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| Tricky-Woo's safe place |
For those of you who have been loyally reading along, this training update is long overdue. So for the next two posts, rather than talk about the pigs, as was my intent, I shall focus instead on the progress of red panda and wildcats thus far.
Tricky-Woo
Tricky has spent a great deal of time up in the branches of the giant oak tree in her enclosure. She came to the park from another facility about 3 weeks ago, and unfortunately, I know the journey was fraught with traditional, stressful procedures, which make the readjustment period long and very hard on the animal.
Even if Tricky had been introduced to positive reinforcement training practices at her former facility, I know that the transport procedure was one in which trapping and crating were used. It's unfortunate -and it certainly doesn't have to be done in such a manner. The whole process of getting an animal to voluntarily go into her crate and be transported can be trained -it just takes staffing and time. By tricking the animal into a crate, the end result is that one has to re-establish the animal / human bond of trust.
Tricky has spent a great deal of time up in the branches of the giant oak tree in her enclosure. She came to the park from another facility about 3 weeks ago, and unfortunately, I know the journey was fraught with traditional, stressful procedures, which make the readjustment period long and very hard on the animal.
Even if Tricky had been introduced to positive reinforcement training practices at her former facility, I know that the transport procedure was one in which trapping and crating were used. It's unfortunate -and it certainly doesn't have to be done in such a manner. The whole process of getting an animal to voluntarily go into her crate and be transported can be trained -it just takes staffing and time. By tricking the animal into a crate, the end result is that one has to re-establish the animal / human bond of trust.
So, after spending a few days just quietly sitting in her enclosure and observing her reactions to my presence, I felt that the more active training should be postponed for a bit -for two reasons: 1) to give her more time to adjust to her new home, and 2) because the facility here just informed me that a female companion for Tricky would be arriving in two days time ...yikes, the timing seems poor to me. I'll wait until the dust settles! As far as I know, learning -even when the most positive methods are used, inherently contains an element of stress. One only has to look back to our own learning experiences to support this point. I have to chuckle here a bit -because I can assure you that some lessons I learned were far more stressful than others!
Lesson learned:
If I had to advocate for just one good argument as to 'why a wildlife facility should hire a professional trainer,' it would be "so that facilities could eradicate the older methods of animal husbandry and relocation practices that are still in abundant use today.
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