This episode of "The Bitey End of the Dog" kicks off Season 5 with none other than Ken Ramirez, a legend in the field of animal training. Ken takes us on an extraordinary journey that began at a guide dog school and expanded to working with a variety of species, from tigers to dolphins.
We explore groundbreaking conservation projects where innovative strategies were employed to alter animal behaviors. Imagine training elephants to change their migration routes using artificial barriers and man-made watering holes, or reducing human-wildlife conflict involving polar bears. Ken shares eye-opening insights on ethical wildlife management, emphasizing collaboration and the importance of understanding both animal and human behaviors to create effective solutions.
This season promises to enrich your understanding of animal training and conservation, leaving you inspired by Ken Ramirez’s modest yet remarkable expertise. Don't miss these fascinating stories and invaluable insights from one of the most accomplished trainers in our community.
About Ken:
Ken Ramirez is the Executive Vice-President and Chief Training Officer at Karen Pryor
Clicker Training where he helps to oversee the vision, development and implementation of training education programs for the organization.
Previously, Ken served as EVP of animal care and animal training at Shedd Aquarium, where he developed and supervised animal care and animal health programs, staff training and development as well as public presentation programs for more than 32,000 animals. He worked at Shedd Aquarium for over 25 years and continues as a consultant to this day.
A nearly 50-year veteran of animal care and training, Ramirez is a biologist and animal
behavior specialist who has overseen or consulted on training projects for many zoological organizations throughout the world. He began his training career working with guide dogs for the visually impaired and has maintained a close affiliation to pet training throughout his career.
He hosted two successful seasons of the pet training television series Talk to the Animals that compared pet training to the important work done with training and caring for animals in zoological facilities. He has also recently worked closely with several search and rescue dog organizations, service dog groups, as well as with bomb and narcotic dogs. Ramirez has been active in several professional organizations, including the International Marine Animal Trainer’s Association (IMATA), of which he is a past president. He taught a graduate course on animal training at Western Illinois University for 20 years. Ramirez has written for numerous scientific publications and authored countless popular articles. He authored the book ANIMAL TRAINING: Successful Animal Management through Positive Reinforcement, published in 1999. His most recent book The Eye of the Trainer: Animal Training, Transformation, and Trust, was published in 2020.
Instagram: ken_ramirez_kpct
Web www.clickertraining.com
Learn more about options for help for dogs with aggression here:
AggressiveDog.com
Learn more about our annual Aggression in Dogs Conference here:
The Aggression in Dogs Conference
Subscribe to the bonus episodes available here:
The Bitey End of the Dog Bonus Episodes
Check out all of our webinars, courses, and educational content here:
Webinars, courses, and more!
This episode of "The Bitey End of the Dog" kicks off Season 5 with none other than Ken Ramirez, a legend in the field of animal training. Ken takes us on an extraordinary journey that began at a guide dog school and expanded to working with a variety of species, from tigers to dolphins.
We explore groundbreaking conservation projects where innovative strategies were employed to alter animal behaviors. Imagine training elephants to change their migration routes using artificial barriers and man-made watering holes, or reducing human-wildlife conflict involving polar bears. Ken shares eye-opening insights on ethical wildlife management, emphasizing collaboration and the importance of understanding both animal and human behaviors to create effective solutions.
This season promises to enrich your understanding of animal training and conservation, leaving you inspired by Ken Ramirez’s modest yet remarkable expertise. Don't miss these fascinating stories and invaluable insights from one of the most accomplished trainers in our community.
About Ken:
Ken Ramirez is the Executive Vice-President and Chief Training Officer at Karen Pryor
Clicker Training where he helps to oversee the vision, development and implementation of training education programs for the organization.
Previously, Ken served as EVP of animal care and animal training at Shedd Aquarium, where he developed and supervised animal care and animal health programs, staff training and development as well as public presentation programs for more than 32,000 animals. He worked at Shedd Aquarium for over 25 years and continues as a consultant to this day.
A nearly 50-year veteran of animal care and training, Ramirez is a biologist and animal
behavior specialist who has overseen or consulted on training projects for many zoological organizations throughout the world. He began his training career working with guide dogs for the visually impaired and has maintained a close affiliation to pet training throughout his career.
He hosted two successful seasons of the pet training television series Talk to the Animals that compared pet training to the important work done with training and caring for animals in zoological facilities. He has also recently worked closely with several search and rescue dog organizations, service dog groups, as well as with bomb and narcotic dogs. Ramirez has been active in several professional organizations, including the International Marine Animal Trainer’s Association (IMATA), of which he is a past president. He taught a graduate course on animal training at Western Illinois University for 20 years. Ramirez has written for numerous scientific publications and authored countless popular articles. He authored the book ANIMAL TRAINING: Successful Animal Management through Positive Reinforcement, published in 1999. His most recent book The Eye of the Trainer: Animal Training, Transformation, and Trust, was published in 2020.
Instagram: ken_ramirez_kpct
Web www.clickertraining.com
Learn more about options for help for dogs with aggression here:
AggressiveDog.com
Learn more about our annual Aggression in Dogs Conference here:
The Aggression in Dogs Conference
Subscribe to the bonus episodes available here:
The Bitey End of the Dog Bonus Episodes
Check out all of our webinars, courses, and educational content here:
Webinars, courses, and more!
Welcome to Season 5 of the Bitey End of the Dog. I'm really excited to be launching 15 episodes with so many incredible conversations centered around the topic of aggression and all of the ways we can help dogs and their people. This is going to be a fantastic season, as I've brought in quite a variety of guests who share their expertise about everything from neuroscience, gut biomes, nose work, husbandry and handling, veterinary behavior, livestock guardian dogs, service dogs, intentional thinking and even puppies. What I'm most excited about is the continued growth in our collective knowledge by hearing from these experts talk about the latest and most modern concepts and applications for helping dogs. My first guest this season is none other than the legendary Ken Ramirez. When people say something like you can't train a dog without using X, y or Z, ken is the guy that can say hold my beer. I honestly can't think of many people on this entire planet that have trained so many species to do so many things.
Michael Shikashio:If you don't know about Ken and his achievements, you're really going to be blown away by this episode, and if you are enjoying the bitey end of the dog, you can support the podcast by going to aggressivedogcom, where there's a variety of resources to learn more about helping dogs with aggression issues, including the upcoming Aggression and Dogs Conference happening from October 11th to 13th 2024 in Scottsdale, arizona, with both in-person and online options. You can also learn more about the Aggression and Dogs Master Course, which is the most comprehensive course available anywhere in the world for learning how to work with and help dogs with aggression issues. I also have a wide variety of webinars, upcoming courses, videos and articles, all from the foremost experts from around the world. We are your one-stop shop for all things related to aggression in dogs.
Michael Shikashio:Hey, everyone, welcome to season five of the Bitey End of the Dog. What a great way to kick off this season, because I have none other than Ken Ramirez, who I like to refer to as the man, the myth, the legend, because I think Ken is one of the most modest trainers in our community. He's done so much and I've seen probably a dozen or at least, of his presentations over the years and you wouldn't know about what he actually does because he's not bragging about it often and I've had the pleasure of seeing him train everything from butterflies to elephants, and I'm really excited to be getting into this. So welcome to the show, ken.
Ken Ramirez:Thank you, michael, I'm happy to be here.
Michael Shikashio:Yeah, so let's kind of talk about that. I think most people in the training world know who you are. Of course, let's talk more about what you've done and some of the animals like. You've taught butterflies and elephants to migrate in certain patterns, and you've done so many things that people may not be aware about. So what's some of your favorite takeaways or some of your favorite stories about the animals you've trained?
