If you are into animal behavior and positive reinforcement training, you're in the right spot. World renown animal behavior consultant, falconer, and educator Hillary Hankey dives deep with conversations and case studies on parrots, birds of prey as well as horses, dogs and all kinds of animals on topics of behavior as well as nutrition, ethology, and problem solving.
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An exercise in futility by Daniele Nicolucci
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Podden om damunderkläder. Sandra Aviani har en passion för lingerie och pratar på ett informativt och underhållande sätt om olika BH-storlekar, typer av av behåar, kostnad för ett fint och funktionellt hantverk, skötselråd, underklädernas historia, med mera. Poddradiovärdinnan har ett djupt engagemang när det gäller kroppsideal och vill stärka kvinnors självkänsla genom att lyfta fram ämnen som diskuteras i de så kallade klädeskabinetten.
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Training your bird for transportation isn't just an important part of education programming, it's a good life skill to have. For wildlife rehabilitation organizations, nature centers, and other small bird of prey centers, this is an essential skill that trainers rely on. For companion parrot people, this is an important behavior to trainer before i…
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73 Dr. Stephanie Rosenbloom and the Appeal to Nature Fallacy
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Looking to the wild for answers is a common refrain among bird people when it comes to care advice, particularly nutrition. And while this concept seems well grounded in science, the actual practice is much more complex and nuanced. For parrots, we don't always know what, how, or why the eat what the eat. And when we do know, replicated the conditi…
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72 Why We Value Fly Offs in Free Flight Training
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"If you are looking for guarantees with free flight training in birds, you are in the wrong place." In this episode, Avian Behavior International founder Hillary Hankey and ABI Animal Training Lead Katie Pnewski talk about how developing skills for birds and training staff around fly offs has been instrumental in their practice as team leaders. A p…
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Owls make remarkable ambassadors to highlight conservation work, but they can also make for challenging training subjects and divisive ideas in the training community. We have remade our entire Owl Ambassador Masterclass to reflect the nuances among species differences and address some of the challenging conversations around parent raised owls, reh…
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70 Ruling the Roost: Managing your needy parrot and your family's happiness
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Having a parrot with extremely complicated screaming, attacking, pair-bonded behavior that won’t let you out of their sight without an intrusive cascade of undesirable behaviors can be a problem for the entire household. It also means layers of stress when you are torn between appeasing your parrot and your family. This excerpt from our deep dive m…
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69 Gail Buhl from the Minnesota Raptor Center and Partners for Wildlife
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This interview with Gail Buhl from the Minnesota Raptor Center and Partners for Wildlife is a thoughtful journey filled with raptor behavior tidbits, the evolution of operant conditioning in bird behavior management, raptor rehabilitation, imprinting and so much more. We talk about how working with rehabilitated birds of prey provides such a unique…
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68 Why I don’t use ad lib weights or base weights: falconry and free flight birds
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We are going to talk about an old school term in weight management of free flying and ambassador birds, and that is ad lib weight. Another term might be trap weight or base weight. Reason why this is old school is that for some people implies your bird has this same reference weight throughout their lives, regardless of muscle tone, seasonality, an…
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67 What we learned about birds in 2023
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What did we learn about birds in 2023? What was the big bird news of the year? (or, Simone and Hillary talk about owls) Hillary sits down with fellow falconer, bird lover, and owl enthusiast Simone Lupson-Cook to talk about our favorite facts about bird behavior, ethology, conservation, and more that we learned about birds this year. From birds in …
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66 Dr. Lucy Kemp on Lead Poisoning in Ground Hornbills
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Lead poisoning is a really big deal for wildlife, and Southern Ground Hornbills appear to be particularly sensitive to lead levels in the blood. In August, Avian Behavior International visited the Mabula Ground Hornbill Project in South Africa to identify some key behavior objectives to enhance the reintroduction strategy for the Southern ground ho…
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65 Developing a student based wildlife training program
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We sat down with Paige Sutherland, Director of Wildlife Programs at Shavers Creek Environmental Center in Pennsylvania for a powerful discussion on wildlife training programs. This far ranging conversation stretched from challenges of family life in the animal care field to how to organize your time as a program leader. We have the pleasure of work…
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News flash, if your bird is attacking you, it probably doesn't mean that they hate you. What it does mean is that we have a lot in our relationship to unpack, from environmental conditions to expectations. When parrots in our homes come at us, either from the ground or on the wing, it can be really scary. Even cockatiels and small conures can pack …
