If you ever need to clicker train a giraffe.....

Third time lucky at posting this ! Will try in 2 posts this time

Thought people might find this interesting - giraffes, lemurs, and a little more, from Alex Kurland.

It's been a while since I have posted anything to the list. I didn't fall down a rabbit hole. I've just been working on the next DVD in the series and getting caught up after a year of clinics and travel. I'm almost done with the DVD. I'm at that stage where I need to set it aside for a couple of days so I can come back to it with fresher eyes for the final edit. This next lesson begins a unit on connecting to the hips. We're slowly getting to the hip-shoulder-shoulder DVD, a much anticipated lesson. This current lesson looks at a simple version of yielding the hips and shows you how to find your horse's brakes using single-rein riding. The "Capture the Saddle" DVD showed you how to steer. This DVD shows you how to stop. Once you've got those elements in place, you can open up the throttle and really have fun!

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In my last post which I sent to the list ages ago I promised people a tale of giraffes. I've been getting emails from people asking where that post is. I was even sent the most charming photo of a giraffe looking straight into the camera lens, with the caption underneath: "Aren't you ever going to talk about giraffes on that list of yours?"

Clearly having promised a story about giraffes, I was not going to be let off the hook. I know it's the holiday season. Most of us don't have a lot of time to be reading long posts. This one won't make your head spin too much, not like some of my other posts. I'll save the head spinners for January when we all have a bit more time for thinking.

The giraffe visit grew out of last year's "Art and Science of Animal Training" conference at the University of North Texas. A consultant for the Oakland Zoo in CA was there and she invited me out to see what the trainers are doing with the giraffes. There isn't a lot written about giraffe training so the keepers have been borrowing ideas and techniques from the horse world to help with basic husbandry tasks such as foot care. Lisa, my host and guide at the Oakland Zoo thought the giraffe keepers would enjoy sharing ideas with an equine clicker trainer.

There are certain animals which just seem especially magical to me and giraffes are one of them. Talk about a high grade reinforcer! The opportunity to take her up on her offer to visit the zoo presented itself this past October. I was going to be on the west coast for two back to back clinics. It made sense to squeeze in a visit to the zoo in between, especially since the second clinic was only a couple hours drive from Oakland.

Now I understand that zoos have to be very careful with visits of this sort. I've had a couple behind the scenes tours, and they are always carefully orchestrated events designed to insure everyone's safety. You see a little training, you hear about some of the special needs of the animals, but it is all a well rehearsed scenario with very limited direct contact. That's what I was expecting with this trip, but it didn't matter. I was going to see giraffes!

I was traveling with Charlotte Eaton from the UK. Charlotte had flown over for the Groton and Toutle Clinics and as an added treat she got to join me for the giraffe visit. We arrived at the zoo before opening time. Our host, Lisa Clifton-Bumpass took us directly to the giraffes. We went through the gate for zoo personal only and slipped into a magic world. Amy Phelps, the head keeper for the giraffes, was cutting up chunks of carrots, bananas and white bread. The treats for the morning training sessions filled three large metal buckets to the brim.

Amy talked for a bit about the giraffes, pointing out each one and telling me about their history. All I could see were the giraffe's heads towering about the metal fencing of their nighttime holding pens.

Their daytime turnout area was being cleaned in preparation for the day's visitors. It was a large sloping enclosure with a giraffe-height solid wall at the back. Several feeding stations were positioned along the top of the wall so the giraffes could browse during the day. Behind the wall were smaller enclosures where the giraffes spent the night. And in cold weather, they had a barn with enormous giraffe-height stalls to shelter in.

We carried the treat buckets to a holding pen just behind the barn. Amy and another keeper went off to sort out the giraffes so the one she was going to be working with could be moved into the training area. While we waited Lisa filled us in on a little giraffe ethology. It was mainly to remind us that the animals we were about to meet were wild animals that could be very dangerous. Giraffes she told us could leap up and kick out with all four legs. She said she thought that was just one of those giraffe myths that get passed around to scare people, until she was watching one of the youngsters playing and saw him leap up and kick out in four directions. After that, she said, she had even more respect for the giraffes, especially when she was also told that a giraffe's kick can decapitate a lion.

