We’ve sent everybody through this training program. And over 16 years we trained 140 some of my staff members. I ended up sending people from every single department. Finance people went, accounting people, the entire maintenance team went one year, one session. They all went together. They wanted to go… Read More
I don’t know how to get it over there?… Read More
And so they learned, through this training program, how to read the animal and how to move the animal around. And we would have six to eight different horses in the arena at any one given time, with people on the lead rope. Read More
And we’d switch horses, because the horses had different “horse-onalities”, right?… Read More
But they’re on the end of the line, and they’ve got this horse, and they gotta get it over there. Read More
Well, how do I get it over there?… Read More
I brought horses from my farm, the trainer brought horses from his farm, and then we put people in a barn. So in the morning they would have classroom classes, and then the afternoon they would go to a barn close by, and they would end up in a stall… Read More
And it was so cool, because here you’ve got people, and they don’t know the language. They don’t know the language, they don’t speak horse, or elephant, or tiger, or rhino. Read More
They don’t speak that language, right?… Read More
What’s this animal thinking about, what does this animal need?… Read More
And then tailoring your care and training program to that animal’s needs as opposed to what we wanna make ’em do. So instead of trying to get the horse to go into the barn, instead of trying to make the horse go in the barn, we wanted the horse to… Read More
And I was searching for a way to evolve and improve our care of, particularly the elephants, but all of our animals. I wanted to, to develop a new model for keeper training and to look at a new way to look at the animals in our care and how… Read More
And that most closely matched our Elephant program, because of course, we don’t put halters on our elephants to lead them around, right?… Read More
And so that most closely matched. So we started bringing that program in, and we started doing that program. And literally, it’s a very good program where it teaches you to read body language, teaches you to read the animal, and to figure out what kind of animal this is,… Read More
So what we did was we would put hay far away from the barn. So they would have to go out and get the hay. We’d put it further away the next time we put it out, so that we would encourage them to walk and to move. And as… Read More
They are content and happy animals. So space is not really the issue. You need to provide ’em some space, of course, but they don’t have to have hundreds and hundreds of acres to roam, because they don’t do that. Even at the ICC, where we have huge pastures, huge… Read More
They’re one of the few elephants in zoos that know what the wild is. And yet they still acclimated, and they’re like, yeah, we know where the food is. Here’s the food, here’s the water. This is where we want to be. So that’s very important. But I think that,… Read More
I’ve seen this. I went to Africa one year and had the good fortune of being there three weeks. And so we came through in the Yoko Vangogh Delta part of that time. Read More
So we came through early in the trip, the Yoko Vangogh Delta, and there was a herd of elephants in this beautiful, lush, green area, and some of ’em very recognizable, ’cause they had tears in their ears or whatever, right?… Read More
We came back three weeks later and the elephants were in the exact same spot. They had not moved. So elephants move for three reasons. They move for water, they move for food, they move for sex. Three reasons. So if you provide ’em water, food, and sex, if they… Read More