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63 Owl Vocalizations and Behavior Karla Bloem of the International Owl Center
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Karla Bloem, Executive Director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota, and Hillary have a fascinating conversation about owl vocalizations and Karla's journey with Great Horned Owl behavior. They discuss owl behavior observation influences, species differences, reinforcement strategies and all things owl. This conversation will fasc…
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62 Part 2 Are we friends with our birds and other deep questions
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Hillary answers more questions from a workshop regarding how to prepare a bird for a program, are we friends with our birds, how to know when you are doing more harm than good and much more. We get philosophical on this one! For more information on our upcoming Advanced Workshop in November 2023, check out this page for registration and details Wel…
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61 Answering Questions About Relationships with Birds of Prey
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Hillary answers questions from a workshop regarding do's and don'ts on building relationships with birds of prey, what to do about a kestrel that attacks the bait bag, weight managing owls, and more. For more information on our upcoming Advanced Workshop in November 2023, check out this page for registration and details Welcome to the Avian Behavio…
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60 World Renown Aviculturist Dick Schroeder on Ground Hornbills
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We sit down with good friend and well known aviculturist Dick Schroeder to talk about what we can learn about working with the Southern ground hornbill in a variety of different ways. Dick is a celebrated member of the avicultural community, he has raised numerous hornbill species, including over a dozen Southern Ground Hornbills (baby Kipling was …
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Our two favorite subjects, owls and raising ambassadors. Owls are considered flagship species, which means that while they may not necessarily be directly endangered, they are species chosen to raise support for biodiversity conservation in a given place or social context. This means that due to their widespread appeal, they have the capacity to dr…
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58 Are LIMA and the humane hierarchy still serving your bird training?
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We are going to be talking about how LIMA (least intrusive, minimally aversive) and the humane hierarchy structure stopped serving me in my animal behavior progress, what got me there, and how I help my clients instead. We take a HUGE look at how it's not uncommon in science for us to wittingly or unwittingly select the results that we want to move…
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Building Trust with a Nervous Non-Releasable Raven
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In this session of our Behavior Makeover Series, we work with a rehabilitated non-releasable raven that is showing a lot of avoidance behavior around his trainer. We create a behavior shaping plan using non-coercive negative reinforcement instead of counter conditioning or systematic desensitization to build the raven's trust. This works on all spe…
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Dr. Scott Echols DVM DABVP Part 3: Exercise, Osteoporosis, and Foraging
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In this final part of our series with Dr. Scott Echols, board certified avian veterinarian, we cover A LOT of ground in terms of avian health and welfare. If you want the straight science about how to get your bird exercising, even in terms of rehabilitated wildlife, diet management, and osteoporosis, we talk about it all. Dr. Echols is as always, …
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Challenges Facing Rehabilitated Education Birds of Prey
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Working with rehabilitated birds of prey as education ambassadors is rewarding work, but it can be fraught with challenges as well. From working with unruly (and opinionated!) audiences to dealing with heartbreaking avian losses and health issues, it can feel thankless at times. In this episode, we focus on two big issues: working with a volunteer …
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The Problem Solving Paradigm: Learn the scientific mindset to solve your toughest bird behavior challenges
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The Problem Solving Paradigm teaches you how to manage really complex and sometimes uncontrollable variables when trying to train your bird, so you actually can realize real change. Because let's just be honest here - trying to train new skills in a busy household or work environment is REALLY hard. Life happens! Uncontrollable variables like famil…
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Dr. Scott Echols: Bridging New Frontiers in Avian Wellness with Technology
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Board certified avian veterinarian Dr. Scott Echols discusses some pretty intense concepts in veterinary and wellness technology. He covers how new technology is discovering diseases we never even knew existed and how we are able to diagnose and treat them. We also talk about how CT scans are able to help us identify issues that blood screening and…
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Bonus: Interview with The Rossifari Podcast
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Bonus release from our earlier interview with Jon Rossi of the Rossifari Podcast. We talk free flight training and how it relates to our leadership philosophies, being a woman in leadership, bird nerdin' and so much more. You can check out our swapped episode on mentorship on Jon's Rossifari podcast page and so much more on zoos, conservation, and …
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Using food as a contrived reinforcer to train our parrots is often fraught with emotions and tension. And not without good reason. But we can discuss the differences in contrived reinforcement and natural reinforcement and how both are important components in building strong relationships and decode our interactions with our birds. These concepts c…
