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158 8 Integrating Training into Animal Husbandry

In order to avoid such unhappy outcomes, a
VetBooks.ir your team will not only grow in sensitivity programme leader should ask their team to
and learn the arts of how to approach an ani­
mal training session, how to shape behaviour,
sion and reinforce the approach by encourag­
and even recognise the animals’ smallest remain intentional during each training ses­
efforts to behave in the desired direction, but ing team members to have goals for ‘routine’
they will also learn to recognise precursors to daily training sessions. This should be com­
undesired behaviours and how to end a train­ mon practice even when new approximations
ing session at the right time before it has gone for new behaviours are not necessarily being
on for too long. trained. An example of how your team might
do this is to create husbandry cards that are
selected a few times a month from a deck.
8.5 Active Training Cards could say things like “the monkey has a
small cut between the toes on the left foot”,
Frequency of training and animal participa­ “the animal needs to be held for close inspec­
tion can be present in a programme, and yet tion”, “the animal needs drainage from ear”, or
due to the lack of rigorous mental stimulation “a sample needs to be collected”. The cards
on the part of trainer and/or trained animal, may represent old situations that have come
the training performance might not reflect up in the past, or may be creative, represent­
the operational needs of the programme. This ing ideas the team has come up with of pos­
type of approach can result in an ineffective sible future situations. Results from these
programme for both trainer and animal. training sessions can then be shared at team
This outcome can occur when no new meetings. This system will challenge the team
behaviours are being trained and team mem­ to be able to work very specifically with an
bers are repetitively requesting that animals animal in order to gain behaviours which may
only perform previously trained behaviours. be needed in the future.
It can feel rewarding to the team to conduct If you notice sessions are filled with multi­
training sessions where animals know all of ple requests for a previously trained behav­
the ‘right’ responses to every request but the iour, this could indicate that new behaviours
feeling can be misleading when an animal’s have not been identified for training, a team
ability to inculcate new trained behaviours member does not have the experience to
deteriorates from lack of practice. train new behaviours, is fearful about how to
Another situation where a training pro­ approach training, or may not be aware of
gramme might become complacent and how they are spending time during a training
thereby inefficient is when there is a degrada­ session. If any of these are the case, it is your
tion in the team members’ expectation of responsibility as the team leader, to build
what the animal’s behaviour should look like. confidence and skills in your team by giving
The result is a behaviour that does not serve them the opportunity to practice, which will
the purpose for which it was intended. For build confidence over time, just as you would
example, initially an animal may have been with a new team member. It may also be
trained to hold a specific body part in a spe­ helpful for you to model the best way to use
cific position for a specific period of time. the time set aside for a training session. For
Over time, the period of time which the ani­ example, working on new approximations
mal is expected to ‘hold’ the behaviour and more challenging training in the early
becomes shorter, simply out of expediency part of the session, when the animal’s atten­
on behalf of the team. The result is that the tion may be at its highest may produce
animal now performs a behaviour which no quicker, more successful results and saving
longer allows for the full examination of that the previously learned or high confidence
body part, which was the intention of the behaviours for later in the session, when the
trained behaviour in the first place. animal’s attention span may be waning.