Ken Ramirez:You know, I guess for me I was very fortunate because I got into the field very young. I was still in high school when I took my first job as a volunteer at a guide dog school and at the time I didn't know where my career was going to take me. But I really enjoyed being around the dogs and I did a lot of food prep and cleaning and I didn't really get to do anything with the dogs. My first year I was just a kennel attendant. But as time went on I got a chance to work with dogs and I think it was the work that was being done with some intelligent disobedience that sparked my 17-year-old interest and said oh my goodness, this is amazing. You give a dog a cue and the dog has to look at the environment and recognize. I know you just told me to go forward, but there's a dangerous drop-off or there's traffic or there's a big barrier in front of you and I can't go that way. So I'm going to stop. And I think the thing that was fascinating to me about it was when we got to working with overhead hangs and you know where a dog is taking a blind person and there is a low hanging sign or there's a tree branch or something that's five foot above the ground and the dog can easily go forward, and the dog would stop and the owner would say, go forward. And the dog would refuse to go forward. And it was fascinating to me, as a young non-trainer yet, that these dogs would follow your instructions 95% of the time, but when given an instruction that was dangerous to the handler or could get them in trouble, the dog would understand that it needed to not listen to your instructions.
Ken Ramirez:And something about that conceptual learning fascinated me and prompted me in many ways to actually become a trainer. And at the time, as a kid you're thinking, oh, I'm going to train guide dogs. I thought what better job could there be than playing with dogs all day long and doing it for this noble purpose? But as I was in college, I had an opportunity to work at a marine life park in the education department helping teach people, teach visitors, about animals, and I enjoyed that as well. But it turned out, as I was learning a lot about dog training, it turned out that the same techniques that I had learned about at the guide dog school were the ways that the tigers and lions were being trained, the way that the dolphins and sea lions were being trained and that the birds and the birds of prey that they were working with were being trained, and I was fascinated by the fact that all of these different species of animals could learn the same way. And before I knew it, that became my area where I worked.
Ken Ramirez:I ended up working in the zoological field, and that took me all over the world. I worked in Japan, I worked in French Polynesia, I worked in Mexico and I lived in those countries for a long period of time and got experiences with quite a variety of different animals, and over the years I became fascinated with conservation work. It's one of the things that attracts a young person like myself, when I was getting started toward the zoological world, is seeing some of the really fascinating conservation projects that could be applied. And somewhere along the way I got exposed to this idea of remote training, where you impacted animals' behavior but the animal never knows that you're a part of the equation. You're doing it sort of remotely and I started seeing the possibilities of being able to work with animals free-ranging animals in the wild and helping to shape and change their behavior in ways that would help them for conservation projects, and so one of the more recent projects that I'm currently involved in is a project with elephants in Zambia, and the challenge with this particular elephant population is, as they migrate to Tanzania, they cut through a southeast corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and poacher protection laws are not as good in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and so poachers wait there, and when the elephants cross the border, they slaughter 60 to 70 elephants every single year, and so, because of a lot of the conservation work I had been known for and had done over the years, I was asked if I thought it was possible to teach an entire herd of elephants to change their migration route and reroute them around the Democratic Republic of Congo and allow them to continue on their migration route, and we managed to do that.
Ken Ramirez:We put together a program where we taught the entire herd of elephants to go a new route to avoid the poachers, and this year 2024, is going to be the seventh year of this project.
Ken Ramirez:We've been doing the project now for six continuous years and we've been very successful at teaching the elephants to go this new route, and the best part about it is, when I started the project in 2018, the population of elephants was like 374 elephants, and this past year, in 2023, that population of elephants that we were rerouting was over 500 animals, and so the population of that particular herd has been declining for 30 years because of the poaching problem, but now that we've managed to successfully teach these animals to go a new route, they're not poached, and so the reproduction keeps up with the population and allows the population to grow, and so this population is now seeing growth for the first time in over 30 years, and so that's the kind of thing that really makes me happy that I'm able to take these things that I learned first as a dog trainer and then as a zoo trainer and apply them to animals in the wild to help for this very important purpose, this conservation work that we're doing, and so I've been fortunate to be involved in lots of different conservation projects over the years.
Ken Ramirez:That's just one of the more recent ones that I'm still actively involved in.
Michael Shikashio:That must be just. I can't think of anything more incredibly rewarding and satisfying. I mean you must sleep really well at night thinking about just the growth of your career. But now I mean, what you're doing is just really so amazing and commendable too.
Ken Ramirez:Well, thank you, mike. It is very rewarding. You know you get involved in projects like this because you care about the population. You want to see the animals helped and it's particularly concerning when it's the decline in the population is due to human activity, whether it's overpopulation or destroying forests or, in this particular case, just outright hunting for a species that's endangered and it's illegal to hunt. But they're still doing it because of the kind of money they can get for getting an elephant's tusk or for getting various elephant body parts and being able to see the success.
Ken Ramirez:You know when you start off with a question do you think you can train 370, some elephants to change their migration route? At first it's an overwhelming thought and you think, oh, my goodness, I don't know how we're going to do that. It's not like they all migrate together. They migrate over hundreds of miles and it takes many, many hours for them to all migrate. And thinking about how you're going to change that behavior sort of can boggle your mind.
Ken Ramirez:But looking back on it now and seeing that we're on the tail end of the project and the real success of the project comes in a couple more years when we're supposed to pull out and not do any intervention at all and the elephants should, on their own, travel the new route. If that is successful and we have every indication right now that it should be that's when we will be able to walk away and say, okay, job well done, we have accomplished our task. This group of elephants has now permanently taken the new route and will continue that route, hopefully. Job well done, we have accomplished our task. This group of elephants has now permanently taken the new route and will continue that route, hopefully into the foreseeable future. That's when I can look back and kind of go okay, we got that one done. But yes, it is very satisfying and it does feel really good when we see that kind of success.
Michael Shikashio:And you're presented with these kind of challenges quite often. I remember you were talking about the dogs. You taught to find the turtle eggs and you had such a limited time to do that. Yeah, and you're often presented with these challenges. And can you talk more about when you're faced with that, for instance, the elephants? Talk us through a little bit more about how that was trained, if you can, without giving away any secrets? Sure.
Ken Ramirez:You know what ends up happening is because I become known for these kinds of projects. I get calls from US Fish and Wildlife Service or some government agency or some university project, or sometimes from some zoo, and they'll say here's the problem that we're finding that these animals are facing, and the question is can we change their behavior? Can we do something with this behavior? Whether it's a group of endangered birds that are nesting on a bridge and their guano is causing the bridge to decay and they would like the birds to find another place to nest. To human interactions with polar bears that are coming too far, coming into town, villages and killing dogs and causing havoc and wanting to change their behavior. Often what will happen is people will present us with the challenge and they're not really sure how to solve it, and we have one of these brainstorming sessions where we just talk. You know what would make the problem go away? Just for a moment. Pretend that there are no obstacles in front of us and say what would you like to see happen? And if what they present are obstacles that are in the form of the animal's behavior is causing this particular problem, or the human behavior is causing the animal's behavior to change. And you know, then we start saying, well, how can we change the human behavior? How can we change the animal's behavior to help them succeed, you know, so that the animals can live their lives but they don't put themselves in danger or aren't putting people in danger any longer. And so those conversations will happen and I'll spitball these various, sometimes crazy and weird ideas and, saying so, it sounds to me like this particular project could be solved if we found a different route for the elephants to go. Now, sometimes the government agencies or the people that are involved and who've been following the problem for a long time will actually have ideas and they'll come to me and say do you think it would be possible to change the route, the centuries-old route of an elephant migration route? And then a big part of that is really talking with the local people and finding out what does the terrain look like and what would the pathway be and where would we be.
