ultimately starts with being able to
understand how reinforcers work, not just for our learners, but for our team.
And being able to
access learner’s reinforcers and being able to start to shape behavior is
important, but looking at your team and what reinforces your team, I think, is
even more crucial. And that’s something that Lisa was really big at teaching
me, is it’s… It was always me calling Lisa for this problem of, “Hey, I
have this thing that I need to do with this animal.”
And she goes,
“That’s great. What does that animal need you to do?” And so, for a
long time, it’s not just looking at what I need somebody else to do, but what
does that other individual need me to do? And so, when I think about getting
the buy in at the top, really successful teams have had managers or leadership
roles being in the trenches with you.
And it can go back
to, when I was working, raising the eight-week-old wolf cub, the manager was
with me, and seeing every step of the way. And seeing, I was willing to shower
eight times a day to go into quarantine, to bond with that animal, to start
building these training steps at an early age. And they were right there doing
the showers just as well because they were in quarantine and quarantine in zoos
is a big issue that we need to work through because, yes, it is a sterile
environment, but we still need to be able to create a really enriching, diverse
environment because you can’t just go from this little isolated pod to now
you’re in front of thousands of people at a zoo.
And another big
one was our goat training team at my current facility that these goats came in
at the peak of COVID, as COVID was starting to take off. And these goats were
going to be ambassadors. So, they were going to be in the contact yard,
interacting with kids and people, but we had no kids or people for them to
interact with.
So, all that time
that we would normally be out interacting with guests, with our different
appearances, we poured that into training. And this group of goats had multiple
curators, interns, keepers, not just from this area, like department, but other
departments as well. And because the curators were so involved and had such
attachments to the program when things came up about appearances for those
goats to go on, or medical procedures for those goats to go on, they had actual
skin in the game. And that was so important to be able to defend some of the
choices that were made in training, some of the welfare decisions that had to
be made, but then also to feel that sense of pride when their animal was
successful because it wasn’t just about the team, but also that they felt the
success of that team.
And being able to
understand what each person is being reinforced for, with the intern, it’s
about being able to access a curator at such a frontline level to see
vulnerability from a curator, to see vulnerability from a person who’s been at
the zoo for 20 plus years, and to see them learning from peers and not just
expecting to be the apex.
And then that
curator who’s been in the field for 20 years, seeing their learner be
successful was important. So, what we did to tweak that little bit of
reinforcement loop was, rather than everybody working at the same time, we had
five goats and five trainers. We would give that person their own session, so
they got to work and hear feedback from people, and to see them light up and
the ownership of that animal and how they could put their own little twists and
flare on cues was really important to them. So, understanding when you’re
building a team or you’re trying to impact change, finding out what some of
those reinforcers are is really important, and sometimes it’s not just the feel
good stuff. I had an animal when I was working with seals and sea lions that
was rescued from a facility, after living there for her entire life, and she
was 32 years old, she was the oldest sea lion in the country at the time, had
no experience with training, no experience with people whatsoever.
During her intake
exam, the vet said that she had a lot of pressure built up in her eyes and it
was quite painful. So, we had to give her these eye drops to help decrease the
pain, decrease the pressure, and that we would need to be able to do eye exams
to make sure the meds were working. So, myself and the other trainer, Meg, we would
ask, “Can we train this? We have experience doing this, let’s train this.”
And the manager
was like, “No, don’t worry about it. She’s 32 years old, she’s blind,
she’s deaf. It’s going to take too long, so just let her live her retired life
out.”
So after about a
week of attempting to put eyedrops in an animal that is just bobbing and
weaving away from these eyedrops, went to the hospital and said, “Hey, I
need a prescription refill.”
And they said,
“What do you mean?”
I said,
“Well, I’m out of meds.”
And they said,
“We need to come watch you administer these meds.”
They come down,
they watch us administer the meds, and they then report back to management,
“Hey, if Kyle continues at this course of being able to put meds in and he
is not wasteful, we’re looking at an extra twenty-four thousand dollars’ worth
of eye medication costs.”
And that’s huge
for an institution that takes care of animals. So, to be able to say to
management, “Hey, if we train this, we’re saving twenty-four thousand
dollars.” We have to go ahead. We have the buy in. We have access to that
reinforcer, and away we go. And it was just really cool to see that. But then
the next layer of that is, “Okay, now management wants to see how we’re
training this blind, deaf animal.”
And at the time,
because of the area that this animal lived, it was, again, it was shut down by
USDA, the facility that she was at. And for her entire life, fish just rained
from the heavens. So, she spent her entire life with her head, back, mouth
open, and knowing that sea lions don’t naturally look like that, we were able
to shape her, dropping her head and resting her head in our hands so that we
could put those eye drops in perfectly.
One of the, you
know, the high up managers, we got a picture of her with the sea lion Maggie
resting her head in her hand, and that was a huge buy-in. So, being able to
have these opportunities to connect. the leaders that are running our
facilities to those things that are wanting to implement changes where I’ve
seen the most amount of really fast change happening.
And if your
readers are looking for resources to be able to access those things, the
constructional questionnaire by Dr. Israel Goldiamond is an amazing set of
questions that you can pepper in and have quick, ready to go when you’re
talking and interacting with your managers to be able to get those questions,
without it being that really direct “What’s going to reinforce you? What
do you want out of this?” It can come off pretty abrasive, but the
questions that Goldiamond came up with, they talk about little green Martians
following you around with a video camera that they’re going to report back to
the mothership with. So, it’s a really cool, quick resource guide to be able to
look at how you can tailor them to your certain facilities, to your certain challenges,
to really help make a difference.
[00:21:13] Emily: I love that. Thank you so much. We’re going to
make sure to put that in the show notes so that people can easily access that
because that is a really beautiful resource. And was just grinning like a fool
the whole time you were talking. If I could have, I would have been giving you
a standing ovation because I am here for every single thing that you said.
I really want to
highlight and emphasize what you were saying about what do the learners need from
us and how that applies to your team. Because so often management is, ”
Oh, why isn’t my team doing X, Y, Z?” And it’s ” what do they need in
order to succeed at that task?” And so, flipping the script and asking,
“What can I do to facilitate a cohesive team?” Instead of, “Why
isn’t my team performing at the level I expect them?” Is such a paradigm
shift.
And It has been
really, I’m just going to take a moment to toot our own horn and say, It has
been one of the most gratifying experiences of my life to see the way that
Allie, and Ellen, and I run our team at Pet Harmony, doing all the things that
we wish our bosses had done for us at previous places of employment, and seeing
it absolutely work, and how cohesive our team is, and how supportive we are of
each other, and how, when those performance issues arise, It’s not conflict.
It’s not, we don’t have quote unquote problem children. We’re like, “Okay,
what do we need to adjust about the environment to set this team member up for
success so that they can really flourish in this environment?” It is such
a critical perspective shift and I love that you brought it up because it’s so
important.
And you were
absolutely right that the only way to get management and the leadership to do
that is to get that buy in and help them see why it’s so important, and so
valuable to run a team that way. So, I just, I love everything that you said.
Thank you so much for sharing all of that.
Another thing that
I want to really emphasize and highlight is that you were talking about how, if
we’re all in it together, there’s that power dynamic there, of the manager and
staff member. And when you let staff members see your vulnerabilities as a
manager, and you let them see you learning, and you allow yourself to learn
from them, then it helps everybody to have that growth mindset. Because
learning then isn’t something that’s embarrassing or shameful, it’s just a part
of existing in the world, and, and, growing as a professional, right?
