Animal Training Fundamentals with Barbara Heidenreich

Latest Episodes:

01 - Creative Uses of Non Food Reinforcers Jul 13, 2019

Show notes

Food can be a great reinforcer for training exotic animals. But anything your animal seeks to acquire or engage in, and can be delivered contingently, has the potential to reinforce behavior. Host Barbara Heidenreich has seven examples of different creative non-food reinforcers. And shares lots of real-life applications of how these unique strategies have been used to get results in zoos, companion animals and conservation projects. She wraps it up with some great tips you can try right away to help you start adding non-food reinforcers to your animal Training Toolbox.

03 - Open Mouth Behavior – Success Strategies! Jul 13, 2019

Show notes

Open mouth can sometimes be tough to train! Often the most difficult challenge is getting the action started. Barbara goes over her favorite ways to start this behavior with wide variety of species. She also covers the methods she finds less successful and why. Also covered is the pesky problem of getting duration. And how the heck should you use a bridging stimulus for this behavior? To top it off, inserting a cue is also not straight forward, depending on how you built the behavior. It can get pretty confusing at times. Barbara brings you clarity. She wraps it up with some great tips you can try right away to help you start adding this behavior to your animal Training Toolbox.

04 - Tiger Training Gone Viral Jul 13, 2019

Show notes

Where did all those cool ideas for training tigers to cooperate in medical care come from? I know a lot of my inspiration came from some fantastic training I saw years ago at Copenhagen Zoo. Since then, their training has gone viral with video clips of urination on cue, using sleeves for injection training and tail blood draws. Training coordinator Annette Pedersen shares how it all started and details of the shaping plans to groundbreaking behaviors that are now inspiring trainers around the world ~ Barbara Heidenreich

02 - The Unthinkable: Guest in the Enclosure Jul 13, 2019

Show notes

In this episode special guest Annette Pedersen shares a story zoo professionals hope never to experience. What would you do if a guest climbed into an enclosure with a dangerous animal? If your team has not prepared for this type of emergency, two lives are at stake, human and animal. Listen to how the Copenhagen Zoo handled the situation when they received the call "This is not a drill. There is a man in the polar bear exhibit."