Category Archives: Mentoring

For a trainer, whether in a show or an interaction program, the key to success is planning. Whilst interacting with their animal, being relaxed and confident, will create the right environment and that confidence will be felt by their animal and the customers. Proper planning, knowing step by step what the trainer wants to do and what is required of their animal, is paramount. Executing what was planned, as closely to that planning as possible, will give the opportunity for calmness and confidence.

However, whilst training behaviours, as a trainer plans a routine or program sequence, there will often be times when unwanted behaviours occur. There are emergency techniques to immediately take control of the situation and restore calm. These actions also greatly support the safety of interactive programs, by a trainer having techniques ready to use as soon as they are required.

Having these emergency techniques to rely upon in difficult times is not only extremely useful but it also ensures difficult situations are dealt with safely.

The technical terms included in these techniques are the behaviours known as Recall, Stationing and Gating.

• Always correct difficult behaviour during interactive programs as soon as it happens, without having to involve customers or any other persons in the water.
• Remove the animal from the program, restart session, review troubleshooting behaviour in the holding with a group of staff to give the animal a chance to get it right and remember to end with a happy session.
• Have available space to move the animal into, whilst correcting the unwanted behaviour.
• Try to have a spare animal, so you can replace an animal in a program, if you need to remove one.
• Once the animal understands where/what was the wrong, have Individual enrichment or play time in the holding whilst other programs or training sessions are taking place.
• Finally correcting a behaviour should be in a holding pen, away from any other animals and programs that are taking place.

A healthy animal is a happy animal and at the start of our day, our priority is to check that our animals are healthy and happy. As a trainer, you must have already been taught that training Husbandry behaviours is the best way to ensure your animal’s health and wellbeing.

Gastro/hydration behaviour is part of Husbandry

This should be one of the principal behaviours in our daily routine. One of the most practical, easiest and reliable ways of training or performing this behaviour is shown below.

Sitting on a platform, place your feet gently below the pectoral fins allows the animal to comfortably stay in the position longer, without drifting away or sinking and it relaxes you both. You can now perform the Husbandry in a much easier way.

More husbandry behaviours, more useful tips and full step by step guides to training and behaviours, can be found in my Behaviour Training Tutorial Handbook available to buy on Amazon or through direct email viadolphin@viadolphin

Creds to fiture image sorce: ggle

Every trainer loves to spend time with their animal but having quality time to train a new behaviour or to be creative is not always possible, so creating the time or taking the opportunity is important. Making better use of the time they do have with their animal, will create these opportunities for quality time.

Having constant daily interaction programs or performing husbandry behaviours, often place limits on the time with the animal. However, you can try to incorporate some things that take only small amounts of time, but result in building up more fun, variety and quality time for the trainer and their animal.

Divide behaviours into sections

Being creative and using any small windows of opportunity to create variety, train sections of a behaviour or to bond with the animal will be highly effective and rewarding.

By using small amounts of time wisely, especially when it is difficult to find longer periods, a behaviour can be trained and learnt in stages and then each learnt part can be put together on the final day, as a new behaviour.

My approach is to take the first minute I have free and train the first stage, the most important part of the new behaviour. I make sure the animal totally learns the first stage of this behaviour and responds to my que with fluency and at criteria. Every time I ask the animal to perform it, the response is at criteria, then I review this behaviour until this stage is totally finished and accurate.

Once the first stage has been learnt, approach each subsequent stage the same way, one at a time until each part is learnt and performed at criteria. It is very important that the trainer maintains a patient attitude, and does not rush the animal, no matter how short the time available is.

When you have trained all stages, then you put all the sections together. The animal should perform all the sections one after the other and then learn the behaviour in full. Because each stage is pre learnt, putting all the stages together will take a fraction of the time, compared with training the whole behaviour all at once.  

The images above are just three of the stages in the American Football Behaviour, which can be taught separately using the approach I have described. The full details and all the stages of this approach can be seen in my Behaviour Training Tutorial Handbook, which explains this approach step by step together with many more training techniques, Operant Conditioning and countless helpful tips, to teach and improve behaviour training.