Ken Ramirez:And so what we ended up doing was for the elephant project is we ended up putting artificial barriers. We got these large tree trunks that we were able to construct a two kilometer barrier that would prevent the elephants from easily going their old route, and then we took man-made watering holes and put them along the new route. They're migrating in search of water and so there is no water usually along their old route. We put water along the new route temporarily to guide them in that direction, and that has been very successful in getting the elephants to move in this other direction.
Ken Ramirez:Then ideally, at the end of the 10-year permit we would get rid of the wall and get rid of the water, and we're doing that in small approximations. It looks like we've removed the wall. We've moved the wall so far away and around a mountain bend that you can't see the wall anymore. You wouldn't know the wall is there unless you go down that old route, and the elephants haven't gone that way anymore, even though there's no immediate barrier there. So they go down the new route where there are watering holes, and then over the years I'm now in a process of slowly approximating the number of water holes down to none and hopefully we'll be able to still get them to go the new route.
Michael Shikashio:So that's fascinating and it's just a brilliant use of the environment and a reinforcer that the elephants are seeking out, and so, in a way, these government agencies or the agencies that you're working with are kind of like a dog trainer's client that wants a specific outcome. They have a challenge. They present you with this problem. Do you ever face, let's say, a particular agency or team that is advocating for the use of punishment? Or let's say, we'll put up like a shock fence system for all these elephants? What if you were presented like, how do you navigate that conversation? I imagine it's very similar.
Ken Ramirez:You know, first of all, I never say any idea is a bad idea. I put all ideas on the table and our goal is to say, okay, what's going to really motivate the animals? My goal is to use positive reinforcement. But I'm not going to take away a tool. If the animals, if the people in that community have already used a tool, already seem to know how to use the tool, I still am going to try to find a way to minimize the use of that tool if necessary. A perfect example would be a project that I was doing in Alaska with polar bears that were coming too far south, and the idea was they wanted to get the polar bears to quit coming into towns and villages, and after really looking at the problem, we took a three-pronged approach. The first one is just a good education program to help the local villagers understand how to secure their garbage and what to do with hanging meat that they're drying out and stuff like that that were attracting the bears in. And so a good education program to change their behavior was first and foremost. But the second part of the project was they already had town sentinels. They had watch towers, town sentinels, they had watchtowers constructed in the town where they would watch, and if they saw polar bears approaching, they would use a shotgun not to shoot the bears, because it's illegal to shoot polar bears, but they would use the shotguns to scare the bears away from the village. And they had gotten really, really proficient at using the shotguns but they were using them so often and the bears would just leave and come into the town a different direction. They would just circle around and come in from another direction. And I thought I'm not going to take the shotguns away. I can't do that anyway. It's not my right, I don't have any legal authority to do that. But I realized maybe if I could teach them how to use the shotguns in a way that was going to be more effective. I said you're just arbitrarily shooting at a polar bear as they are approaching and there is no real learning that's happening because there's nothing that's connected to that shotgun. They're just walking around in their normal everyday life and suddenly a shotgun goes off and it scares them away temporarily and they come in another direction.
Ken Ramirez:So my suggestion was okay, I get that you're using these things, but you ought to at least connect the shotgun sound to the moment that the polar bear sniffs a trash can, the moment the polar bear sniffs a tire. The moment the polar bear sniffs a trash can. The moment the polar bear sniffs a tire. The moment the polar bear sniffs something human, at that moment that's the behavior you want to not have them do, and so let's make those shotgun sounds happen at that moment.
Ken Ramirez:So I taught them how to time their aversive tool better, because my feeling was if they could understand how to do it better, they would reduce the need to use it. And it did reduce the need to use it quite significantly. And then meanwhile we used a form of positive reinforcement to lure the bears to a location where natural food was available. They didn't have to get the food from the town. So that was a situation where I didn't particularly like the use of the shotguns, but it was already in place. But if I helped show them how to use it more effectively. And it was amazing because, just as an example, in one of the villages where we were doing this project, the average number of polar bear incidents in a single year was about 321. There were 321 incidents and that meant that shotguns were fired 321 times to try to scare the bears away. After implementation of this project. The average number of polar bear incidents in a single year was four. So they used the shotgun four times after we implemented the training.
Ken Ramirez:And so what I did was I worked. I didn't tell them to get rid of their aversive tool, but I helped them reduce the use of that aversive tool while meanwhile using positive reinforcement to move the bears in another direction. And so when there is an aversive tool that's already present, I don't just go in and say get rid of it. I say, well, let's see how we can minimize the use and make the use more effective and move then toward this more positive reinforcement effect. But the point that you're making is a good one, because when you're working it with many of these communities, there are so many different people who have many, many, many different ideas. In the Elephant Project alone, the number of legal hearings that I had to go through and the number of different opposing ideas and conflicting ideas were huge.
Ken Ramirez:And a big part of being able to be successful in these projects is being willing and able to listen to every single naysayer and every single person who says that can't be done or you shouldn't do this, or we want to do it this way is to be able to give them hope, their opportunity to speak, and not have a knee-jerk reaction like no, you can't use shotguns. It's like, no, that's what they've been using. So I understand why you're using those shotguns. So let me take that note down and just keep listening and saying how can I make a difference? And they come to me, like often when a client comes to us with a dog problem, they come to you because they can't find a solution. In other words, despite the fact that they might be using an aversive tool or a positive tool, it doesn't really matter something about their use of that tool isn't doing the job. And so how can we help them do it better?
Ken Ramirez:And for me, the hardest thing about most of these wildlife projects is the myriad of people, from universities to animal rights groups, to various biologists and various government agencies, park rangers, you know, there's just a huge number of people that have a vested interest in the outcome, all with very different opinions. And so one of the hardest things that I always tell other trainers about these kinds of work because once they hear about them, many trainers go. How can I help? And my first question is do you have the patience to see this project through? And do you have the people skills not to get upset, not to get angry, not to you know, a big part of this elephant project, for example, was we got permission finally to do the project and government law said that because we had a permit, we could reroute the elephants this direction.
Ken Ramirez:But we were very aware that there were five tribal nations whose land we were going to be going through and despite the fact that legally I could have come in and said we're coming through the land, government told us we could. We didn't do that. We went to each group of tribal leaders through the entire route and said here's what we are hoping to do, but we would like to be able to come through your native lands and we want to make sure that you're okay with that and that this route is okay with you. And by doing that we got the local buy-in in the project and in some cases they said gosh, we love this project, but the route that you've chosen is not the best one, for the following reasons If you could change the route and move it a little further west or a little further east, or not go this close to this village, it will make life for our community better, and so we would listen to that.
Ken Ramirez:Sometimes it was difficult because it wasn't the most convenient route, but at the same time, by getting the local people buying into it and helping with the project, it made it more possible for us to succeed. And so so much of these cases are people cases and you know, it's just like dog training. It's really about teaching people how to use certain tools and being able to work with what they need, what they desire, and finding a way to help them succeed at that and help them learn to use whatever tools you're going to put forward. I'm sorry, I think I got off on a real big tangent.
Michael Shikashio:It had me thinking it would be a masterclass just to sit and watch you talk to all these people. And the topic of conflict resolution and managing multiple viewpoints I mean it's tough enough just for, like, one family where, as a dog trainer, consultant, working with these multiple, multiple ideas and everybody wanting to have their say, it must be incredibly difficult to manage.
Ken Ramirez:It is. It's interesting At the end of each of the elephant seasons I put together my diary. I take a diary and then I kind of put it together with pictures of the project and someone was reading my diary and they said the same thing. They said, wow, you conflict managed that situation really, really well.
