Zoomility: Keeper Tales of Training with Positive Reinforcement

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What do elephants, killer whales and your family dog all have in common? Training with Zoomility! It has been working for animals in zoos and aquariums for years. And now, you can use it for your own training, with help from Dr. Grey Stafford. As the book's foreword written by Jungle Jack Hanna explains, training should be about helping animals succeed, not boosting our egos. That idea is at the core of Zoomility, a combination of humility and Dr. Stafford's years of experience training animals at zoos and other facilities. Using only positive reinforcement, never punishment, Zoomility outlines steps you can follow to teach your animal calm, cooperative, and complex behaviors that will hold up in any situation. Using Zoomility's 3R's (Request, Response, Reinforce) you'll be able to train any animal, regardless of age or past behavior issues. Dr. Stafford includes dozens of "recipes" to guide you through helpful behaviors like sit, stay, and so much more. And using the techniques you'll learn in Zoomility, you'll be able to create your own recipes to successfully shape any behavior. What is Zoomility? In accredited zoos and aquariums everywhere, keepers are using the behavior tools that marine mammal trainers have honed for decades to positively reinforce all sorts of useful, complex, and cooperative behaviors with birds, mammals, reptiles, and even fish! The great news is, the tools described here are easy to learn and will work with your animals too, regardless of species or breed. When you train using only positive reinforcement, the richer life you and your animal will experience together far outweighs any initial investment in time, patience, and energy used to modify your own behavior. Plus, using positive reinforcement is fun! As you begin to see your animal succeed, you too will get plenty of reinforcement of your own. Working in a zoo has revealed a simple truth: good training decisions usually start with leaving one's ego at the door. Each chapter of Zoomility begins with some personal tales of zookeeper humility or zoomility. Done properly, training is as much about having fun as it is about helping animals succeed in the world in which we ve placed them, whether it be a zoo, a kennel, a wildlife preserve, a stable, or our own home. So this book was written to provide readers useful training tips as well as a glimpse at the humorous side of working around animals with positive reinforcement.