"In this contemporary world of professional animal care, the words “choice” and “control” are swirling all around us. As each generation stretches to find the next best thing, these past decades have taught us more about the detrimental side effects of excessive stress on our animals and the revolutionary possibilities we can achieve when we embrace the concept of applying the most positive, least intrusive effective strategies with the animals (and people) in our care. Positive Reinforcement training has been widely accepted and applied for decades. We now understand that ‘control’ is a primary reinforcer for all animals, just like food and water. From the day we arrive, we aim to control our environment. When we teach our animals that they have an equal voice in our conversations with them, by recognizing how our body language and other environmental stimuli effect their body language and allowing their body language to affect our body language, with the goal of all of us maintaining calm, relaxed body language, everyone wins. Implementing behavior programs built on this foundation allows caregivers to offer care with less stress on them and the animals. Relationships are strengthened and animals voluntarily participate in a wide variety of husbandry, medical, and enriching behaviors with minimal stress and greater enthusiasm. The first step in achieving choice and control happens when we take a moment to stand in their ‘shoes’ and see how each animal spends their day, what variety they have and take advantage of, and how much time they spend doing various species appropriate behaviors. That gives us the inspiration to brainstorm how we can offer more variety in choice and teach them to explore, to get the most out of, to have the opportunity, to control their environment to maximize their physical and mental health in ways that are valuable and fun for the animals, caregivers, and family members. I am inspired and excited to see what our next generation of animal caregiver consultants is contributing to the welfare of animals and their families."

Sponsor:IAABC Foundation
Speaker(s):**Cassie Malina, CPBC, CPBT-KA

Contact:
 Email: questions@iaabcfoundation.org
 Web: https://iaabcfoundation.org/animal-behavior-conference/