And yeah, removing
the stigma of learning and allowing yourself to learn alongside your team is
another really important factor to building good, cohesive team. I just love
all of that.
[00:23:54] Kyle:
And I think, what you all are talking about with your team, and you have, when
you know that your team has the access to those reinforcers and you know that
they know that you respect them and that the learners in charge of deciding
what’s reinforcing, that it becomes a safe environment.
And that’s where,
you really start to see, when people ask us about, animals assenting to these
procedures and we give them all this choice, why are they likely to choose what
you want them to do versus what everybody expects them to do, which is the opt
out. And then, then you bring in contra freeloading and all this, but what it
boils down to is safety.
And that when your
team feels safe, you can have those honest conversations without feeling
hypercritical or attacked, or am I going to lose my job? Because, I made this
little mistake, but when you feel that safety of, I know that this is important
to you, I feel seen, I feel heard. You can have those conversations a lot
quicker and a lot, you just feel better about them.
You don’t feel
icky. You don’t feel that stress, that tightness in your chest. You can just be
able to have that, it’s a dialogue that you move fast. And those have been some
of the best teams I’ve been a part of is when you have that shorthand or you can
look across the other day, we were starting training with these animals, and I
looked across and I saw one of our team members was getting low on reinforcer.
So, I was able to pop down food for my group, run over, get reinforcers to the
bucket, to that person without having that language, with that ability to feel
safe enough, you can act a lot quicker and results a lot faster.
So, I absolutely
see that with your team being able to say that, and you being able to give
yourselves props, that you should absolutely be propping yourself because that
is, that’s where I think all of the workforce needs to be moving. And I don’t
think the people in charge of a lot of these big workforces are ready for that
conversation to be had.
I don’t think
they’re ready for the ownership of, that they are controlling a lot of these
access to reinforcers, like time off. Making the younger generation not feel
guilty about taking time off, and especially in a field that where we have
individuals and animals that depend on us, feeling like you can’t take time off
then just bleeds into the stress of everything else that we do.
Your family life,
your friend life, that work life balance, it just, it comes down to safety. And
that’s where I said, thinking about it, it comes from the top because if we’re
looking to enact change, you have hungry individuals, and then when those
people at the top can see that they’re hungry, they want more, you get so much
more out of your productivity.
[00:26:10] Emily: Yeah. And I do understand its, change is hard,
right? And change is exponentially harder when you have responsibility for an
entire facility and you have all eyes on you and especially in nonprofits where
like you have donors who are like holding you accountable or even not nonprofits
when you have a Board of Directors who are holding you accountable, right?
So, I understand
why change is hard, and also just like we were talking about earlier with
coercive training, even after somebody is buying in its, ” Okay, I want to
change. I want to change my leadership style.” The process of learning how
to do that takes time. It building, building, building fluency in any skill
takes time and practice.
And so, I
understand why it’s hard for organizations to shift that mindset, but it really
is better for everybody involved when we can let that, the hierarchy become
logistical rather than cultural. That’s how we run Pet Harmony as well. We do
have a hierarchy because there needs to be a direct report, there need to be
people who have very clearly specified roles in the team, and there are people
who need to be responsible for overseeing other things that are done, so that
hierarchy is necessary, but it’s not a cultural hierarchy.
We still learn
from the people who are technically beneath us on the chain. We still listen to
them. They bring us ideas that we incorporate because that their position does
not mean they have less value, or less of a voice, it just means that their
role is different than those of us who are higher up on that chain. And that’s a
very difficult cultural shift to embrace, and yet I think it is a necessary
one. Yeah.
[00:27:52] Kyle:
Yeah, absolutely. I think what I have found in this management role is just
saying the word change is hard. We need to change this. And what I’ve equated
that to is, okay, when we change our clothes, we’re literally taking what we
have off. We’re stripping down, we’re left very vulnerable, very exposed.
So, rather than
saying we’re changing, we need to adapt, and the reason we’re adapting is
because of these outside forces that are coming in on us. And what that means
is if we’re going to the beach, we’re going to have a certain attire. Just
because I like wearing parkas doesn’t mean I’m going to rock my parka at the
beach.
And that means
that the beach environment is, it’s forcing us to adapt, take that parka off to
be comfortable, and, if it gets cold, the parka goes back on, if it rains, we
get an umbrella. We have to adjust to what the external environment is telling
us. We’re not looking to change who you are; we’re not looking to take away any
of your funkiness, your uniqueness. We just have to be able to respond to
what’s happening that’s forcing these pressures on us that we have to adapt.
And then it’s almost like that implication of what happens if you don’t adapt?
You stop ceasing to exist in the environment.
And so that’s one
of the language changes that I’ve tried to find myself if, again, if it’s a
policy, we have to adapt this policy to current protocols that are being
followed. We have to adapt. Being able to do this feeding protocol. So yeah,
absolutely.
[00:29:06] Emily: Oh, my god. I’m stealing that from you. That
is so great. I love that. Shifting from using the word change to adapt. It’s so
beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for that. That’s excellent. So, let’s shift
back to non-humans a little bit because I love this conversation of giving
learners safety and as much choice and control as possible and giving them the
ability to consent or assent.
And obviously
clearly, you’re doing that well as a team leader. Now I want to hear you talk
about how you do that with the animals in your care, because you mentioned
training the wait, was it a sea lion.
[00:29:44] Kyle:
Maggie, the sea lion.
[00:29:45] Emily: her head in your hand? Yes. Maggie, the sea
lion. And I heard a rumor that you taught a kookaburra to voluntarily
participate in an injection. Correct?
[00:29:56] Kyle:
Yup. Absolutely.
[00:29:57] Emily: Yeah. Talk about that process for me, please.
[00:29:59] Kyle:
So, I think again, like the biggest thing is, when I have these incredible
platforms to be able to share the work that we’re doing is, I always want to
make it clear that it’s not just me running around institutions like Batman,
just fixing everything left and right, but that I’m a part of a team of people,
and it’s always a group of us that are working together to make a difference.
And so, it always just feels unjust that I get the opportunity to speak for the
whole team. But a lot of the work that we do, it comes down to a group of
people, exactly like we’re talking about with Pat Harmony, coming together with
different experiences and backgrounds to make these things happen.
And when it comes
to being able to give, that agency, choice and control, assent, consent, all
those things, is it comes down to empathy and compassion, I think, is the root
of everything that we do. And we think about what it’s going to feel like for
us, and then also what that learner is experiencing, what their day to day is.
The kookaburra, Cohen, is a real special little guy for us because he was the
first kookaburra born at the facility since 1992, and he was designated as an
ambassador. And for those of you who may not know, when an ambassador is brought
into a collection, that animal’s duty, if you will, or job, is to interact with
the public to inspire a lot of the things that you want when you go to a zoo.
You want to learn
about conservation and connecting wildlife to people. And so, this little guy’s
job was going to be to connect with people. And we thought, “Okay, how do
other facilities do this?” Oftentimes, they have them in wildlife shows or
encounters behind the scenes. And first thing we did was we taught him how to
be able to fly to us.
And some of you
also may not know, I don’t know, birds don’t inherently know how to fly. You
have to be taught and you have to build up those muscles, and when we started
teaching him how to fly, we looked at what Lisa Clifton Bumpus had taught us
about the whole life approach. What does his whole life look like flying to
people?
