WANT A PEANUT?
I'm a fan of Animal Planet, and there's a show on the network called "Amazing Animals." Well, it's true!
All of my life I have lived with or around animals. During the past 24 years, my life has been informed and enriched by some very special animals.
I am sharing my life currently with my fifth guide dog, and two cats.
Four years ago, when I was in class getting my current dog, I began a journey of learning about how to relate to animals in a different way. My instructor taught our class using a method of training called Positive Training. It's based on a theory of Operant Conditioning that B. F. Skinner developed and formalized in the 1940's and 50's.
Operant Conditioning is "The process of changing an animal's response to a certain stimulus by manipulating the consequences to the response." http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2001/glossary.htm
This process helped me to think differently about how animals think. Until I began learning more about Positive Training, I did a good deal of anthrapremorphizing with my animals-something commonly seen with many people who are animal lovers. They (we) impose our own feelings, thoughts, and interpretations of our animals behavior onto them. Positive training changes the paradigm. It helps the handler learn to think the way the animal thinks, not way the human thinks the animal thinks.
Changing the way I think and interact with animals has given me an incredible new set of experiences with inter-species communication.
Several years ago, I was visiting a friend who has an African Gray Parrot. These parrots are thought to be the most intelligent species of parrot. I had my forth guide dog who hated our paratransit vans. She would guide me anywhere but to the door of the van as we approached to climb aboard.
It came time for us to leave, and as we walked out the door of her home and toward the van, my dog slowed down. As she approached the van, she hesitated. Freeze action!
Back at my friend's house, the door was open and she and her Personal Assistant were watching us as we approached the van. As my dog slowed down, Her bird said, "Step up."
He was relating to something he understood. When my friend holds her bird, she asks him to "Step up," on to her finger.
Another experience happened more recently. I frequent a pet store that has a resident African Gray Parrot. One day my current dog and I went in to get supplies. The woman behind the counter asked if she could give my dog a treat. I said yes, and she came around to hand my dog the goody. She asked her to sit, which the dog did, and she gave her the biscuit. The bird was watching this interaction and said, "Good dog!." My dog looked at the bird and wagged her tail.
It turns out the bird lived in a house with a dog before coming to live at the store. She had certainly heard the words, "Good dog," spoken many times in her previous home.
Another time we visited the same store, the bird kept saying something that I couldn't understand. I asked the person behind the counter what she was saying, and she said, "She's saying, want a peanut?" The woman turned to the bird and said, "You really want the peanut, don't you?"
Maybe the bird learned that by asking in that way, she could get her handler's attention, and in the process score a treat!
The most amazing experience with inter-species communication I had was when a friend and I went to the zoo for a Dolphin Encounter.
We viewed a PowerPoint on dolphins, watched a dolphin show, and then got to go back into the dolphin's home pool area to play with and feed them.
As my dog and I walked into the pool area, a young four year old dolphin made a sound that I could only imagine as her saying, "What's that?" She wasn't looking at the humans, she'd seen them before, she was looking at my dog.
While we spent time with the dolphins and their trainers, my dog stayed in the doorway of an adjoining office. She watched everything we were doing with the dolphins. The trainers used the same kind of Positive Training techniques I used with my dog-marking the end of a behavior with a signal, and then delivering a treat for performing the behavior.
After we finished our encounter, the head trainer brought my dog over to the edge of the pool. The young dolphin swam over and the two animals looked at each other for what seemed like a very long time. Then the young dolphin turned around and swam away. She picked up a toy and brought it back to the edge of the pool and placed it next to my dog on the pool deck. The trainer standing next to me said, "Who's the smarter species?"
We can't know exactly what animals are thinking, but by stepping outside of our own experience as humans, and observing their actions, we may be able to come to a better understanding about how they think.