My book can be purchased through Amazon using the following link

Link: https://cutt.ly/zb0zH2n

If anyone is interested in purchasing my book but cannot access it through Amazon, then please email me on  viadolphin@hotmail.co.uk and I will arrange delivery with you directly.

How to provide the best quality diet in your Dolphinarium.

A trainers’ daily priority and first task…nutrition.

In most facilities when staring a working day, a trainers first task is to prepare their animal’s diet.

Making sure their food is defrosted and ready to eat is their first step, which is not too different to us humans, when we select frozen food to eat from the freezer. 

When preparing the diet, every morning a specialist continuously monitors the animal diet to make sure it complies with the animals requisite nutrition before it reaches the animal, which offers the best care to the animal. The nutrition area is sanitised before and after use and is scrutinised by specialist personnel. The animals diet consists of a variety of fish and various crustaceans. Within dolphinariums, the animal’s food is selected according to an animals weight, behaviour and environment within which they live. Although their regular diet is rich in nutrients, a selection of a variety of fish is chosen depending on an animal’s needs. For example, during a very hot summer when the water is warmer, the animals temperature is warmer, so fat intake is closely monitored, because the

animal needs less fat to keep it warm and too much fat during this time can cause the animal to get sluggish.

The fish is sorted and selected one by one. By the time the food reaches our animals, trainers must make sure that the fish is defrosted, covered with ice in warm environments and as fresh as possible. The animals food is provided by professional suppliers with extended years of experience. As soon as the fish is caught it must be frozen right away this ensures the food selected maintains the best quality for our animals. The food is matched specifically to the kind of animal, to ensure good quality, it must only be frozen once. The food we provide for our animals has often better quality than food made available for humans. Fish supplied for your animal must not show any signs of discoloration, tears, being broken or have blood marks, because all these sings may indicate that the fish was already frozen and defrosted. Fish supplied for your animals must only be defrosted once, by the trainer when required for their animal’s feed. It is always better to throw away any fish that we feel is not up to standard, rather than compromise the animals diet and ultimately their health.

Dolphins fresh-water intake is paramount, they get their water from the fish which is naturally high in water. Finally, as we do with human diets, we add vitamins to the animals diet, to ensure they have the best and most complete nutritional benefit possible.

We all know the world is not perfect and trainers do not ultimately determine the fate of their animal, however they should strive to protect and care, making their animals life easier, both physically and mentally.

In a recent forum, trainers were discussing moves to remove the use of toys, such as rings and balls. What may not be realised is that these toys play an important role in secondary reinforcement, their removal will be detrimental to an animals wellbeing.

The benefit of using these toys is enrichment.

Enrichment:

We marine mammal trainers would like to know that our animals have a stimulating life, with opportunities to engage in natural behaviours. Encouraging natural behaviours, increases activity and allows animals some control over their environment. Enrichment helps satisfy both the physical and psychological needs of animals and allows them to make choices. Thus, animal enrichment creates a win-win-win situation for both animals and trainers.

We trainers provide for an animals needs, so we must assist and encourage the use of toys for instance, as methods to aid physical and mental stimulation, which in turn encourage natural behaviours. Chasing after a toy, or jumping over a tube, or challenging each other to do so, all involve natural instincts and behaviours.

Enriching an animal’s environment comes in many forms, including altering the physical environment, modifying animal care and creating stimulation. You will see play with plastic tubes and play with a ball used in most animal facilities, not just with marine mammals. These are examples of adding “furniture” for an animal to play with that enriches their environment. 

I have read criticism of videos showing dolphins playing with a ball, from people who have not idea about these animals and they make a big issue about it, without any knowledge whatsoever to support their comment. We trainers know that living with the animals every day gives us knowledge and experience, to see the real benefit of utilising such toys.

We have rescued animals near to dying and during their recuperation a toy is part of the process,  providing big improvements in their health and well-being. I have heard comments such as, how can a ball be more benefit for these animals than playing with other animals in the wild? Well, these animals include ones saved from the wild, is it better to save them with a ball or let them die? If an animal can play all day with a ball and not get tired, how much pleasure, stimulation and enrichment is then being achieved for that animal?