We wanted him to
feel that he could make the choice to leave where he was to fly to us, as
opposed to us come where he is. And that is a really big shift. And so again,
thinking outside the box, we created the space in his enclosure where we could
open the door into a little separate catch cage area where he could fly to us
and be where we were.
And that kind of
starts the conversation at being able to add these layers of behaviors that allows
the animal to opt in or out. And you’re not looking for choice and control or
ascent as a pivot point, but as a point of convergence to a number of different
skills or behaviors for that learner.
And so, when we
started training that, it was about him learning to fly to us to an area that
he could leave his enclosure, and he could also go back to his enclosure if he
felt like it. So, that’s that first little layer of him being able to opt in or
out to the sessions. From there, we started trying to work on that classic
kookaburra call, if any of you have seen any jungle movies or even any movie
where that’s set in a forest, regardless if it’s a jungle, is you’re going to
hear a kookaburra noise. So, they’re very well known, they’re from Australia,
so we thought, “Alright, cool, let’s start to train him to be able to do
these vocals on cue.” And right around there, we got the report that he
was going to need his West Nile vaccine.
And the way that a
lot of AZA zoos work is when you get a species, there is most of the time an
animal care manual to help you navigate what that animal’s life is going to
look like. Diet recommendations, breeding, habitat, enclosure, all those
things. You get this little manual. And in that manual, it tells you most of
the time you just take, you hand grab the bird off the perch, put him in a
towel, and give him an injection.
And, thinking
about it, how fair is it to that animal that is going to be flying to guests,
to strangers, and the back of his head be keeping a tally, every 167th person
that I encounter is going to grab me, and give me this injection. And again,
it’s not a knock on anybody or any facility that is doing that, I don’t want it
to come across that way, but that’s just how our team was thinking at the time.
That it was merely, if this is how we’re training this, is it really fair to
truly give this animal a choice? That all of a sudden, hands are going to come
up, grab you, and give you this injection. And sure, the argument can be made
it’s just once a year, it’s just this, but as many of us know in the animal
field, things happen that aren’t in our control that we never ever thought we’d
have to plan for that all of a sudden come up and you’re like, ” I have no
idea how to handle this.” So, we started thinking, all right how can we
bring our skills together to help this animal overcome a voluntary injection?
And we started
reaching out to different people in the field to say, “Hey, have you ever
seen a free flight of Kookaburra trained for a voluntary injection?”
“Hey, have you ever seen this?” And a lot of people got back to us
saying, “No, absolutely not.” And there were some people who were a
little bit more aggressive like, “Absolutely not. It’s impossible. It’s
unsafe. You shouldn’t be doing that.” But again, our team came together,
and our team consisted of somebody who had 20 plus years of experience in the
zoo field, a world renowned giraffe trainer, another person who had worked with
gorillas as well as other domestic livestock, very experienced, very skilled
trainer, and myself coming from another very diverse animal background.
And we started
thinking, how can we work on this together to give him the skills to become an
ambassador that can take part in his own injections? And what we did was
utilizing, again, Dr. Israel Gold Diamond’s constructional approach, looking at
the whole life of the programming that animal is going to encounter, we built
skills that could help them learn to take part in his own voluntary injections.
So, the next thing
was, all right, great. You came and flew to us. Now, can we start to shape and
teach you the skills of objects touching you? We’re not just looking at it
linearly, like first we touch you with a pen, then we touch you with a dull
needle, then we touch you with a sharp needle.
We want him to be
informed that different things are going to touch you. Again, in his life, he
may get a scratch on his chest that we have to use some gauze and wipe it away,
but if all we’ve ever trained him for is voluntary injections, if all of a sudden,
I come at him with a white, wet cloth, that could totally startle him.
So, we want to
prepare him for all the different things. And so rather than focusing just on
the injection, we focus on all of these life skills. And again, at any point in
time, that door remains open to fly back home. So, we’re not just, he flies out
of his enclosure, he’s in the little vestibule with us and he’s stuck in that
room with us.
He can fly home
and shaping those skills to be touched by different objects, we were looking
at, is he committed to that object? Is his body position leaning over forward
towards us, towards the different objects that we’re using? And so slowly we introduce
that, and then adding another person, but the one element that really pivoted
on all of this was the hospital staff being a part of it and buying in as well.
Because if you have any vet techs listening or any vets listening, there is no
course in vet school that teaches you how to give an injection to an animal
that is unrestrained, that can fly away, that if you mess up the injection, it
could die.
So, we had to start
default hospital and early to start the conversation of, “Hey, this is
what we want to do.” And because one of the managers was a part of the
training team, they could sit there and go to bat with us, with the vets and
with the other, wellness people saying, ” We understand that there’s
nothing that says that this can’t be done, but we’re also saying that just
because you’ve never seen it done, doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
And so, we found
one of the vet techs that wanted to be a part of the training team and we
folded her in, we started shaping her skills alongside shaping the kookaburra, Cohen’s
skills as well. So, her being able to measure if he’s committed, her being able
to feel how she can touch around his chest so that he doesn’t get off balance,
so when she goes to give the injection, he’s not going to be pushed off balance
and mess up the injection. So, shaping her skills alongside his was a huge part
of the success of this. And eventually we were able to agree on using a TB
needle as the injection source, but because again, hospital had been so
conditioned to the needle’s too small, and you’re gonna have to do multiple
injection, it’s that’s, we can train for those things. Like you’re literally
talking about things we can train for. We can train for multiple injections. We
can train for duration. And when we finally said to the vet techs, “If I
could poke you with a bigger needle, but it’d be over in, half the time versus
I can poke you with a smaller needle, that’s not going to take nearly the pain,
but you’re gonna have to sit still a little bit longer, which are you going to
pick?” And they all just looked at each other, “Yeah, we would take
the TB needle.”
All right, cool. So,
we’re in agreeance and hospital felt comfortable that the needle wasn’t too
long, that it would pierce into an air sac or getting any vital organs. And
that’s ultimately what led us to the point of, not only could Cohen fly to the
vet tech, see what’s in the vet tech’s hands, get reinforced by the vet tech,
then come to me, be able to understand that again, there’s numerous different
objects that could be touching him, was what ultimately led us to being
successful with that injection, and being able to build on different skills.
Initially, he was
trained to fly to my hand, so I’d hold my hand parallel to the ground. He would
fly to that flat surface, get reinforced on it. But we found that my hand,
because we were doing something new, I was nervous, so I was shaking, I was
being a very bad tree. So, what we did was one of the other members of the
team, Elise, had trained him to go onto a little T Perch that we were using to
weigh him.
That T Perch gave
us stability, it gave him a solid landing point, and he had a reinforcement
history with it because she was, as we were working the injections, she was
training for the scale training as well. Because a big component of this was,
we weren’t going to deprive him of food. We weren’t going to worry about any
bit of food deprivation to be successful with this.
So, congruently,
we’re weighing him doing these injection sessions, but we’re able to take that
T perch from the weighing part and fold that in because that skill wasn’t just
solely based on only when the scale is out, do I go on my scale perch, but we
pulled that into the injection part of it as well.
So, the day came,
we did the two injections for the West Nile vaccine. We’re all high fiving each
other, Cohen’s all excited, and as Molly leaves, she goes, “I’ll see you
guys in two weeks.” And we all look at each other, ” What do you mean
two weeks? Like, we were just training for this injection?”