Ken Ramirez:But for me, at the time, I don't even think of it as conflict management. I have an obstacle in my way. Here's a group of people who are furious about something and I need to find a way to work with them and still succeed. And sure, at the end I can look at it and say, oh, I see why you think of it as conflict management. I just thought of it as, all right, here is an issue. They're upset. I need to find a way to get them to see things my way, or at least to allow me to have a reasonable conversation with them without yelling and finger pointing and being upset. And for me it's always about finding common ground. Inevitably, there's always common ground in almost anything that you're approaching and you're saying, okay, we both want to see this happen, correct. And then you sort of work from there toward finding a solution that is going to be equitable for everybody.
Michael Shikashio:I see what you're doing there, ken. You're going in there and saying I've got to change the behavior of the animals that I'm working with, but I'm also going to change the behavior of the humans that I'm talking to. You're kind of like I jokingly refer to you as Yoda and you're just going to say something to people like see, you will do like this is what you're going to like. That's that's just how I envision it, because it's so interesting now, like you, just make it a goal of like all right, I'm going to change the animals behavior as well as the people's behavior and you don't let that get in your way.
Michael Shikashio:It's an amazing way of thinking about it.
Ken Ramirez:But you can't. You can't If you want to be successful. You can't allow the people to get in the way. You can't, allow them to get under your skin, you can't. And if they're actively a part of the project, you're not going to get very far if they're angry or disagree with what you're doing. So you've got to sort of take a step back and let them see that you're willing to listen to them and really ready to hear their point of view and figure out a compromise or an alternative way. Or, if you feel like the way you had in mind is the only way, you then have to help bring them around to seeing why that it's the only way and help them be the ones that go.
Ken Ramirez:Well, I see now why you do it this way, or this is probably the best way to go, and sometimes they just say it in a different way, and if that makes them happy, then you're absolutely right. That's the way we should do it then, and you guide them in the direction that you need them to go, and so it's the same skills we use as dog trainers, but unfortunately, in my experience, frequently dog trainers don't always have those skills because they are different. It's the use of reinforcers. It's the use of consequences, but we're trying to deliver them using language, and so it requires communication skills. That there's no question that being a good dog trainer requires communication skills, but you're learning to read dog's body language, to make your decisions, instead of figuring out how to describe it to the dog logically. It's a different set of skills that, a lot of times, dog trainers just don't have.
Michael Shikashio:Yeah, you know, this is a perfect segue too into the next topic I wanted to talk to you about, you know, because you're giving these people, your learners, in a sense, the opportunity to express themselves, to give you information and feedback that you need to know to change their behavior, so the opportunity to maybe say no. It's funny I come up on a social media post the other day ask Ken about the beluga whale story. It come up on a social media post the other day, ask Ken about the beluga whale story and one of the things was is that you're teaching the animal to say no or you're reinforcing the animal's choice to say no? So can you talk more about that I mean what was happening there and give us a little background there?
Ken Ramirez:Yeah, let me give you some background. So when I was working at the aquarium we had a large population of beluga whales and our beluga whale population was very successfully breeding. So we had calves that were born into our program and we had this one young beluga whale who had been born into our program. I had known this beluga her entire life. I had a great relationship with her. I was one of her first trainers. I helped raise her, spent a lot of time in the water with her and she became what her first trainers. I helped raise her, spent a lot of time in the water with her and she became what a lot of the trainers that worked with her called. She was our perfect little princess, you know, and she was so good at taking all the cues and doing every behavior perfectly that we sort of got in what I would call a bad habit of we would put our attention on the whales or the animals that needed attention, and the young perfect whale. We would always let the newest trainers work with her, because she was so perfect that we could. You're brand new to us. We'll teach you what you need to know and you work with her. We're going to go work with these more challenging animals over here, and I think that what happened in retrospect I didn't know it at the time, but in retrospect I was able to look back at records and see that she had been with so many young trainers that perhaps didn't always know how to read her body language. They weren't always aware when she was trying to say I don't want to do this now, while those of us like myself who knew her well, if I could see she was resistant to wanting to do something, I would change the plan, I would go a different direction, and she got very used to the fact that the trainers who knew her well would adapt and change and go with her, while I think that the younger trainers not only were they not good at reading body language, that the younger trainers not only were they not good at reading body language, they also had the artificial pressure of being youngest of the staff. And so if you send a veterinarian to go take a blood sample on that whale, if she didn't want to give you her tail for a blood sample, our policy was that you said okay, we won't make you, that's okay. But I think, as a young trainer, you're kind of going oh, my goodness, the vet's right here. Everybody will think I'm a bad trainer if I can't get the blood sample.
Ken Ramirez:So if she would give a signal that she didn't want to do the blood sample, I think what happened is the young trainers sort of, even though it was against our policy, would ask again and kind of insist on it and be a little bit more forceful in the way they would ask for it. And so we ended up, over a period of several years, she ended up becoming this problematic whale who would not do medical behaviors. She wouldn't cooperate for medical behaviors and she would throw a little fit. If you asked her for a medical behavior especially the younger staff she would swim off and huff and puff and then not come back for two or three minutes. But what was interesting is that there were three of us on staff, myself included, who, if we came out to do a blood sample, she would give us her tail and go sure, here you go. And there was no resistance at all.
Ken Ramirez:And so we began becoming aware of the fact that part of it had to do with our relationship, but part of it, as I realized what was happening was for the experienced staff. She had a way to say no. We could tell, based on her behavior, that she was hesitant or reluctant. So we would change our plan. We wouldn't even think of it as saying no. We would say that there's a hesitancy for you to want to give me your tail, let me take you to another location, let's go somewhere else. And so we could always put her in a position that made her comfortable to do the behaviors that we were looking for, and we never really thought of it as her saying no. She just simply we could tell that she didn't feel comfortable here. So we won't push the behavior here, we'll do it in a different way. Younger staff didn't have that, and so once we got to this point where she was being so resistant to doing these behaviors for these younger trainers, I said you know what? I don't think you're reading her body language very well. We need to make it easy for her to say no.
Ken Ramirez:And so we put a big red buoy right next to her bucket and she was taught that she could touch the red buoy anytime she wanted. And if she touched the red buoy she would get a fish, no matter what. If we gave a cue and she didn't want to do the cue she touched the red buoy, she would get a fish, no matter what. If we gave a cue and she didn't want to do the cue, she could touch the buoy. If she just wanted to touch the buoy for fun, there was no bad consequences for touching the buoy. In fact, touching the buoy would always receive reinforcement. At the time we didn't call it teaching her to say no. We thought of it as an alternative way to receive reinforcement. But what it meant was that if there's any cue that we give you that you don't want to do, all you have to do. And the buoy was like right next to her head. So all she had to do was move her head two inches to the left, touch the buoy. We would blow our whistle and feed her fish.
Ken Ramirez:I remember when we started this project we had a lot of experienced trainers who would say well, if you do this, isn't she just going to learn that all she'll ever want to do is touch the buoy? And I said I don't believe so. I think she enjoys training and working with us and as long as we make training fun, she's going to want to participate. She's only going to touch the buoy. That could be a very boring thing to do. She's only going to touch the buoy if there's really it's something she doesn't want to do. And so, as we taught this cue and I do several presentations that I teach people about how we taught this but over the period of time, what ended up happening is it got to the point for young people. She used to refuse a lot of medical behaviors and things like that. She got down to where her refusal rate was under 2%, and it was after we implemented this project and it was because, I think, she had a way to say no.
Ken Ramirez:But when we were first training it, you could tell that this was this foreign concept. You know, in the past she had to wait for a cue to touch a buoy, but now I can just touch the buoy anytime I want. And with some of the younger trainers that she didn't have a good relationship with, she would literally touch the buoy, get reinforced. Touch the buoy, get reinforced. She would touch the buoy 100 times in a row, not do anything else. And our experienced staff that were skeptical of this idea said see, I told you and I said just give it some time, watch what happens.