In many zoos, the staff is permitted no direct contact with the animals in their care. If a medical procedure can't be done in a squeeze shoot, the giraffe is sedated. Sedation carries with it a greater than 50% risk of mortality, so the work that Amy and her staff is doing is extremely important. Going through the daily training sessions with the giraffes lets the keepers provide basic husbandry care and medical attention without undue stress. She has created a program that is at the leading edge of care for these animals.

Amy and her staff shifted one of the giraffes into the holding pen, an older female who needed some extra care to keep her joints feeling comfortable. Amy wanted to show me what she had been doing with her, but first, we got to feed her treats.

I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store! I think this must be one of those world divides sorts of things. There are the people who resist like mad feeding treats to animals, especially during training, and then there are those us who love feeding animals. What is it about giving bits of carrots and soggy bananas to a giraffe that can turn people into giggling six year olds?

This giraffe was so wonderfully polite in her treat taking manners. We were feeding her through a mesh fencing. She reached her head down to our level and put her wonderfully soft lips up to the wire. We could just reach through enough to let her take the offered banana slice from us. (I did also feed her chunks of white bread, though it felt wrong somehow to be feeding her something which all the health advocates tell us we should avoid. Wholesome whole grain breads would have seemed more "politically correct", but she certainly loved her white bread.) She put out her long, wonderfully prehensile purple tongue and took the bread ever so carefully from us. Charlotte and I took turns offering her treats from the bucket. I loved the giraffe's tongue. I hadn't been expecting purple. She'd stick her tongue out further, further, and further yet, and we'd laugh as she took the offered treat ever so gently from us.

Amy and another keeper were now ready to do a bit of training. What struck me most in what they did was how familiar everything was. They worked with protective contact, meaning two strong straps were hooked across the gate of the pen, just like the stall guards we put up for the horses - only higher.

Amy was working on foot care. The giraffes have cloven hooves, but in many ways their feet are very similar to a horse's. The zoo staff has invited barefoot trimmers in to consult on foot care, and to my eye, this giraffe's front feet looked very much in overall shape like a good barefoot hoof.

What Amy was doing would be familiar to all of you. She wanted the giraffe to be totally comfortable having her legs and feet handled so she was going through the "Can I touch you?" game. She stroked down the giraffe's long leg, blowing her whistle when the giraffe's behavior met the selected criterion. She was following the "four second rule". If she thought the giraffe would move away in four seconds, she blew her whistle and took her hand away in three. It was great fun to see a direct borrowing from techniques we use with the horses applied to the giraffes.

When she blew her whistle, a second keeper, perched up on a ladder handed the giraffe her treat. Using two people makes sense with an animal the size of a giraffe. It makes sense with horses, as well. There are lots of situations where having a second person delivering the treat is a huge help. I saw a great example of this at the recent Texas clinic. The clinic organizer breeds quarter horses for reining. She knows her horses are going to trainers who have no patience for feeding treats. If a horse were to sniff their hands looking for goodies, they'd get smacked. Martha wants to give these youngsters a solid clicker foundation, but she doesn't want to set them up to get in trouble with trainers who aren't going to be receptive to the work - the results yes. They love getting her clicker-trained babies. They are so easy, so ready to go to work. So they love the results, but they aren't yet ready to entertain the means. Someday perhaps after one of Martha's horses wins the futurity, they'll get curious. In the meantime she works as a team with her barn manager. He handles the horse. When one of them clicks, Martha delivers the treat. She drops a bit of grain onto a dust pan which is tied to a long broom handle. It may not be the most elegant training device ever invented, but it gets the job done.

The colt gets his grain, then the pan disappears and he's right back to work. I watched a yearling stud colt with the most amazing focus and work ethic being handled in this way. He was on a lunge line. His training team was free shaping the balance his future reining trainer would be looking for when he's worked under saddle. He'll be well-started before he ever heads off for his formal training. And he won't be looking for treats unless he hears his click and sees the dustpan appear. It was a very clever solution for a horse who is headed for a high performance career outside the clicker world.