She goes,
“Yeah he needs a booster. He’s never gotten it before. So, he needs a
booster.” And what Molly didn’t realize was that in a week, he was going
to be moving to a brand-new enclosure. And we were so worried that this skill
set and group of skills that he had acquired was not going to transition to the
new environment, but because constructional works the way that it is, and it
allows the earn, the learners to own the skills two weeks later, brand new
environment, Cohen flies right to the perch, two injections, no issues. And it
was fantastic.
It was, one of
those things where, we’ve been taught and listened to Dr. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz
about, change the environment, change the behavior. So, I reached out to him, I
go, “So, what does this mean? Did I do something wrong? Is the behavior
not solid?” And he’s like, “Well, I mean, I think I learned something
from this because, I think that maybe we should adjust this to like problematic
behaviors. If you’re wanting to pull those problematic behaviors away, then you
pull them away from the environment if it happens, but when you have a
skillset, that skillset is transferable location, because it’s dependent on the
learner, not dependent on the environment.” And it was so mind blowing to
us as a team to be like, this is something we empowered this bird with, this is
something that he gets to have with him his entire life. That we can talk about
that. You can see the agency and a big part of us being able to train that is
being able to train and reinforce the no. So, when he’s uncomfortable with an
approximation, or he’s not comfortable with what’s happening, being able to go
to him and say, “Okay, I hear you, here’s the reinforcement. Let’s be able
to look at what’s going to help you be successful in this environment
again.”
So ultimately the
third round of his West Nile boosters, it had gotten around the zoo that, he
was this really amazing, incredible little bird that there was a line of people
in front of his enclosure, wanting to see this happen.
And it basically
almost blacked out his enclosure, there were so many people watching him, that
he looks at them all, he flies to me, I reinforce him. Molly comes up to give
him the injection and he flies away, and I turned to look, and I have this huge
smile on my face on the video, cause I was like, “He opted out!”
Like he knew that
was a valuable option and he opted out. And everybody’s like, “Yeah, but
he didn’t get the injection.”
I go, “I don’t
care. He knows that no is an option. He can clearly see that if he doesn’t want
to, he doesn’t have to.”
And I cued him to
fly over again, he flew over again, I reinforced him and when I reinforced him,
he held the food in his mouth. I was like, “Oh, he’s not going to do it
this time. It’s totally fine.” Molly walks up, he flew away. I was like,
“Cool. He opted out. We’re going to respect it. This is not the
environment for him. I’m sorry, everybody. But this is a big part of our
training that the learner gets to say, have a say, and have control over it.
And that’s what he did.” So, he is a very special little guy. And to that
team’s credit, two of the other members of that team were not bird people and
Cohen made them love him more than they’ve loved almost any other animal in
their life before. He’s a special little guy.
[00:41:37] Emily: That is such a great story, and I really love
the emphasis you put on letting him opt out and letting him say no. That’s such
an important part of the process, not just because of if they’re uncomfortable
with the environment, but a lot of times, animals know things that we don’t
about the environment or their bodies.
And if an animal
who has been doing something consistently says, no, it could be because there’s
a pain issue, or there’s an injury, or something. And we need to be able to
tune into that instead of being like, why aren’t you doing what I’m telling you
to do? And so, I just love, I love that example of him being like, “Look,
I do not want a large audience. No, thank you. I’ll pass this time.”
That’s so sweet. I love that. Yeah.
So, let’s talk a
little bit about the documentation portion of the enrichment framework, because
we talk a lot about how important data collection is so that we can objectively
track our progress, and I think that’s especially important when you have a
team, and you have multiple people who are working on the same project, and
maybe not all at the same time. So, what was your documentation like for
Cohen’s process, for example? How do you typically keep track of the progress
that you’re making with training, or just an enrichment plan in general for the
animals in your care?
[00:43:00] Kyle:
It ties back into that first question about, building the team, is what’s going
to work for each team? What’s going to work for each member of that team to be
successful in being able to document all those things? So, a couple of members
of the team, the manager that was involved in that team, anytime that she could
be a part of training or come up and get a session with him was fantastic and
great, but what we were finding was, is she wasn’t really great at being able
to document what her session looked like, and… How much food she used, how
many mealworms she fed him, she loved to feed him mealworms, and he loved to go
hunting for his mealworms.
Just because we
typically keep our training logs in this type of format, and this is how we do
it, it wasn’t going to work for that member of the team. So how do we adjust?
How do we cater to keeping accurate documents for that training log? And basically,
what it led to was a face to face check in.
Checking in with
one of the member of the team that was easier for her to be able to help us
document it as opposed to this person just sucks at taking records, we’re going
to exclude them or not allow them to be a part of it because they can’t keep
records. So, what I found is again, just being flexible, and being able to see
what’s going to work for the team, what’s going to work for that individual learner’s
success that’s taking a part in it.
So, with Cohen,
what we were finding was if he got too many mealworms, he was just looking for
mealworms as reinforcement, and if we didn’t know that the next session that
played heavily into the success of the session, but we had to figure out what
was working for him. So, then basically it was, ” Hey, Amy, I’m going to
leave 10 mealworms up here for you to be able to use as enrichment, only use
five of them, so I can use five more for him.” So that, again, that face
to face time was more successful for Cohen and for Amy as a member of the team.
Amy was extremely busy running around, running multiple departments, so being
able to hone it in and making her environment easier for her to be successful
was important.
So, it, it really
greatly fluctuates team to team and what’s going to work best. Sometimes I’ve
been a part of teams that everybody has their own notebook. We all take notes
about the session, and then at the end of the week, we compare those notes in
those sessions, so that we can come check back in and say, ” I saw that
session as a win. What didn’t you see about that session that was a win? Oh,
you got to the part of the bucket that had all the thorny thistle in it with a
blackberry, yeah, I can understand why you thought that part of the session
wasn’t fun because you were getting stabbed in the hand as you’re reinforcing. So,
let’s make it more positive for you, and I’ll feed the thorny stuff out and you
can get this.”
So, every team is
going to function a little bit differently and being able to meet everybody
where they’re at is important. Nowadays, everybody wants technology and they
want to be able to text stuff back and forth, but then it gets lost in the text
chain.
It just really
fluctuates team to team. So, I wish I could give like one solid thing, I’m
like, “Yeah, go for this.” But it really, it just varies. I have one
member of our team in our department that loves to be able to have their
enrichment calendars on Microsoft Excel. It’s great. It’s easy to be able to
track, OB positive, or they didn’t interact with it and it’s super easy.
Another member of
the team would curse at me if I said, “You have to keep your enrichment
calendars in Microsoft Excel.” So, what we’ve gone to is they print out,
what their calendar is like, they take a picture with the iPad and then we have
a digital record of it, and they can get rid of the paper one and getting rid
of the paper one was all they wanted to do.
They’re like,
“I have binders and binders of these enrichment calendars. I can’t stand
it. It takes up so much space.”
All right, great.
Here’s an iPad. Take a picture of it. It’s uploaded into our system.
Everybody’s happy then. AZA is happy because you have documentation, I can look
back, our director of training can look back, and everybody can see it. So, it
just really, it’s important to meet the individuals where they are to help them
be successful.