Ken Ramirez:And sure enough, after a while she got tired of touching the buoy. But she would touch the buoy if you asked her for a difficult behavior, if it was a medical behavior, if she wasn't feeling well and, most notably, if she went out and did a behavior that didn't meet criteria and you didn't click your clicker, you didn't blow your whistle, she would come right back and touch the buoy because the buoy had to be. Our rule was it had to be reinforced. And so in my mind she learned that it meant no, but she also learned it meant you have to reinforce this.
Ken Ramirez:And it ended up happening that as time went on, she would only touch the buoy when maybe it was a behavior that she didn't understand, a behavior that was difficult or a behavior that had some discomfort, like a medical behavior tied to it. And so we ended up after the fact calling it the no project that we had taught this whale how to say no. And I don't know if she understood it as a no. She certainly understood it, as I can get reinforced in a different way and I'll touch this buoy and I'll get reinforced, and it keeps me from having to do this behavior I don't want to do. But you can't get into the animal's mind. But what we did is the data ended up showing us that her refusal rate for behaviors went way down and she became much, much more reliable because we had given her this option. You have this option to earn reinforcement other than the cued behavior. You can do the cued behavior or you can touch the buoy. You'll get reinforced either way.
Michael Shikashio:Ken, I will say that I am definitely somebody that was very confused by this concept when I first started learning it. Because, as trainers, when you think about when you first start training, you think about the errors you make. So we're teaching a dog to station or set, stay or something like that, the dog breaks the stay and oh, now we did something wrong as a trainer, we made an error in our training plan, and so you don't think about, okay, we should give this dog the opportunity to have that choice, especially when it comes to something like husbandry or handling type of care, where the dog has the option to opt out, which then you know. You don't think about that, though when you're starting out, you're like, oh no, they broke the stain, now we're not going to be able to trim the nail or, you know, clean their ear, and where I finally figured it out, I'm like, yes, we actually want to do that to reduce the frustration, to give the learner that choice and control, so we don't see aggression issues pop up later on.
Ken Ramirez:And I think the way that we came up with this idea of touching the buoy was as we watched the whale who did perfectly for me and for two of the other trainers on our staff. We said why is she doing better? And of course, the first reaction is she likes you better, you're her favorite whale. Well, maybe that's true, but why? There's got to be a reason that she's willing to do these difficult behaviors for us. And as we watched video and watched the training, we realized you know what it is is when she's feeling a little hesitant and doesn't want to perform. We see that, we recognize that and we change our plan. We do it a little different way. We move to another location, we bring up something, a different prop, we get a different veterinarian or person who's playing the veterinarian to come up and we adapt to what we saw. And what we saw was that the younger trainers weren't doing that. They were just being very no, you have to give me your tail. And we realized that we knew how.
Ken Ramirez:So when people ask me because of this procedure, do I think everybody should train a no behavior, my answer is no, I don't think it's necessary. I think if you have a really experienced staff person who knows how to read the animal's body language. You're already allowing your animal to say no. They're just saying no in different ways and you're adapting to it and moving on, and so I don't think it's necessary. Where it becomes helpful is when you have young staff or people who don't know how to read body language. That gives you an avenue to go.
Ken Ramirez:But I also suggest to people people often ask me all the time about wanting to train it and I always tell people to be cautious, because one of the first times that someone decided to go train it without my tutelage, they just saw me do a presentation. They went back and they came back to me and said you know, I saw your presentation. I thought this makes so much sense and I taught it to my horse. And she says she came back and said all my horse will do is touch the buoy all the time. I can't get my horse to do anything else.
Ken Ramirez:And so I started asking questions. I said do you remember I put a warning in that presentation saying I wouldn't suggest that everybody try this? And I said I am willing to bet that, although I know you're a very positive person that I bet there's a lot of aversives in your horse's life, and she said I don't think so. But as we talked about it, I started pointing out well, the horse probably perceives that as an aversive. Is that as an aversive? And so what's happening is you're giving your animal choice. That's great, but what it's showing you is that most of the other choices to perform behaviors that you want are stuff that the horse feels is aversive, that they're not enjoying that activity, and so for them, they're perfectly happy to touch the buoy and get a treat every single time, because you didn't make the rest of the things that they were doing enjoyable to begin with, and so that was the problem.
Michael Shikashio:That brings us to another good topic to talk about is when aversives and positive reinforcers are mixed into a training plan. But I want to take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors and we'll be right back, which is an additional format to this podcast where I walk you through a variety of aggression issues. Some of the topics already in the episode library that you would receive immediate access to include territorial aggression, emotions and aggression, dog-to-dog resource guarding, dogs that bite when being pet or handled, aggression on leash and a bunch more. These are solo shows where I take you step-by-step on how to work with each of these types of aggression. You'll find a little subscribe button on Apple Podcasts where the bitey end of the dog is listed, or a link in the show notes to subscribe using Supercast. Your support of the show is very much appreciated and don't forget to join me for the fifth annual Aggression and Dogs Conference, either in person or online from Scottsdale, arizona, from October 11th to 13th 2024. This year's lineup includes many incredible speakers, including Dr Clive Wynn, veronica Poutel and Gina Fares, sarah Rodriguez and Jess Arachi, emma Parsons, sarah Colnice, dr Kelly Moffitt, sam Freeman, dr Amy Cook and many more. Head on over to AggressiveDogcom and click on the conference tab to learn more about the exciting agenda on everything from advanced concepts in dog body language to working with aggression in shelter environments to genetic influences on behavior behavior. Dr Amy Cook is also going to be bringing her entertaining and energetic personality to the grand reception and cocktail party, which, by the way, will be live streamed as well as in person, and, as usual, you'll find a wonderful, kind, caring and supportive community at the conference, both in person and online, and I wanted to take a moment to thank one of our sponsors for the conference.
Michael Shikashio:As a family of world-class trainers, fenzi Dog Sports Academy provides expert and accessible instruction for competitive dog sports using the most progressive training methods and positive reinforcement techniques. Through their online platform, students are able to access professional dog training, no matter your location or pup's skill level are able to access professional dog training no matter your location or pup's skill level. Fdsa believes the bond between dog and human is a proud and life-changing partnership, and they will work with you to develop a respectful and kind relationship with your furry best friend. Check out FDSA at FENZI dogsportsacademycom. All right, we're back here with Ken Ramirez and we've been talking about a lot of different species, a lot of different training, and we were just talking about a beluga whale.
Michael Shikashio:That Project no, I guess we'll call it was taught to make other choices in certain scenarios. But you know, we often hear this argument that we really can't get 100% reliability, and even that's a debatable term, right. So 100% reliability of a behavior, or I'm putting up air quotes proofing a behavior without the use of reversives we hear that argument quite often, so I'd love to get your take on that. Maybe you can even weave into talking about some of the work you do with predation or snake avoidance, training and things like that where reliability really does matter. Yes, absolutely.
Ken Ramirez:I think it's a common belief. I run into it all the time. I do a lot of work with professional working dogs and for a lot of organizations that really want to move to the use of positive reinforcement, they still hold on to the fact that to maintain discipline, to keep their animals on task, that to maintain discipline to keep their animals on task, to not get their animals distracted by various distractions in life, that those are places that they have to maintain the ability to apply an aversive, to punish, to correct the unwanted behavior of going off and chasing a squirrel or getting off task. And I certainly understand that desire getting off task and I certainly understand that desire. You know, when you have a guide dog who is being guiding a blind person, you do not want that animal to think that they can just go chase a squirrel and pull the blind handler behind them. You need that dog to be reliable. And what I will say is that for some of the guide dog organizations who transitioned to positive reinforcement, what they did is they divided up all the different tasks that they had to do with their dogs and were able to train most of them using positive reinforcement, and they reserved these correction situations for the one time that they would use aversive tools until they figured out how to go about doing it with good reliability, and the best way that I can describe it is thinking about me as a human learner and my desire to work.
