Show Notes
In this pilot episode of Precision Animal Training, Kirsten Kraljevic introduces animal training legend Dr. Bob Bailey, sharing stories from his childhood curiosity with ants to pioneering dolphin training for the U.S. Navy. The conversation dives deep into the science of behavior change, the value of precise observation, and the origins of the famous Chicken Workshops. Dr. Bob Bailey reflects on his unconventional journey, influential mentors, and the importance of trainers focusing on their own behavior to inspire animal learning. Listeners will discover why data, curiosity, and adaptability are key to both animal and human achievement. This episode is packed with wisdom, anecdotes, and actionable advice for aspiring trainers and anyone interested in the art of behavior change. Thanks so much for tuning in to Precision Animal Training! If you enjoyed hearing Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey share incredible stories and insights about animal training, make sure you follow and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Want to dive deeper into precision animal training and learn more about Kirsten's legendary Chicken Workshops? Head over to kirstenschickenworkshops.com for workshop details, resources, and more ways to connect. Don’t miss the next episode: hit subscribe, and join us on the journey to becoming a better trainer, observer, and lifelong learner!
3 Key Takeaways
1. The Power of Observation in Animal Training: Kirsten Kraljevic highlights that exceptional observation skills are fundamental to successful animal training. She discusses how being quiet, observant, and not interfering allows trainers to learn an animal's behavior, which then empowers the next steps in shaping behavior. 2. Stimulus Control and Changing Behavior: Throughout the episode, both Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey emphasize the concept of stimulus control—essentially, how trainers can guide animal behavior by creating environments where animals are motivated to change. Dr. Bob Bailey's stories showcase how understanding and controlling one's own actions as a trainer is crucial for achieving desired outcomes. 3. Focus on Personal Development as a Trainer: Dr. Bob Bailey advises future animal trainers to prioritize self-awareness and continual personal improvement. He encourages trainers to reflect on their behavior and timing and to ask the right questions, reinforcing that changing one's own behavior is often the first step towards helping animals learn and succeed.
Quick Lessons From The Episode
Here are the wrap-up lessons that Kirsten wanted listeners to remember from this episode:
1. Be Curious: She emphasizes curiosity and shares how it was curiosity that drove Dr. Bob Bailey from playing with ants as a child to studying animal behavior at a deeper level. 2. Value Observational Skills: Kirsten Kraljevic points out the importance of observing before interfering, highlighting that watching and collecting data are essential skills for animal training (and beyond). 3. Learn How to Change Behavior. Starting With Your Own: She stresses that the foundation of Precision Animal Training is realizing the only behavior you can truly change is your own, which is a principle that applies to animal trainers, CEOs, and anyone wanting to improve relationships or leadership. 4. Collect Data: She notes the importance of data collection in understanding and influencing animal behavior, as illustrated by Dr. Bob Bailey's fieldwork. 5. Diversify Your Interests: The episode promotes the idea that broad interests (from science to hands-on skills, even blowgun proficiency!) can lead to unexpected opportunities. 6. Empower the Next Generation: Kirsten Kraljevic urges the audience to learn from Dr. Bob Bailey's experiences and apply these insights so the next generation can go further. 7. Keep Learning: She encourages education and continued learning, connecting it back to the winding path that led Dr. Bob Bailey to his unique career. These less
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Kirsten has a way of describing how modern dog training grew up, and it comes in three phases. First the scientific one, when the Brelands' and Baileys' work came through the chicken workshops and the field found out there was a science underneath it. Then the professional one, when it turned out that loving animals is not a business plan. And now the ethical one. Don Hanson has lived all three of them, and because he is a prolific writer, he wrote them down while they were happening. Thirty years of this field's history exists in his archive whether the field asked for it or not.
Mike Wood interviewed Shelley for a job in the Florida Keys on a glass bottom boat. They were both married to other people. Years later, both divorced, he hired her again to come to Mexico, and that is where it turned into a marriage. It is also where two trainers with one dolphin enclosure turned into close to thirty facilities in nine countries with more than two thousand employees.
Bob Bailey has been watching this field for sixty or seventy years, and I have been watching it with him, and his verdict is blunt. More dog businesses have failed on the business end than on the dog training end. Veronica Boutelle watched the same thing happen from the other side. She was Director of Behavior and Training at the San Francisco SPCA, where Jean Donaldson's Academy for Dog Trainers ran out of her department, and she would check in with graduates a year later and find them back in the careers they had tried to escape, or picking up part-time work to make rent. Not because they could not train. Because nobody had taught them how to run the thing. So she built it. Veronica and founding partner Gina Phairas launched dogbiz in late 2003 and are coming up on twenty-five years of teaching trainers the part that keeps the lights on. In this conversation Veronica tells Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey how the SF SPCA brought Chicken Camp to San Francisco by selling tickets to local trainers to cover it, how Bob flew out to headline her grand opening with a night of newly declassified government stories and the raven cameras, and how COVID turned a hastily built free six week program called Survive and Thrive into two thousand trainers from around the world and then into Thrive, the group coaching program still running today. She also says the thing most positive reinforcement trainers need to hear about their rates, and it is not comfortable. 3 Key Takeaways 1. You are running three businesses at once, whether you know it or not. Training animals is one skill set. Coaching the humans who live with the animal is a second, and if you do not change the person's behavior nothing you do with the dog sticks. Running the business is a third. Most trainers invest continuing education in the first one only.
After Marian Bailey died, Dr. Bob Bailey was ready to be done. He had promised her on her deathbed that he would keep teaching, and then he got discouraged enough to start looking at other things he could do with his time. Two women talked him out of it. Cheryl Trotter drove up from Houston and Carolyn Clark came down from Canada, and between them they told him they would help and they would not let him quit. Everything that came after, Sweden, Japan, China, and the workshops that built a generation of trainers, happened because those two would not let go of it.
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