[00:46:26] Emily: Absolutely. And I love your answer. I was not
expecting you to give a tidy little formulaic answer. I was expecting you to
have the answer that you do, that’s functional that actually works for you, and
meeting your learners where you’re at is absolutely a beautiful response.
And I think it’s a
really important one for people to hear because a lot of times when we’re
talking to colleagues about data collection in working with clients, one of the
concern that we hear over and over again is my clients are never going to do that.
And I’m like,
“Yeah, okay. So, find out what they will do.”
And a lot of times
that looks like clients noping out of data collection. And then they’re like,
“Ah, we had the setback.”
And we’re like,
“Cool. What are the patterns of this setback?”
And they’re like,
“We have no idea. Oh, that’s why you wanted us to do data collection.
Isn’t it? Maybe we should do that now.”
So, letting people
discover for themselves why it’s valuable, and why it helps them, and actually
serves them well, and letting our learners have control over how they decide to
do data collection, and what works best for them is the most successful
strategy, right?
Yeah, I love it. I
love it. Okay. So our, we have a program called PETPro, which is for behavior
professionals who are wanting to reach their professional goals in our program,
and we give them the opportunity to ask questions of our guests, and the
biggest question that we got for you, you already answered but I’m still going
to ask it because I think you can probably answer it, I think the repetition is
valuable here.
So, the question
was, how much does a stable and familiar environment matter when you start
training? And does your team start cooperative care training in the animal’s
kind of natural setting, and then transport it to different places that you
need to use it? Or do you start training them in a neutral location?
[00:48:22] Kyle:
That’s a great question. I have a couple different examples I can hit on it
with.
One example was
when I first got the job at the Children’s Zoo, there was a 20, 20-year-old
Gotland pony who had Cushing’s and needed to have blood draws. And so, what was
important for me was to see all the different ways that the systems and setups
that it had been done with and be able to pull that animal out of those systems
to be able to help them be successful, and not inherit the different cues, or
the different biases, or histories that learner had in that environment.
So, in a case like
that an animal with 20 plus years of experience, both successful and
unsuccessful blood drives. It was important for me to take that animal out of
the environment, and shape something completely new to help her be successful
in the short period of time that I was given to allow her to be successful.
And in that case,
it served us really well to change the environment really quickly, but not do
it so drastically that I had to spend time on conditioning a new environment,
but it was more about saying, “Hey, we’re just going to take some of the
stuff, and just change the picture a little bit more.”
So, rather than
doing it outside in a little shoot location, or in the middle of your big
corral where you have different competing reinforcers.” Are the donkeys
getting more food than me? Did that crow just drop something delicious for me
to snack on?” Let’s pull you inside the stall with the door open, you have
access to leave, you can get your normal diet, we’re not restricting any of
that. And being able to basically teach, everybody has different terminology
for it, but for her, she learned how to be able to control the touching on and
off, and so we had her put her forehead on a tennis ball and she would get a
conjugate schedule of reinforcement that a continuous rate, and when the vet
was touching in a certain spot, she would get a higher magnitude. And she
learned really quickly, if I pull my head off the tennis ball, the vet’s hands
come off, I can express I’m uncomfortable. And we really just struck gold with
that, because this animal that had for a long time either been put into a small
space, or it had been haltered and sedated, it was really eye opening to see
how fast she was able to say, “I’m now in control of this, I get to tell
you what to do?” but it was only just tweaking, literally bringing her
into her stall instead of another environment saying this is place, she’s
comfortable, she knows that food happens here, she has a positive association
with us coming and going, and we can shape from here. So, on one element,
sometimes you do have to start in a different location.
Another story or
example would be, one of our giraffes receives chiropractic care. Her name is
Sarah. And Sarah has this wonderful habit of trying to do the reenactment from
Jurassic Park, where the dinosaur stands up on its hind two legs, be able to
rip the branch off from the top of the tree.
Sarah is massive
for a female giraffe. She’s a little over 17 ft tall. She’s bigger than some
male giraffe, and she still will literally jump to try and get the tops of
these trees. And so, it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on her pelvis and
her lower spine, and we work really closely with an equine vet, Dr. Kerry, who
is again folded into our team, she is an integral member of our team. She has
taught us so much, some really cool, amazing things. And she wants to be a part
of the training picture, she doesn’t want the training picture to hinge on her.
So, she would actually come every three weeks in between treatments to practice
and run through what we needed to prepare the animals for skill wise.
And what we were
working on is Sarah already has a lateral move into the fence. So basically,
she can parallel park herself to the fence that allows us basically a lateral
view of her body. And from that, again constructionally speaking, that lateral
movement doesn’t mean we’re trimming your hooves, that lateral movement doesn’t
mean you’re automatically getting an injection, but that it just means you’re
presenting this part of your body to us.
And from there, we
were able to teach an assent behavior where we hold our hand out, Sarah moves
her head, her neck, her shoulder, her part of her body that we’re asking into
our hand. And so, that’s her being able to provide one layer of permission to
us to be able to touch her. And we train this behavior outside with them on
exhibit, and behavior is going great, we’ve done a few adjustments. And then
the giraffe barn needs a brand new roof, which means the giraffe are stuck
inside for a couple of weeks while the roof goes on. And Dr. Kerry comes for an
adjustment, we had never done any adjustments inside. We had never practiced
any adjustments inside, but because Sarah had the ability, and the skill to do
the lateral move in to be able to parallel park herself, the behavior was
actually stronger in the new location because all of the environmental cues,
Dr. Kerry being present, the ladder, the trainer, the moving, the behavior
happened, like I said, it was faster, it was cleaner, it was without any
issues. Inside in a place that we have never practiced before, but because
Sarah knew what the environment was asking for her, she could nail it without
an issue.
And Sarah loves to
be right. There is, she is convinced a hundred percent of the time she is
correct, and, we always say the learner is never wrong, but there are certain
times that Sarah is just 10 steps ahead of where she needs to be. So, the fact
that we could see her just light up like, “Oh, I know what they need me to
do!” And just boom, swings her hip in, it was so enthusiastic that we had
to put in the extra safety precaution of Dr. Kerry clipping her ladder to the
fence so that when Sarah pushes into the fence, the ladder doesn’t not make
contact to the fence anymore, because she did it with such excitement for that
behavior.
And so, again it
really does vary from time to time, what your learner needs is going to
sometimes dictate it. But other times, if you really are empowering your
learner and making it so that the learner is not dependent on the trainer, is
not dependent on the environment, but owns those skills and knows, “Oh, I
know I can do that here.” You see this joy light up, again, that safety
light up from them, that they know what they can do. And then there’s other
times where because we train constructionally, if we all of a sudden need Sarah
to move in a little bit more specifically, she has the skill and the components
to help her be successful.
So, we can say,
“No, I need you to move your hind left foot closer to the fence.”
She goes,
“Oh, why don’t you just say that I can move my hind left foot
independently of all my other four feet.”
So, it’s really
amazing to see how we can train and give the animal skills so that if it does
fall apart, or if it does, have some bit of difficulty to it, have all these
other component-based skills that we can reprogram with a learner to say,
“Hey, you just need to move your left foot and you’re there.”
“Oh, okay. I
can do that. No problem.” So, it’s, again, it really, constructionally
speaking, if you train nonlinearly, you can see the learner own those skills
and be proud of those skills. And so, it doesn’t, it’s really hard for some
people to understand that the behavior doesn’t belong to you. You may have
helped shape it, but ultimately the learner is responsible and owns that
behavior. And that’s something that Lisa said to me eight years ago that has
just stuck with me ever since.