Ken Ramirez:If you have ever managed employees or have ever had a job yourself, you're always hoping that your employees will perform 100% all the time, but there are days that we get sick, there are days that we can't work, there are days that we make mistakes, and I look at various bosses I have had in my career, notable, highly aversive bosses, who their first reaction was to yell, to criticize, to demean you, to tell you you were an idiot, to tell you you were a fool, to tell you that you didn't know how to do your job, and I worked well under that condition. So I grew up with a mom who was really strict, so I understood that kind of working environment, and I just accepted it as the way that it was, and if you made a mistake, you're going to get in trouble, and you're going to get punished, and you're going to get criticized, and et cetera. And I also, though and one of my favorite bosses was a boss that I had, who I worked with for over 20 years, who was a very positive boss. I remember the very first Christmas that I worked with him. I was one of his direct reports. He gave everybody on his team a book and it was called the Power of yes.
Ken Ramirez:And I thought to myself I'm going to like this guy because he was very, very positive, he believed in his team and he listened to his team and in my 20 years of watching him lead our organization as an exceptional leader and see us achieve amazing things, I only recall him being angry with someone once. One time in 20 years I saw him get angry and boy, did it make an impression. It did. This is a guy who you never saw angry or never get upset. But then I thought why is it that his team and I was a member of his team performed at such an exceptionally high rate? And I thought about well, I'll ask myself. I'll say why do I work so hard for this guy? And it isn't because I was afraid of making a mistake, because he'd never criticized, he'd never punished me.
Ken Ramirez:Yet I realized that I worked hard for those other people because I knew that if I didn't, I'd have my hand slapped, I'd be called an idiot, I'd be ridiculed and cajoled and made to feel foolish. It got to the point that I actually had no fear of being fired. While he had the right to fire me, it never occurred to me that I might get fired. It never occurred to me that I might get in trouble. Then I thought, well then, why do I work so hard? And I thought, well, I work hard one because I'm paid. But I always got paid in all those other jobs. What else was different? I thought, well, I believe in the mission of our organization. I like my boss, I like my coworkers, I like the animals. And before I was done, I had this list of 20 or 30 things that were all positively reinforcing things.
Ken Ramirez:And when every single thing in your world is approached positively, you end up wanting to do a good job, you end up working harder, you end up putting in extra hours, you end up going above and beyond, and never once was a punisher put in there or used, because the positive reinforcement was coming at you from so many directions that you wanted to do the job well. And that's an analogy that I felt like almost everybody can understand. Now some people may not be able to understand because they may never ever had a positive boss, but hopefully there are positive bosses out there and you find that there are still people working hard and doing well. But it's because the reinforcement is so palpable and so good that it causes you to really work hard. And that actual analogy really helped me in a lot of the work that I've done in law enforcement and when I've worked with law enforcement.
Ken Ramirez:Law enforcement has done a great job at trying to move the needle to using positive reinforcement effectively and more often, but they still understandably felt the need to maintain some aversive tools to maintain certain amount of control. You know you have a dog, a potentially dangerous dog, in a crowded situation. You want to make sure that that dog is not going to get out of control, and so they still continue to want to use some aversive tools. But one of the reasons that I was brought in is I wasn't there to teach them how to better train the tasks they needed. They knew how to train those tasks. Well, I was brought in to say show us how we can switch to positive reinforcement when we're dealing with distractions, and so that became one of the big things and that's you mentioned snake avoidance training.
Ken Ramirez:I do a lot of snake avoidance training and where people fall short is when they're dealing with a squirrel running by or something and the argument is there is nothing in this world more reinforcing to my dog than that squirrel. And I end up showing them that there can be. And it isn't that you are replacing the power of the squirrel, you're making the power of the reinforcement so strong and so palpable that they'll worry about the squirrel later. It's not that there weren't lots of temptations when I worked with a positive reinforcement boss that might cause me to oh, I'm going to skip work today because the football game is on during a workday and I want to go to see the football game. I'm going to skip work to go do that to see the game another time. But the reality was that there was so much reinforcement and so many things happening within the workplace that that took priority in my mind.
Ken Ramirez:And you help a dog learn that, as much as you'd like to bark and chase after that snake, you want to teach them that. No, you want to stay paying attention to what I've taught you to do and I'll give you the opportunity to chase things at other times I'll give you the opportunity to do those chasing games and those opportunities to have fun playing in the forest at other times, but when you smell a snake or see a snake, your job is to run fast the other direction and come back to me where I can keep you safe. And what we really did was we worked with the use of those positive reinforcement tools, but what we did was the. We worked with the use of those positive reinforcement tools, but what we did was the mistake that I think a lot of people make when dealing with distractions is they put too high a level of a distraction in front of the dog too quickly and it hasn't learned to ignore a distraction.
Ken Ramirez:So what I do is I start with very, very low level distractions and let the dog learn that distractions are irrelevant. I should pay attention to my trainer because my trainer will keep me safe. My trainer has the best reinforcers, my trainer knows what's going on and we build up those distractions to a point that after a while, they learn to shut them out and focus on the task at hand, and they become very, very good at it. And focus on the task at hand and they become very, very good at it and we don't end up having to apply a punisher or an aversive tool at all if you take the time to train it the right way. But I totally get it.
Ken Ramirez:When I come in to work with law enforcement or work with anybody who's always used aversive tools, my first goal is not to criticize or chastise them at all.
Ken Ramirez:I would say I totally get it.
Ken Ramirez:I understand exactly why you're using these tools, and let me just see if I can show you a technique that will replace those tools with something else and keep using those tools as long as you need to, until you find that these new techniques that I'm showing you win over and you don't need to use them, that these new techniques that I'm showing you win over and you don't need to use them.
Ken Ramirez:And so, rather than ban those tools, what I will do is let me just keep showing you and if you feel you need to use the tool, you use it, and what you'll find is, as their dog becomes more and more and more reliable, they're finding themselves using those tools less and less and less until eventually they reach a point where they go. I haven't used that aversive tool in a whole week. I haven't used it in a whole month and they still sometimes have the tool at hand because it's kind of what they know. But they realize that as they've learned to use their positive reinforcement more effectively, they have been successful in real-world environments at keeping their dogs focused, and the tool, the aversive tools, have just become less and less necessary until eventually they've been able to fade them out.
Michael Shikashio:That's such a great analogy to the one you're talking about your boss and your work experience, because there's so many takeaways from that, if you're reading in between the lines as well. So, of course, your boss is going to have control of the environment, much more so than anybody else. So they're setting the stage, just like we are as trainers, for the learner, but you also have the relationship, the history, reinforcement. It's just. There's so many takeaways. I really love that and it also reveals everything you've been talking about. Reveals such an important skill we can have is the critical thought process we put behind our training plans and really thinking through problem solving and thinking these things through, because if anybody's going to be like telling you you know, no, you need aversives to get this behavior, you're the guy that's like. You know here, hold my beer, let me show you how it's done because of that critical thought process, you know.
Michael Shikashio:It brings me to another case you had talked about. It was a few years back. I remember seeing you at a conference You're talking about. Since we are an aggression podcast, we'll dive into that case, but a history of dog-dog aggression or a pretty severe case from what I recall, and the critical thought process in sense of we might have different expectations depending on who wants certain outcomes for the dogs, and you've navigated. We might have different expectations depending on who wants certain outcomes for the dogs, right, and you've navigated those conversations beautifully.