The giraffe team went one step further. They worked in a team of three: the handler, the feeder, and a spotter. Lisa was the spotter for today's session. Her job is exactly what it sounds like. She was to stand back and from her wider perspective keep track of the giraffe's reactions. This is so useful. At that same Texas clinic we were starting several horses with the clicker. I was doing the handling, offering the horse a target to touch. My focus was on the target and the horse's nose. That's what I needed to be seeing to ensure good timing. When we paused to assess the training, the rest of the group talked about seeing other things. Standing back at a distance, it was easier for them to watch the horse's ears and to see other details that were definitely worth noting. These are the details that tell you either that it's okay to go on, or whoa there! Better slow down. Watching the giraffe work reminded me just how valuable it is to train in a team.

"But wait a minute", I know many of you are thinking. "That's all well and good for a zoo staff, but I'm here all by myself. Sure there are other people at the barn, but they all think I'm crazy. There's no way any of them would help out with the training."

I know the realities of barn life. We don't often have training partners, but we can still add a second one of ourselves to the team. I know that sounds odd. How do we add ourselves? By videotaping. Not everything lends itself to videotaping, but when you are working in your barn, you could easily set a camera up on a tripod. It won't give you the instant feedback that another person can provide, but it will still show you details of handling and your horse's responses that you may have missed.

With the giraffe, after Amy and her team had reviewed the basic handling, Charlotte and I were invited to come up and stroke her leg. I wasn't expecting this! Watching was one thing, but to have the opportunity for direct hands-on contact - now that was a treat!

We moved from stroking down the leg to handling her foot, letting her feel us hold the front of her coronet band. Lisa told us that giraffe keepers from other zoos had visited the Oakland Zoo to learn from Amy's work. Some of them had been giraffe keepers for more than fifteen years, but they had never before held an unsedated giraffe's foot in their hands. And the sad part is this experience at the Oakland Zoo might be their only opportunity to do so because the institutions they worked for weren't ready to allow this kind of contact.

It made me feel even more privileged that I was being allowed this experience. Zoo management has to be so careful to insure the safety of both the animals and the keepers. And old ways of managing animals are hard to change. It may seem easier and safer to move hoof stock around with water hoses - easier until you need access to a giraffe's feet and the only option available to you is a tranquilizer dart.

Lisa told us that the Oakland Zoo has a reputation for taking in older animals from other zoos and caring for them in their exhibits. As we walked around the zoo later that day, she pointed out many of the more geriatric residents. The giraffe we were working with was one of those more senior residents. She received regular leg stretches to keep her comfortable, and Amy was very excited because she had just been told that the giraffe exhibit was going to be upgraded to a state-of-the-art care facility and would include among other things a water bed to help this elderly lady stay more comfortable in the winter.

Amy showed us the leg stretches she uses, something else which she had borrowed from horse care. She raised the giraffe's front leg up, flexing it at knee so the lower leg was tucked up. She then cradled the hoof in her hands so she could flex the pastern joint. As the giraffe relaxed into her hands, she drew the leg out and forward for a long stretch, then back to the cradled hoof position.

She repeated this a couple of times, then let me have a go at it. Now I have to tell you that the first time I held the giraffe's leg I wasn't thinking about anything other than I'm doing leg stretches on a giraffe! But after the first round, I started thinking more like a microshaper. As I drew the hoof up into a stretch, I thought about microreleases in my own body. The giraffe answered with a more definite release in her shoulders. I drew her leg forward and thought about my own shoulders and hips, releasing the bits of tension I found there. The giraffe answered with a stretch that went through her whole body. I could feel the change and everyone watching could see the difference. Whistle/treat. When I stood up from my giraffe stretches, I felt amazing! What a magnifier that long giraffe body was for my own joints. I'd never felt anything like it! Following a giraffe's release gave me an experience beyond anything I've had from the horses!

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