[00:54:55] Emily: I love that so much and I’m super jelly that
you and Lisa get to hang out with giraffes and get giraffe hugs and stuff
because I have not gotten a giraffe hug before, and I feel like I’m worse off
because of it.
[00:55:09] Kyle:
It is special. A lot of giraffes, they have a huge lobe in their brain that is
dedicated solely to their sense of smell. And so, oftentimes when you feel them
come over and you feel this deep breath in and they’re smelling you and they’re
saying hi, they’re also checking you in a sense, we obviously know with dogs,
they have this incredible sense of smell, they can smell all different types of
diseases. They can smell our stress on us. But imagine the lobe that giraffes
have on their brain, their brain that’s dedicated to the sense of smell. You
can’t hide anything from a giraffe, they see into your treat pouch. They know
exactly how much food you have left in your treat pouch.
They know what
type of food you have in your treat pouch, again, the giraffe training team is
one that I have always loved being a part of, I’ve been a part of multiples and
they just, they keep you on your toes. They’re the ultimate teacher. And one of
the behaviors that we had trained them is this hug.
And the hug is
just so impressive because again, the giraffe is making the choice to lower its
head to your level on the ground and be able to target basically their chin to
your chest. And so, they pull you in and this embrace that you, there, there is
nothing else like it to feel embraced by a giraffe, to feel them humble you in
their size.
It is very
special. And so, I do highly encourage people that if you get the opportunity
to be hugged by a giraffe, you should, if the opportunity is not present, do
not go and seek it out. Giraffes have a lot of power, especially in their head,
especially in their legs. Don’t go running out to your local zoo, respect the
training that has happened there.
Again, the person
who’s in charge of the giraffes at our facility, Elise has done a really
amazing job at their program and has been able to speak at IMATA as well as
ABMA about the program that has been built there and about how each giraffe has
its own individualized training plan because it’s a whole life plan for that
individual.
And it literally
starts with what is in their training bucket. The giraffe that I’ve worked
with, Eve, loves green beans. If you offer Sarah green beans, they will come
raining down on your head. If they are free green beans, Sarah will eat them
readily. She will not work for green beans. Sarah has a seasonal flavor
profile, so sometimes in the fall she really likes her corn.
And then,
summertime, it’s a little bit more sweet potatoes and it’s every individual is
given that opportunity to express what’s reinforcing to them. Interestingly
enough, the fact that usually blows people’s minds is the giraffes, they get
bananas, but they don’t like them peeled. They have to have the peel on them
because bananas without the peel are slimy and gross, so don’t try to offer
that to the herd that we work with because they do not like slimy bananas. I
[00:57:30] Emily: That is adorable. Okay. So, I could keep
talking about drafts for a very long time, but instead we should probably move
on to the next part of the interview. And this last section are questions that
I ask all of our guests. So, I just like to hear how everybody answers the same
questions. So, the first one is what is one thing that you wish people knew
about either the topics we’ve been discussing today, your profession, or
enrichment, any of the above.
[00:58:00] Kyle:
I think what’s really important for me to try to help to stress with people
nowadays, is it’s really hard not to become an armchair expert when it comes to
animals, and the training of animals, and the care for animals. The best
example that I usually can think of is the video that kind of circulates on
social media of the two gorillas fighting, and somebody says, “Where are
the zookeepers?”
And to think that the
zookeepers are just going to converge on that situation, and gently take the
gorilla by the hand, and walk them to the corner, and ask them about their
feelings, it talks about understanding what really goes on into this field and
what keepers are feeling and what keepers are told not to feel.
They’re not
empowered to be vulnerable and show their soft sides. They’re not empowered to
talk to a lot of the naysayers that have really old, negative, outdated
information. And I experienced that a lot in the marine mammal field. It, it
was a time that Blackfish was really circulating widely. And while it’s
important for there to be oppositions to a lot of the stuff that we do, that
people that are keeping our ethics in check, it’s really easy to exploit people’s
feelings on things.
And so, one thing
I encourage people to do. Is if you do feel a certain type of way about animals
in human care, animals in captivity, is find the facilities that are closest to
you that are highly regulated, highly recognized, and go and talk to the people
that take care of those animals. There is nothing more they want to do than
share those animals. And there’s a lot of times that you hear people in the
field talk about, “I got into animals because I don’t want to work with people.”
And every time I would meet a dog trainer that would say that it’s like I, I
would hurt for those dogs, because I know that those trainers are missing a
huge component of that element, which is the owners. The people that they’re
trying to connect with their dog.
And ultimately
what we serve as animal care professionals is we serve as alien translators.
We’re speaking for these animals that don’t have a voice, and we’re trying to
connect them with people that want to listen, that want to care, but we have to
find the frequency that those people want to listen and want to care about
them. And I think with the way that the world is today, getting people to care
and understand about species and connecting them with the people that take care
of those animals is what I wish we did a better job as in the field as a whole.
A great example I
talk about is giraffes. A lot of people aren’t aware that giraffes population
are plummeting. And, but what they are really aware of is elephants. Elephants
are endangered. So, there’s about half a million elephants on the continent of
Africa, and everybody’s aware of the critically endangered numbers.
There are less
than 100,000 giraffe, maybe even less than that now, on it, on the continent of
Africa, and that’s it. And I would always tell people I would love to be able
to take the giraffe that I work with, put them on a plane, take them to Africa,
and let them be out and do their giraffe thing.
But the reality is
those animals are going to be scared. They could be stuck in a snare. They
could be poached, they could be injured, and I can work really hard where I am
to make sure that my giraffes are never scared, that they’re never hungry, that
they are never cold. Those little things I can control, but what’s happening
out in the world right now is that’s not really the case.
And there are a
lot of institutions that work really hard to make a difference in what’s going
on. So, it’s not with giraffes, like it’s not just controlling the ivory, but
it’s about being able to network with the people that live alongside giraffe,
and that’s what the most successful conservation groups are doing is they’re
doing on the ground work. Something like vaccinating a goat herd, or a cattle
herd protects that herd from disease that could possibly have wiped them out
before, that farmer then turns and looks at a giraffe and doesn’t see a
beautiful, majestic individual that I know at my zoo, they see a way to feed
their family. And that’s a big reality shift for a lot of people to understand
that. That is no longer individual, that’s a means to keep my family alive. And
so, I just encourage people that when you see the stuff that is meant to evoke
emotion on social media, that you take that minute to step back and think,
“Is this video’s goal to get me to feel a certain type of way without
giving me all of the facts and all the information?”
And so that’s why
I always go back to that gorilla story of, where are the zookeepers? What are
we expecting these new keepers to do? What are we expecting them to step in and
intervene? Are you understanding that’s a part of, possibly that animal’s
culture, that there could be a small discrepancy that male was actually being
really aggressive to a younger, less dominant animal, and that’s just something
that they have to work out? That the silverback’s job is to make sure that he
looks over the whole group and the dynamics of that group. I think that’s
something I just, I wish that our field did better.
There are so many
people that love being able to dig into those zoo shows, the behind the scenes,
and I think that more zoos need to open themselves up to that and show them
behind the curtain, show them what goes into these animals that, that’s what
people’s lives are. It’s a field that is built on passion. It’s not a field
that’s built on money or fame or anything like that, but it’s because people
truly care and they give their everything. They give up time with their
families. They give up holidays. They stay late. They miss, stuff for really
important things. And that, that I think, it’s a really long rant about that.