Ken Ramirez:You've indicated that throughout this episode, but tell us more about that case and sort of what the outcome was there, sure, so that was a fascinating case and it was one of those cases that I never would have expected to be dealing with such a severe aggression situation dealing with such a severe aggression situation. But when I was at the aquarium I frequently through 30 years of being there I often used pet dogs as vehicles to help teach lessons. One, because so many of our public had dogs. Secondly, so many of the animals that we had at the aquarium were rescues. We rescued our sea lions, we rescued our otters. And secondly, so many of the animals that we had at the aquarium were rescues. We rescued our sea lions, we rescued our otters. Our animals were all rescue animals that we were taking care of and providing a home for. And so we often used dogs as a great example that we would rescue dogs from our local shelters and we would show them that these dogs that had been given away and thought of as untrainable were highly trainable and were really, really good. And so it helped us make a better connection to training. It helped us make a better connection to rescues. And so over the years I had four different times when we brought dogs to live at the aquarium. We took care of them, we put them in some kind of a presentation or used them for certain types of programming.
Ken Ramirez:And word had gotten out into the rescue community in Chicago that we were getting ready to adopt a number of new dogs and the head of Safe Humane Chicago, one of the organizations that was working with some pretty aggressive dogs, was dealing with a lot of political fallout from the fighting dog world. Fighting dogs were being rescued and there was a group of people feeling that fighting dogs should all just be euthanized Every single one of them doesn't matter what status they are, just euthanize them all. And on the other end of the spectrum were a lot of people saying no, no dog should ever be euthanized and these dogs can be rehabilitated. And the head at the time of Safe Humane Chicago had been one of my previous students For 20 years in the Chicago area at Western Illinois University, which was not in Chicago, but they had a satellite campus in Chicago. I taught a graduate course on animal training and the head of Safe Humane had taken my course, like 15 years earlier, and she remembered a protocol that I taught people about the way we took highly charged and aggressive animals. Whether it's a tiger or a lion or a bear doesn't matter.
Ken Ramirez:You bring them into your zoo and you need to teach them how to get along. You don't want them to come in and kill each other. They're really aggressive animals. How do you introduce them to each other and keep them safe and not allow them to hurt each other? And so there was an introduction protocol that we used, where we used a barrier the fence and the gate, and animals would be on opposite sides of a gate, and that in itself can lead to certain kinds of barrier, frustration and things of that nature. But there's no way for the animals to hurt each other because they have this barrier between them, and I would take the idea of teaching them to get along. You're on one side of the barrier, I'm on the other side of the barrier, our trainer comes in and feeds us. Together. We get used to seeing each other. We're given a tool like a target, and we both end up touching the target. But we're on opposite sides of a fence and we basically teach the animals how to accept the other animal in our area. There's a barrier there that prevents us from lashing out. We can still growl or bark or posture, vocalize, we can do lots of things, but there's protection and as the animals learn that the protection is solid and safe and that we are asking them to do behaviors together, you begin to realize that the animals learn that reinforcement is contingent on allowing the other animal to be present. Reinforcement is contingent on the other animal being right there. Now those animals might wish they could bark and bite and hurt each other, but after a while they learn that they can't and they just learn to focus on their trainer and focus on the task at hand. And then, once that's good, we teach them to do things together, to do cooperative behaviors together, while still being protected, until eventually we mix the animals together and with a lot of precautions and a lot of important safety techniques in place. Should it not work, we would introduce the animals gradually over time.
Ken Ramirez:And they asked us if we would be willing to participate in this project and my original response was no. I have my pick of any shelter dog in the chicagoland area and you want me to take a fighting dog, a highly aggressive, assertive dog, a highly reactive dog, and you want me to bring them all together. Why would I do that? I don't need to do that, I and so, and when they asked me to do it. I said said why? They said well, we want you to use this aggression treatment protocol that you taught us in your course. And I said I don't teach an aggression treatment protocol in the course.
Ken Ramirez:And she goes yes, yes, you did, you taught us this. And I said what protocol? And she explained how I would introduce animals on other sides of the fence and teach them to be together. And I said oh, that's not an aggression treatment protocol, that's an animal introduction protocol. And she goes well, what's the difference? They were aggressive animals and they learned to live together. I said, yes, but we weren't directly treating the aggression, we were simply teaching the animals that they needed to learn to live together. It doesn't mean they may not still want to kill each other, they've just learned not to and learned to redirect their behavior in another way, and that that will earn them reinforcement. And she says yes, but the aggression went away. And I said it went away, but it isn't cured, it isn't gone from their repertoire. They've just been taught a replacement behavior that when in these conditions, this is the way we behave. And I said I refuse to call it an aggression treatment protocol because that's not what it is. It just gets the aggression under control so that we can introduce them to each other.
Ken Ramirez:And this project ended up being a really beneficial project for the area, for the Chicagoland area, because it helped the two sides that were on opposite sides of what to do with fighting dogs come together, because the people that wanted all dogs to no dog to ever be euthanized were able to say see, they were able to teach these dogs to live together. But they were also able to recognize that it took us a long time, it took a lot of effort, and maybe not every dog can we put those kind of resources into, and so it caused the two sides to start working together. But it was a really great example of working with aggressive dogs and using a technique that helps teach them how to get along. And I remember five months into the project our dogs could all these dogs that would have killed each other at the beginning could be allowed to play together. But we had a really good example of one of the really highly reactive dogs and the fighting dog who, when they would be in a play session together where they would play the highly aggressive dog, the fighting dog would lick his lips and move away from the reactive dog dog. The fighting dog would lick his lips and move away from the reactive dog and the reactive dog had learned to play and would come over to the aggressive dog and the dog would show me all sorts of signs that he was uncomfortable, would move away and didn't want to be with the dog, and I use that as an example of see, this is a dog that's not liking the situation he's in. He's just learned not to be aggressive.
Ken Ramirez:But with one of the other aggressive dogs that we had, she learned really to like being with the other dogs and they learned to live together.
Ken Ramirez:But it just took time. But we had managed the aggression, taught them how to live together and managed to have results where we ended up introducing lots of other dogs and all of these dogs that were originally all had been destined to be euthanized and after our study was over, we were the original plan. They, the plan from the Safe Humane was that we were going to bring them back and they would be euthanized. They didn't need to be euthanized. They were rehomed and have lived. Two of them are two of the dogs. Three of the dogs that were a part of the program are still alive and doing really, really well in various homes around the country, and so we were able to successfully get there through an animal introduction protocol that really focused on redirecting their aggression, teaching them alternative behaviors, teaching them how to behave in those situations, but keeping them safe, and it's a really short explanation of what was a very complex three-year project.
Michael Shikashio:And positive reinforcement-based.
Ken Ramirez:Positive reinforcement-based entirely yes.
Michael Shikashio:Yes, there's an example of Ken saying hold my beer.
Michael Shikashio:Because again you hear these arguments that you have to use aversives in this kind of case. Only the most dangerous dogs are going to respond to aversives and all these arguments that are now sort of a moot point. We hear about all these amazing stories, which kind of leads me to let's wrap up with one more fun question. And is there a species that you haven't trained yet? I know you've trained many dozens, if not hundreds. Now Is there one you haven't trained that you would like to work with?
