Trainer vs. educator

Recently I experienced interesting reactions to my statement that I'm an animal trainer. I haven't realised how people can understand it until I heard: are you a circus trainer? It didn't occur to me that training animals can be associated with taming animals. And my understanding of the word "training" couldn't be further from that!

It reminded me of what I heard on Dog Behaviour Conference this year from amazing Sarah Fisher. She is talking about educating animals, not about training them. I love this idea! It takes this negative connotation away from the word training! I need to adopt that word too.

Educating animals is about empowering them and helping them navigate through the world they currently live in. It's about giving them a choice. It also goes hand in hand with an errorless learning mindset that Susan Friedman talks about. There is so much more to it than people think!

Interacting with animals is still training

While being in Cayman Island I kept hearing that I need to visit a stingray city. I’ve finally booked a trip on my last weekend on the Island. The waters of Cayman are so stunning that just being in the water is simply amazing! But then here are the stingrays. They are not kept here by force, it's an open sea. However, they are all in the same area whenever any ship arrives. Why? Because people are feeding them here. For them, it's worthwhile staying here and swim towards people as it means mealtime. No force was needed. And to me that is what we call training or educating animals. “Being in this place will produce positive consequences for you” - that's what was communicated to them.  And that's exactly how I work with any animal. Even if the animal is restrained - by a leash (a dog), by being in a closed room (a cat) or by a confined area in which the animal lives in (wild animals), I never want any of this to be the reason animal stays with me. I want the animal to choose to be with me, just like the stingrays do. It's not about making them work with me because they have no other choice. It's about communicating to them that there are positive consequences available when I'm there. And as you can see, even wild animals can make that choice.

We don’t have to share opinions and choices, just respect one another

Someone may ask: “is it ok to be feeding wild animals just so we can touch them and take a picture with them?” When I met blue iguanas I didn't touch them. I went very close to them to take a picture and it was about it for my interference with their lives. I did, however, hold a stingray as it was a part of the tour. It's not an easy question. I will let everyone decide for themselves what seems right to them. I would just like us to stop fighting with each other and try to force our own opinions on others. We all have rights to our own opinions. Moreover, we can always find a mutual purpose! No matter how small. As humans, I would like us to look for the things that we have in common and stop focusing on differences. No one has to agree with me, absolutely no one! And with force and judgement, you won’t change my opinion. With dialogue, that’s a different story!

We can all be superheroes for animals in our care, the question is will we make that effort to educate ourselves?