What I've learned from Dr. Temple Grandin

For those of you who are not familiar with Temple Grandin. She is autistic, and has done pioneering work for the autistic community, but also realized that her autistic abilities allowed her to better understand the animals. She is a renowned animal scientist. And I had the opportunity to hear her speak. The energy was amazing.. people were overflowing everywhere, the SLC Library auditorium, which generally seems large, seemed minuscule by the throngs of people. I loved it.


*Animals have feelings. Their feelings are the key to their emotional and physical well-being.*
I loved hearing this out loud! Just loved it!
After all, this is what my life work is based around. The fact that animals feel, and their emotional well-being is important. Temple speaks in her book about the importance of the emotions of animals, and also addresses the fact that their emotions directly effect their behavior. Beautiful & oh so true! I see it everyday!

*Animals Think in Pictures*
For most of us that work with animals in behavior modification, we completely understand this. She spoke specifically of fear and used the example of a horse that was scared of black hats. Any other color hat was fine - black was not. She found out that, during a procedure with the horse, someone splashed alcohol in her eye. The horse was looking at a person wearing a black hat. That is the photograph her mind took when she was scared. Ouch = Black Hats. This is true for any animal that has a bad experience... I could list hundreds of examples here, because I see them everyday. Dogs that are pinched, shocked, forced or physically manipulated. Their fear, anxiety and pain are real - and most often make an association.

*Flooding is not fixing*
I loved that she was able to make this point to the audience in attendance. There is a very common mindset locally, that you should just make the animal 'do it', that they need to 'get over it' or be forced in order to 'suck it up'. This couldn't be more wrong. Fear is a real emotion for an animal, and whether or not we see the threat - they do. Flooding is a psychological term for basically 'forcing'. She actually used the example of Cesar Milan - noted an episode where he forced a dog to walk across a slippery surface that the dog was afraid of. She literally gasped as she said it - it struck her as that inappropriate and cruel. Stating that more often than not - the fear worsens instead of getting better.

There was much, much more. And, if you have the chance to read any of her books - I highly recommend them.

One other thing I took away that evening is - never underestimate the power of friends. I loved seeing the others trainers I work with there, as well as rescue people, therapy animal people & other friends. What a wonderful opportunity to bring us all together!

*smooches to the pooches*