But I think ultimately, I wish that people could see what really goes on behind
the scenes for zoos and understand that the people that are, the majority of
people are doing the best that they can.
And when you have
the COVID sensation of Tiger King out there, it just takes a couple to give the
industry a bad name, and ultimately that’s can change and suede a lot of
people. And so, when I was working with marine mammals, again, I would bring
people behind the scenes. I would show them a training session. I would get
them to meet the animals and see the stuff that we’re doing. Any chance that I
had, I was empowered by the management team to bring people back, to show them
what we’re doing. And I wanted them to understand that. And it wasn’t just, you
saw a 20-minute animal presentation that’s all those animals have.
You don’t see the
four training sessions a day. You don’t see the dive team going in and
scrubbing the pool. You don’t see the person who’s here 24 hours a day
monitoring the water quality of those animals. There’s a lot more to it, and it
just takes that step of reaching out and talking to those people to make that
connection and having a little bit more ownership of your local, community zoos,
or sanctuaries.
[01:03:51] Emily: And I’m going to lend my position as the host
of this podcast to support everything that you just said. One of the things
that’s really important to us at Pet Harmony is teaching epistemology, which is
basically, the theory of how we know things. So learning, how do we know that
what we believe is true?
And applying
critical thinking skills to the information that we receive. Because what
you’re talking about has been a lifelong passion of mine. And in our, I
believe, third episode, like one of the very beginning of the podcast, we
brought on Dr. Eduardo Fernandez and he taught us the term theramorphic, which
is taking the viewpoint of the animal rather than approaching animal care and
animal welfare from the human anthropocentric point of view, taking a theramorphic
point of view is considering the wellbeing of the animal.
Do animals have
the freedom and are they empowered to live as closely as they would in the
wild, but without the dangers that the wild presents for them? And do they have
a voice? Do, are we letting them have a say in what happens to them? And are we
actually considering what’s actually in their best interests, not what feels
warm and fuzzy to us?
And so, I want to
be careful about how I agree with you, because I also think it’s important to
celebrate the fact that people are passionate about wanting to make the world a
better place and wanting to save the planet and save animals, that’s super
important, and that is a, an important and wonderful first approximation that
should be honored.
And also, if you
think a solution is simple and straightforward, and you think why don’t they
just do this, or all they need to just do is, or this is, blanket statement,
bad, or this is, blanket statement, the way to do things. You’re probably
missing a whole lot of information, and it’s time to take the step to the next
approximation, which is learning from the people who have devoted their lives
to what you care about. Yeah, I am a big supporter and I think we all at Pet
Harmony are a big supporter of replacing sentimentality and those emotional
manipulations that happen with a theramorphic view of animal welfare, not just
in zoos, but also with companion animals and all of the different ways that we
interact with animals in our care. I fully support and agree with what you’re
saying.
[01:06:25] Kyle:
I appreciate that.
[01:06:26] Emily: You’re welcome. Next question. What is one
thing you’d love to see improved in your field?
[01:06:31] Kyle:
Technology. I think for a long time, we have relied on a lot of manual labor,
and a lot of just physicality to get stuff done. And I think there is a huge
component of technology to getting things done. And there’s a great example. I
was just talking to a manager from another zoo that found these Bluetooth
temperature and humidity readers and he has them in the exhibits and all he has
to do is walk by with his phone and boom, it gives him the entire month, hour
by hour breakdown for every single day about the temperature and humidity in
that environment.
And that takes
away easily 15 minutes a day for that keeper to have to sit there and manually
write down these records. And then if something came up to have to sit there
and go through pages and pages of records to figure out, was there a
temperature dip? And so, being able to incorporate more technology into the
field, I think is one key element that’s missing.
I think that there
are so many brilliant minds in the tech field and there are, especially this
young generation that’s coming up every time I talk with them and have an
opportunity to interact with them, I want to stress that it is not about trying
to pull you into this field to help you be next to me and clean up poop, it’s
about if you can think of a way to program robotics or an automatic feeder to
be able to get stuff to these animals in a new, fun, diverse way. Whether it be
being able to allow a carnivore to chase a mechanical ball that spits out
chunks of meat, that allows that to happen or, my lifelong dream is to have a
zip line that’s automated for giraffe so that every two hours there is a new
piece of food that’s out moving the Savannah that’s triggering the giraffe to
go to another part of its exhibit to go and do something.
I currently work
with a mini horse that I think would be amazing at being able to learn games on
a tablet and being able to do match to sample games on a tablet, being able to
touch it. She’s just brilliant. And I think that there is a technological
element that is missing from the zoo field at this current time.
And I, I just see
that it’s going to take one person that’s going to see it because again, what
person is going to want to deprive an animal from an iPad, right? And again,
it’s not saying that technology is the answer, but I think that there’s a big
element that’s missing from it, to be able to see.
There’s a really
cool study that I recall of showing that chimps have a higher memory
recollection, and being able to remember patterns and numbers that just puts
people to shame, but it’s not talked about. And so, I think when you can have a
facility that shows exactly what we were talking about, that animal’s natural
ability to be able to come over, have access to the reinforcer for taking part,
and being able to do something, interacting with the tablet, as well as being able
to go out and forage in their exhibit for the same type of food, to give them
that choice and freedom, but also saying ” Hey, we understand at the end
of the day you’re confined in this space.”
That’s just the
reality of what we do. And a big part of my job is to recognize that I can
expand to acres and acres of land, but I can expand your mind. I can create new
opportunities, and give you new neural pathways, and new ways to access
reinforcers and interact with your life that may not be available to you in
other ways. That’s more or less for free. It doesn’t cost me anything to train
them. So, I think if we can get more technology in the field, that there’s a
lot of really cool opportunities that can come from that.
[01:09:35] Emily: That’s super cool. I would love to see that as
well. All right, next. What do you love about what you do?
[01:09:40] Kyle:
Meeting the animals. I love being able to meet the animals and see their
personalities come out and I am so lucky and so privileged to be able to do
this job. That, not being able to have these animals a part of the
conversations to speak their voice in all this. Like I said, it always feels
like a little bit of an injustice to hear like their side of things and to hear
them talk about, how big of a fool, like you wouldn’t believe how long it took
Kyle to figure this out about me.
So, I think for
me, I love being able to meet the animals and see their personalities come out
and shine and then connect them with people. One of the animals I work with, Slider,
is a miniature steer who’s just, he’s an incredible teacher. And he came to the
zoo because he was an oopsie. So, his dad was a Spanish fighting bull, who
jumped the fence and mated with his mom, who was a miniature Zebu, and thus
Slider was formed. And not only did he have this incredible background of
species, er, breeds coming together, but he was born with a crooked jaw, which
meant that he couldn’t nurse from mom and had to be hand reared.
Because he was
hand reared, he didn’t realize that he’s a thousand-pound hoofstock. So, he
wanted to cuddle with people, he didn’t understand why people didn’t want to
cuddle with him. So, he would throw his head around and ultimately became
dangerous as a thousand pounds. And we needed to be able to train him for a
hoof trim, and if you Google, bovine hoof trim, you’re going to see some really
nasty, gnarly images of that.
