What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage by Amy Sutherland

Author:Amy Sutherland
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781588366900
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

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There is a beautiful simplicity to the animal mind. Nature has designed animals to live in the moment. It’s not that they can’t think ahead or behind, but animals immediately link events that happen simultaneously. If a tiger puts his front paws on his cage and gets an instantaneous click, followed by a chicken neck, the tiger’s brain makes a note: Paws on the cage = click = chicken neck. If just as a dolphin threads his nose through a small hoop he hears a whistle, then gets a mackerel, he likewise jots a mental note: Nose through toy = whistle = mackerel.

Whenever a trainer has trouble, the first culprit to consider is timing, usually that they are a few beats behind in tooting the whistle or clicking the clicker. That’s often true because humans are the slowpokes of the animal kingdom. Most animals are fast, scary fast. I experienced countless examples of their uncanny speed. As instructed by one gregarious trainer, I ducked into a bobcat’s roomy cage and sat down on a dusty truck tire. The bobcat, in a smaller cage off its main enclosure, watched me. I didn’t know what the trainer had in mind until, with a smile, he opened the gate between me and the bobcat. One split second the cat was a good twenty feet from me, ears pricked. The next it was perched softly on my shoulders, rubbing against the back of my head as if it were a housecat. I didn’t have time to yelp. I didn’t even see it leap. I must have at least bugged my eyes as the wild kitty nuzzled me, because the trainer, outside the cage, laughed his head off. If I were a deer I’d be a dead deer.

No wonder the students often squeezed their clicker a few beats too late, thus marking the wrong behavior, teaching a sit when they meant to teach a circle. Savuti the hyena at the training school was such a font of behaviors that if he didn’t hear the click immediately, say, for picking up a log in his freakishly strong jaws, he’d try something else, hold up a paw or look over his shoulder and smile. Usually by then, students new to working with Savuti had finally managed to squeeze their clicker, about four behaviors after they meant to.

With people, I could not be as precise as a trainer, but I began at least to think about my timing. Ideally, I’d reward someone the moment they did something I liked. That’s why applause is such a thrill; it’s not only a response, but an immediate one. This is the reason writing is not such a thrill. The reward comes months, even years later, if then, but certainly never when you are actually writing. By the time an article or book has been published, I’m typically gnashing my teeth over a new project and the former is a distant memory. That’s like giving a dolphin a big tuna about two years after a flip.

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