Ken Ramirez:You know that's it's a great question because people often will ask me that question. And you know, prior to 2015, in 2015, I did this really remarkable butterfly training project. But I want to use that as an example that prior to 2015, if someone had said what's a species of animal you'd like to work with that you've never worked with before, it would have never occurred to me to say butterflies. I would have never thought about butterflies as an animal that I would ever think of, or me to say butterflies. I would have never thought about butterflies as an animal that I would ever think of or be involved with training. But I ended up becoming involved in this project and ended up training thousands and thousands of butterflies to fly on cue. And it was a fascinating project that we did for a botanical garden to help for a big gala performance, and the garden's theme that year was symbiosis and the way different animals and plants live together and help each other out. But we ended up training the butterflies on three separate queues, three different groups of butterflies, to fly across this huge soccer stadium on cue. I would have never in my wildest dreams ever thought to say butterflies, but yet it was an animal that was presented to me and what I appreciate is I think back on that project is I remember when they asked me if I was interested in doing this project, I said, sure I'd love to do the project. And after hanging up the phone I remember going oh my God, crap, crap, crap. I don't know anything about butterflies. I don't know the first thing about training them, but the reality was I am confident in my training skills and I knew that if the botanical garden was going to supply me with a couple of butterfly biologists, that I could ask those biologists everything I needed to know about what they eat and the way they perceive the world and we could figure out a way to train them. And we did. But it leads me to the fact that I don't know what I would like to train until I have it in front of me, because sometimes it would have never occurred to me to say butterflies.
Ken Ramirez:I think about a lot of the animals that I've worked with, and I've worked with a wide range. I've trained spiders, I've trained snakes, I've trained a variety of reptiles, many species of birds, certainly lots of mammals. I even did an invertebrate project with some jellyfish in which we were training them to respond to light cues, and most of the most unique ones, like butterflies or jellyfish, or which are actually better called sea jellies, they are not the types of animals that I would have ever said what's an animal you'd like to train someday? It would never have occurred to me to suggest them until that it was put in front of me and said hey, this would be a really helpful project. Do you think we could train it? So I am constantly learning from every species that I work with, anything that I've really felt like I really want to train. I've usually had the opportunity to train, but the reality is there's probably lots and lots of species that are still on the horizon that I might get to train in the future. I just don't know what those will be.
Michael Shikashio:Ken, this has been amazing and I'm sure the listeners will agree. What a fascinating episode. Where can people find you? What do you have going on for this year's project?
Ken Ramirez:Well, I am the chief training officer for Karen Pryor Clicker Training and so we have lots of projects going on. I have a. I'm right now I'm here in Washington State where I have a place called the Ranch. It's part of the Karen Pryor National Training Center and during the nice weather times of the year, from April through October, I conduct courses here at the Ranch. If people go to the Karen Pryor Clicker Training website that's clickertrainingcom, you can click on the little bar that says the ranch and it'll tell you all about our courses and the various opportunities to come out here, spend a week with us, learn about training and work with our animals. We have donkeys and alpacas and goats that give people an opportunity to work with a variety of species and hone their training skills. I also encourage people that are interested in learning about training.
Ken Ramirez:Karen Pryor Clicker Training has a wide variety of courses that we offer. If you go to karenpryoracademycom, we have a variety of on-demand courses and live courses that we train and then, of course, every year at the beginning of the year, we have Clicker Expo. We usually have a couple of Clicker Expos, which are a big training conference. You, of course, are a speaker, have been a speaker at Clicker Expo the last couple of years. I know in 2025, we'll have Clicker Expo opportunities coming up and they're just fun opportunities to train.
Ken Ramirez:And then, personally, I'm still going to be doing my elephant training project. I have a couple other conservation projects that I'm working on, but people can't usually find me there. I'm in secret in the wilds of Zambia as we do this project, but you can find me, as I said, at Karen Pryor Clicker Training and find out about all the different things that I'm doing there. You can follow me online on Instagram. I don't post every day, but when I have interesting things going on, I usually post a lot about where I am and the cool things that I'm doing, so I encourage people to do that as well. Wonderful.
Michael Shikashio:Ken, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time and I hope to see you again in the future.
Ken Ramirez:Well, thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate being here and I appreciate all the great work you do in helping people learn about training and about the challenge of working with aggressive dogs.
Michael Shikashio:It was an absolute pleasure chatting with Ken and I hope to catch up with him soon on his travels. I think there's just so much we can learn from work with other species and the knowledge and experience of someone who has devoted his life and career to helping animals and their people. And don't forget to head on over to AggressiveDogcom for more information about helping dogs with aggression, From the Aggression and Dogs Master Course to webinars from world-renowned experts and even an annual conference. We have options for both pet pros and pet owners to learn more about aggression and dogs. We also have the Help for Dogs with Aggression bonus episodes that you can subscribe to. These are solo shows where I walk you through how to work with a variety of types of aggression, such as resource guarding, dog-to-dog aggression, territorial aggression, fear-based aggression and much, much more. You can find a link to subscribe in the show notes or by hitting the subscribe button if you're listening in on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening and, as always, stay well, my friends.
Ken Ramirez:Oh my God, crap, crap, crap. I don't know anything about butterflies.
Speaker 5:Hey there, this is John LaSalla. I'm the guy who edits this podcast, and Mike is such a swell guy that he said it'd be okay if I popped in at the end here to share something with you. See, I've been working on this four-episode podcast series with CPDT dog trainer and anthrozoologist Marika Bell, called Animals of the Maui Wildfires. Remember the fires out in Hawaii last summer? This is what it's about, but it focuses on all the dogs and cats and pigs and other animals impacted by those fires, particularly on the struggle that Maui Humane Society had rescuing and retrieving them in the wake of the disaster. So have a listen to this little trailer we produced and check out the series. I believe the first episode should be out by now.
Speaker 6:And she's not paying attention. But I'm paying attention and I see the rearview mirror.
Speaker 7:I see the black clouds of smoke and it's coming their direction. In that moment, fear struck me.
Speaker 6:In August 2023, high winds and dry conditions set the stage for disaster on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and on August 7th, a wildfire suddenly erupted and swept through Lahaina, on Maui's western shore. You could feel the heat off of the metal or the rock walls or the road, everything around you. You know, I thought my truck tires were going to melt and I was going to be stuck there and I was going to be on foot. I'm Marika Bell, cpdt, dog trainer, anthrozoologist and an animal myself. The Deal with Animals is a podcast about the connection and interaction between humans and other animals. However, this series is going to be something more.
Speaker 7:Like I honestly still have a lot of survivor's guilt and I have remorse for seeing some of the things that I saw out there that I didn't intend to see.
Speaker 4:I should have just left the door open. I could have. I should have done this, but disasters are very complicated.
Speaker 6:Two months after the island changing wildfires, my family and I visited Maui, so of course, I reached out to Maui Humane Society and asked if we could talk. This podcast series is a result of that conversation, which led to four other conversations with staff of Maui Humane Society.
Speaker 3:I felt it was my job to listen. I felt that if I was going to be the person that was going to be communicating the needs of the organization, that I needed to be the person that was going to be communicating the needs of the organization, that I needed to communicate the hardship that people were feeling inside of that.
Speaker 6:After that first conversation I knew this was a bigger story than I could tell in one hour. It needed more context, it needed more voices and it needed to have a purpose.
Speaker 7:And even though we are an organization, like really each department is just made up of one or two people, or five people at the most, like serving our whole island.
Speaker 4:Serendipity, intuition, everything just came into play where the more I was involved the more I felt called to stay.
Speaker 6:We're releasing this trailer two months before the first anniversary of those same wildfires in Lahaina and surrounding areas, and over the next two months, the Deal with Animals will be running a fundraiser to benefit Maui Humane Society and all the work they do and have done for the animal community of Hawaii. Our goal is to raise $10,000 by August 8th, exactly one year after the wildfires. By August 8th, exactly one year after the wildfires, To donate to this fundraiser. We have a special link on our homepage that will take you straight to Maui Humane Society's donation page, set up just for this fundraiser. So, yes, all of your money will be going straight to MHS. Follow the Deal with Animals now wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss a single episode. Join me as we ask the question what's the deal with the animals of the Maui wildfires?
Speaker 7:The fire burnt so hot that it even melted asphalt and we could see paw prints all over the place.
Speaker 6:These animals went through hell. Subscribe and donate at thedealwithanimalscom.