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Training free lofted birds of prey can be an incredibly enriching program for trainer and bird, but it can also lead to an unnecessarily protracted program that brings all parties a lot of stress. Bird of prey trainers that are interested in this type of training need to assess a number of environmental conditions, including their own skills and su…
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Keeping the Science in Animal Care with Barbara Heidenreich
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Why does science in animal care matter? My bestie Barbara Heidenreich and I sit down - this time in person - for a conversation about what it actually means to be scientific in animal care and behavior. And why that's important. We talk about natural behavior, species differences, the constructional approach, and so much more. Resources for the Avi…
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ICYMI, petkeeper is a derogatory term in a niche community like falconry. This episode explores the roots of some falconry disagreements and why it's so important to find a supportive community that fosters curiosity and an ethical training paradigm that fits you and your bird's needs. https://avianbehaviorlab.com Our Patreon The weekend effect in …
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The Constructional Approach to Animal Welfare and Training with Maasa Nishimuta and Sean Will
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Whoa baby, y'all, this is another incredible interview that gives you a whole 'nother paradigm to the think about in animal training. Let's blow the lid off of the way we think of operant conditioning and dive deep with Maasa Nishimuta and Sean Will of CAAWT, or the Constructional Approach to Animal Welfare and Training. This conversation will have…
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Dr. Scott Echols DVM DABVP and the Dietary Supplements for Birds
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Our second interview with Dr. Scott Echols, Diplomat- ABVP - Avian Specialty, nutrition expert, and, geez, there so many epithets we can tag on here. In this episode, we talk about avian dietary supplements, Omega-3 fatty acids, the ol' pellets versus raw diet debate, and a few other questions within this topic. You might want to bring a pen and pa…
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What Matters When Training an Owl Ambassador
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Owl ambassadors can be tough to train, but in our opinion, so worth it. They are powerful conservation ambassadors for myriad of topics. We topic about two key things that we look at when we set ourselves up to train an owl ambassador. Our Owl Ambassador Masterclass gets really deep on this subject, and you can purchase it on demand at the Avian Be…
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44 Rebroadcast How to stop your bird from screaming when you leave the room
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Screaming is a big deal when you live with parrots, and boy do we know it. We just dropped the final lessons of our Screaming Masterclass in the Avian Behavior Lab. Eleven meaty lessons and worksheets filled with in depth how-to's and comprehensive approaches to this issue. We get you started in the right direction with this episode. Check out http…
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43 How Murphy's Law Can Improve Your Animal Training
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What do trials for human's capacity for G force have to do with animal training? Turns out, the alleged beginnings of Murphy's law at Edwards Air Force Base in California by Colonel Stapp's team had its beginnings not in pessimism but practicality. Our episode explores how we can use this mindset can turn our understanding of animal behavior into m…
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42 Special needs and Aggressive Parrots with Melanie Canatella
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In our interview with self-proclaimed bird nerd and parrot lover, Melanie Canatella, Founder of Fluff and Feathers, we chat about working with birds with special needs and creating a more harmonious environment and relationship with them. This is an in-depth conversation about how minimizing fear and stress responses can weave tight the fabric that…
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41. The What's and the Why's of Animal Training Mentorships
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Animal training mentors, role models, and teachers can be incredibly impactful for our growth. This was a concept I actively sought when I knew I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could about animal behavior.We talk about: Is a mentor a necessity or a luxury? What to look for in a mentor/role model What bad relationships teach us Why it's ok to…
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40 What's the best way to train a bird of prey?
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How do you train your dragon? If you have been on the earth for a hot minute, you know that everyone has an opinion for how you need to train the bird of prey in your care. Let's go over the methods, well most of them. Or some of them. We analyze the environmental conditions that inform our decisions, jess free or no, free lofting, tethering, strob…
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What are the Fundamentals of Animal Training?
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In this episode, we talk about how our training ethos shapes every interaction we forge with the birds in our care. There are some great ways that we can build our foundation through a firm understanding of the animal training fundamentals, so let's get into it! How do you start training before you even start **training**?? On the show notes page, …
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38 Bird Training Stories Part 2: Force Free Veterinary Training, Practical Application of CAT, and More!