But again, our
team came together and said, we can do better. But there wasn’t a lot of
resources to show you how to positively train bovine for their hooves to be
done. So, we took again, our experiences and put it together and created
basically a bovine version of a giraffe hoof trim. So we found a block so that
he could basically lift his leg up and have his foot be on a block so that he
could trim it.
And again,
reaching out to the experts, we were laughed at. Cows physically can’t stand on
three feet. It’s impossible for them, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, all right,
fine. So, we have to find a way to cater to help him. And for Slider, we had to
go through at least 10, 12 versions of different types of blocks to let him be
successful.
But he never
stopped trying. He never gave up, never got frustrated. He just constantly was
like, “I want to do this. You guys just aren’t giving me the right tools
to do it.” And what’s so cool is I, there was a guest one day at the zoo
who just again happened to be passing by, she’s a little girl, her name is Miriam.
And we’re talking
to her about this new pygmy hippo that just came to the zoo. And she goes,
“Why is he out? He should be in his mandatory, 60-day quarantine
period.” How does an eight-year-old know what the quarantine period is at
an AZA zoo for a pygmy hippo? And from there, I just welcomed her in, took her
on behind the scenes tours, introducing her animals left and right.
And again, she has
met so many animals at the zoo. She has been hugged by a giraffe. She has met
koalas, and every time she comes back. And the best part of this, she brings
members of her friends and family all the time. “How’s Slider? can we go
see Slider? Let’s go see Slider. Now, can I go say hi to Slider? Where’s Slider
at today?” And she loves that cow so much. She loves that steer so much.
And what was
really cool was we were training Slider for his voluntary injection. And what
that meant was that he would again do the lateral move into the side of the
fence. We would hold out an object for him to be able to move in and push into
the syringe so that you don’t have the vet chasing around trying to puncture
really tough cattle hide for an injection. And we had trained it so well that
this animal who had such a negative history of knocking people over could allow
an 8-year-old to hold the device there for him to move his shoulder into, and
she got to buy into part of that. And so, to see Slider connect with this 8
year old who just loves him so much, it is one of the most rewarding parts of
my job that I could have. And to connect more and more people and to spread the
message of these animals, unique personalities and life experiences is by far
one of my favorite parts of the job.
[01:13:21] Emily: So, what I’m hearing is in about 15 years
we’re gonna bring her onto the podcast because she will have done lots of
extraordinary things by then, I’m sure.
[01:13:28] Kyle:
A hundred percent. I’ve already been talking with her mom. This is where I
think again, she’s eight years old, this is where we should start to look at
for her for college and like this program and make sure she gets onto this
internship. She’s just, she’s such a special kid with such a unique perspective
on life.
She doesn’t ask
for birthday presents. She asks for conservation projects. She makes t shirts
for conservation groups. So, she’s such an incredible kid. So yes, I hope in 15
years you get her on here and she can talk about all the cool stuff that she’s
done.
[01:13:55] Emily: Amazing. Okay. What are you currently working
on? If people want to work with you more or learn from you, where can they find
you?
[01:14:04] Kyle:
I would reach out to me, my email which I’m sure there’ll be some way for us to
provide. Or if it’s Instagram, I, Instagram stands out to a lot of people. But
just reach out, just start a conversation. The big thing that we’re working on
right now is working with the human ABA world about the work that we’re doing
with animals, and being able to share with a certain group and community about
how you can still have a nonverbal individual, be able to give you permission
to be able to do something that’s really invasive.
And then they can
also withdraw that when they’re not comfortable without being able to say,
“I’m not comfortable.” That’s our work that we’re doing with animals
is pushing the boundaries of what should be expected in animal care, that the
human field has started to catch on to that and welcome us into learning more
from us and creating a dialogue. Because for so long, I’m sure many of you have
encountered this, that, there’s a difference between human behavior and animal
behavior and that we should not talk and share stories and communicate, but
there is so much that parallels, the ABA human world with what we do with
animal training. Right down to the same type of, just the same interactions
that we have at our facilities with people and not being able to think about
what the learner is experiencing, not thinking about giving the trainer the
skills to help the learner to be able to transition to whatever they need to
do.
And so currently
working with the ABA community, that’s the constructional approach community,
has been incredible and being able to speak at the last two ABAIs has been
really eye opening about again, the different perspectives and how much we can
learn from each other and pull together. That is currently what we’re trying to
really navigate is talking about, beyond the warm and fuzzies of the animals
and the cool videos that we can show, but that we’re also teaching people how
to be able to work with these animals and inspiring people how to work with
these animals in a different approach.
Linear training is
been around for a very long time. That’s what we all know. That’s what we’ve
all been taught on but being able to look at things from a nonlinear approach,
from, getting data and looking at all the different contingencies that are
bearing down on your clients, or on your bosses, or on your coworkers, and
being able to understand how all those are interacting.
It’s been really,
it’s been fun. So, I, email Instagram, however you would feel comfortable
reaching out to me. I do take that to heart, and I do really mean that because
growing up and saying that I want to be a zookeeper, I want to work with animals.
I was mocked and made fun of and put down even by college professors.
And I do take it
really seriously when somebody is interested in the field or wants to know
more, they have a kid, or a cousin, or a friend that wants to be able to break
into the field, but doesn’t know how, doesn’t know what that looks like. So, I
want to make myself a resource for people.
[01:16:33] Emily: I think that’s so important. I share that
history of shame about my field. Like I’ve been passionate about animals since
I was a very young child. And this is all I’ve, my whole life, this is what I
wanted to do. And I always felt a certain amount of shame about working with
animals instead of humans is not a real job or it’s not important enough.
Or I felt like my
passion for social justice wasn’t really aligned with my profession. And it
took me a very long time to, to realize that when we say that social justice is
intersectional, that includes the work that we do with nonhumans, for many
reasons, one of which is that what we learn from working with nonhumans helps
us be better at how we treat other humans. And how we view human behavior and
human learners. So, I’m right there with you on that journey as well.
All right. So that
wraps it up for us. Thank you so much for joining us today. It has been such a
pleasure speaking with you. I really love all the work that you’re doing. Keep
up the work, keep up the good work and I hope we’ll have a opportunity to work
with you again soon.
[01:17:42] Kyle:
Yeah, absolutely. I again want to thank you all as well because it is a
humbling and an honor to be able to be a part of this when you are going to
somehow see my name in picture with all of these other incredible people in the
field that have been progressing and moving the field forward. It is very
reinforcing to me, I will say.
So, thank you so
much for the honor and for requesting that I come and share all the cool stuff
that I’ve been a part of and the amazing team of people and animals that I’ve
gotten to share my life with. So, I’m deeply honored and humbled to, to have
been able to join you all. So, thank you.
[01:18:12] Emily: Absolutely. It’s our pleasure.
[01:18:14] Allie: I
resonated so much with Kyle saying everything he’s done since third grade has
been for this. Except for the age, same here. Everything I’ve done since I was
13 has led me here. And one of the things Kyle said that really struck me,
especially because he said it so easily that I know this is just the way he
normally speaks, he said, “let the animal be successful.” And that
really puts the onus on us as the trainer to figure out how to let our learner’s
shine. I am absolutely going to try to incorporate that phrase into my regular
vernacular. Next week, we will be talking about are necessary evils really necessary?
Thank you for
listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on
Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you
who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in
this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and
subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum
for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.
Thank you for
listening and happy training.
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