Animal Training Class: 10 day challenge

Why are the important behaviors taking so long?

It happened again, didn’t it. You had a great plan for training more often and more consistently, but you’re still having problems getting behaviors completed.

I’ve been there with you. I could train a solid target, turns were easy, I even trained this guy how to wave.

The fun stuff was easy and I typically was able to train it quickly…..but there were important behaviors that weren’t getting completed.

Hoof trims on our okapi
Laser therapy for our old man otter
Physical therapy for our snow leopard with swimmers syndrome
Voluntary pill behavior for our tigers
Blood draw behavior on our aging serval
Voluntary vaccines for our binturong
Sub Q fluid administration for a gereatric caracal
Insulin injection behavior for a mandrill

That was my list.

What’s yours?

Do you wish you were training more complex or more important behaviors more often?

What behaviors would benefit your animals the most?

Would you train something that could change your animal’s life for the better?

So why isn’t it happening for you?

I was just like you. I loved training, I wanted the best for my animals. But I overextended myself and set unattainable goals and often found that it took me forever to train the important stuff, or worse I abandoned those behaviors and never got them done.

My coworker was completing injection behaviors, blood draws, and voluntary x-ray behaviors and I was avoiding anything complex. It hurt, I didn’t feel like I was serving the animals in my care the way they needed.

You see, I had just started in my new role as Assistant Curator at a new facility. I was supposed to be the expert (or so I thought), I was supposed to be able to lead the team to new heights and all I felt confident enough to train was a simple target behavior on a newly acquired porcupine. Maybe I needed to take an animal training class?

The problem was my confidence. It turned out I didn’t have the faith in myself and in my new role to rise to the occasion. I would watch my coworker knock these behaviors out of the park and that would just make it worse.

That’s when it clicked. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and start paying attention to what she was doing that I wasn’t!

I’ll tell you what I discovered.

Before that, read this post about the monotony of maintenance!

Confidence

First, I watched her session closely. I watched her bridge timing, where she had her hand when she wasn’t reinforcing. I watched her cues, I watched what she didn’t when an animal made a mistake.

Second, I filmed myself and my training sessions and I compared notes.

That’s when I saw it! The basics that I had been executing for so often were pretty sloppy.

So I went back to kindergarten and focused on my basics. Guess what? It worked!

The irony that my overconfidence in the basics had resulted in my lack of confidence in complex behaviors. It wasn’t my fault. It’s because the basics hadn’t been a focus of mine for years, no wonder I was struggling.

The problem with the industry is that often we don’t even learn the basics well. I learned my basics at Moorpark college in a classroom and then mostly applied them unsupervised in the real world with no one watching.

We work independently so often in this industry. We don’t have someone giving us the tiny tweaks and small amounts of feedback that we need to really hone our skills and become masters.

Once I realized that my basics were what was holding my back I completed my first important behavior!

Sleepy time little tiger

So once I fine tuned my basics I was able to complete the first “important” behavior on my own.

I trained an injection behavior on a tiger with inflammatory bowel disease. This wasn’t a normal injection behavior because this tiger’s health caused him to have an aversion to food at times. It required all my basics to be flawless and my consistency to be reliable but it also required problem solving.

I was able to train this behavior in just under one month and completed a successful knockdown in order for him to have an ultrasound.

I felt so proud of my accomplishment and glad that I was able to reduce stress and avoid having to pole inject or dart him for his procedure. His recovery was quicker and he lined up the next day for another injection!

I went on to train sub q injections, voluntary scale and crate behaviors, eye exams, voluntary x-ray behaviors, and more. I also didn’t stop training the fun stuff like a binturong high five!

But it’s not just me!

Others have brushed up on their mechanics and basics skills and training alligator snapping turtles to target, aggressive camels to be calm, rhino ultrasounds, and giraffe’s to walk in to a chute.

Remember when I talked about how it was really my confidence that was the challenge?

Ever heard the phrase “repetitions build confidence”?

Well it’s true the thing I didn’t expect to find was that focusing on the basics really allowed me to build my confidence and grow as a trainer in ways I didn’t feel like were possible.

And it built up my animals’ confidence as well!

And that’s why I created the Basics of Training 10 Day Challenge. I’m going to tell you about the course and how it’s helped others.

10 days to unlock you training potential

I created the Basics of Training 10 day challenges to help build trainer’s confidence and also help our animals become more resilient.

I took me almost a year to create. Hours of editing. Staring at your own face and listening to your own voice over and over and over again is incredibly painful.

The beta group tested the course and I went back and made edits and small changes to improve the content and the delivery but it was totally worth it.

It makes training complex behaviors SO much easier. What used to take me 6 months to a year to train I can not complete in 1 month or less.

Understand the bridge and how it works so your communication is crystal clear to your animal.

Figure out what reinforcement your animal prefers to you can make the most of what you offer to them.

Learn how to split your approximations as small as they can go so you can be prepared for anything your animal throws at you.

But don’t just take my word for it.

But before you get started, let me ask you a question…

Would you like to get access to the Basics of Training challenge? For less than the cost of two Animals Anonymous shirts, you can get access to everything inside of this 10 day course.

Now, while it will be impossible to show you ALL of the benefits of the 10 day challenge, I want to show you some of things that you’ll experience as soon as you’re on the inside.

You’ll get mentor check-ins from me and my team, a support Facebook group of likeminded trainers, and the step by step guide to check your basics and build your confidence.

The cost of the Basics of Training 10 day challenge should be $349, because normally you’d need multiple textbooks and a training consultant to get the same content.

If all this course did was help you communicate more clearly with your animals would it be worth $349?

If all this course did was save you from wasting time training ineffectively would it be worth $349?

I’m not going to charge you $349. I’m only going to charge you $50. I will also going to take all the risk and I’m going to give you the I’m poor keeper guarantee. But you have to act now because as more students enroll in the course the hands-on nature of my support won’t be available for long.

Just imagine what it will feel like to complete that behavior that’s been haunting you for years? Imagine what it would be like to do a blood draw on your animal and then have them excited to see you and start another session the next day.

So click here and you’ll be taken to our secure checkout page. After you put in your credit card information there will be no waiting. You’ll get your first day’s content right away!

For those of you who are already signing up, here’s what is going to happen next. You’ll get your welcome email, and the link to join our Facebook community! Make sure to introduce yourself and share what you’re most excited to learn.

Still not sure?

Watch this and get pumped!

https://youtu.be/qE3I7e-iEyI