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In Part 2 of our live recording of our podcast from MemberFest 2021, we cover some serious ground! We talk about aspergillosis and the importance of force free veterinary training, field a few questions about training with negative reinforcement and the constructional approach, and end up with a bit of a sciency chat about spiders! You can check ou…
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Bird Training Stories with Katie, Paige and Hillary Part 1
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It's our Avian Behavior Lab MemberFest 2021, celebrating the second anniversary of our online animal behavior and training membership platform. We did a live podcast with our members, telling training challenges and success stories, plus things we have learned, putting everything into question-answer format for our members to ask questions of their…
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On curiosity, leadership and evolution as an animal trainer with Dani Poirier Larson
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You can’t tell anyone to be curious, you can show them, you can inspire them, and you can lead with humility and grace That’s what Dani Poirier Larson of the Southwick Zoo shows, the spirit she embodies and shows her team. Dani’s words are so powerful and ring so true for a behavior enthusiast who wants to engage with the human and animal world aro…
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Animal behavior sure does love routine. But what happens when that routine changes and is beyond our control? What about those changes that affect our mental well-being and then transfer on the way we work with our animals and fellow animal lovers? We talk about the three different ways this impacted our work. We also discuss pandemic pets and what…
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What to do when your bird picks favorites
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Everyone has preferences, and our birds and other animals are no different. From African Greys to Turkey Vultures, the birds that we work with make no bones about it when they have chosen a favorite. Sometimes it is harmless and other times it can be downright dangerous. We talk about strategies and environmental management scenarios to help your b…
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Interview with Wildlife Biologist Wes Larson
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We sit down with the Griz Kid! Wildlife biologist Wes Larson, bear expert, co host of the Tooth and Claw Podcast, and all around awesome person talked with us about his work with HawkWatch banding Golden Eagles. Wes and Hillary discuss what it means to get a job as a wildlife biologist and of course, all about the challenges facing golden eagles in…
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Thinking of Free Flying Your Parrot?
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As a professional free flight bird trainer with high visibility, Hillary has heard from many different companion parrot free flyers of various experience levels. Here she examines several questions, including 1) What is parrot free flight and how does it work? 2) What are some ideal qualities in a parrot free flight trainer? 3) Can you learn to fre…
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Applying Negative Reinforcement for Calm Animal Behavior
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Hillary talks about her evolution on the principle of applying negative reinforcement with the help of other trainers in using space as a reinforcer to reinforce calm behavior in challenging birds to help the listener understand why this is such an incredible tool for our behavior change processes. She also uses her experience as a guest speaker at…
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Member Interview: Adopting a bird during the pandemic
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Avian Behavior Lab members Harry and Hailey sit down with Hillary and talk about adopting Paulie the Quaker parakeet during the pandemic. Everything from the first meeting to socialization is different during quarantine in place orders. When everything is different and the only thing that stays the same is change, Harry and Hailey do an amazing job…
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Why Scientific Literacy Matters to Our Animals
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How does understanding the brain is wired for thought help the animals in our care as well as conservation? From concepts of how we handle behavior questions we don’t know the answer to all the way to consuming information on documentaries, we look at how asking questions and filling in the picture can help us understand how science works and how t…
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There are behavior challenges, and then there is what comes with adopting a male umbrella cockatoo. Avian Behavior Lab member Liv Morton talks to Hillary about the work that she has done adopting her Umbrella Cockatoo Scout and all of the ways that utilizing the science of behavior has led her to success.…
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27 What to Know if You're Interested in Falconry
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Does falconry still have a place in the modern world? It’s an old heritage sport, and there are a lot of misconceptions about what it entails. In this episode, Hillary uses her experience and insights as a licensed American falconer to discuss what the commitments and responsibilities of a falconer are. This episode includes a very frank and candid…
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What kind of jobs are there if you love birds and want to spend your life sharing your enthusiasm? It turns out, there are many types of jobs, and in this day and age, you can also make your own way. In this episode, we talk about some of the useful strategies we have seen in the entry level animal trainers and other care givers we have worked with…
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Being intentional about your choices in animal training and behavior, the shortcuts you take or don’t take in your relationships with people and animals all make up a mosaic that is our behavioral repertoire and learning evolution. How much that we recognize how our actions impact future decisions for the individuals around us makes us better anima…
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