Show Notes
In this episode of Precision Animal Training, Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey delve into the evolution of modern animal training, tracing its roots from the Brelands’ pioneering work to its influence on institutions like SeaWorld and military projects. Dr. Bob Bailey shares insights on systematized animal care, the importance of observational skills, and the unique role of chickens in foundational training. The discussion covers innovative training for unpredictable TV commercials and military applications, including clandestine operations with ravens and specialized work with scout and mine-detecting dogs. Both speakers highlight the shift away from harsh punishment towards reinforcement-based methods, the critical role of real-time data analysis, and the enduring influence of these early practices. The episode underscores a culture of creativity, scientific rigor, and humane training standards that still shape animal behavior programs today.
3 Key Takeaways
1. Systematic and Innovative Animal Training Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey highlight how early animal training companies implemented systematic training and animal care, setting a new standard in consistency and reliability. Their methods included starting trainers on chickens and using data-driven approaches to analyze and improve animal performance.
2. Adaptability and Generalization in Training
The discussion emphasizes training animals to generalize their skills to new and unpredictable environments, such as TV commercials, stage performances, and even covert military operations with agencies like the CIA. Dr. Bob Bailey explains the importance of starting in controlled small environments and gradually preparing animals for a wide range of scenarios, focusing on stimulus control and resilience.
3. Humane, Data-Driven Training Techniques Both Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey advocate for positive reinforcement and minimal use of punishment. Their training philosophy centers on setting animals up for success, reducing reliance on harsh methods, and constantly monitoring progress through real-time data and observation. This approach not only produces reliable results but also respects animal welfare, challenging traditional "old school" methods still prevalent today.
Quick Training Lessons From The Episode
Here are the wrap-up lessons that Kirsten wanted listeners to remember from this episode:
1. Setting animals up for success is foundational: don’t let them fail unnecessarily, and always analyze feedback in real time to adjust training. 2. Reliable behavior and stimulus control aren’t accidental: they’re built through systematic, data-driven training, not guesswork. 3. Generalization matters: train in small, controlled spaces with lots of distractions before moving to unpredictable environments or long distances. 4.True innovation in animal training comes from clarity and consistency, not just from eliminating punishment but from knowing when, why, and how to reinforce appropriately. 5.The methods pioneered decades ago still work today: the fundamentals of good training haven’t changed, even as technology advances. 6.Culture and tradition shouldn’t outweigh data: be open to learning new, evidence-based approaches and leave unproductive arguments behind.
More from Precision Animal Training
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.
Vicky Darnell did not want the puppy. The plan was to get herself trained up first and then bring another dog into the house, and that is not how it worked out. Tiz came home early. Three weeks later Vicky was sitting in her first Chicken Workshop. What she carried back to Chicagoland was not a chicken trick. It was timing, criteria, rate of reinforcement, and the nerve to stop a session that is going sideways instead of hoping it comes around. Tiz started trialing shortly after she turned six months old, the youngest age a dog can compete in UKC Nosework, and finished her Grand Champion at eleven months. Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey talk with Vicky about what actually transferred from the bird room to the trial floor. Vicky has run dog sporting events for thirteen years and has taken the discrimination class twice, and she still describes the workshop the way everyone does once they have been through it: you cannot comprehend it until you are standing there. Bob puts the principle plainly. You get what you reinforce, not what you want. Kirsten tells on Vicky for walking the hallway between the classroom and the bird room muttering seven seconds to herself, then watched her run that same clock at a nosework trial months later.