Behaviour and animal handling training resources

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Ian M — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 20:34:50 GMT

Cough ** no staff pets then, cough**

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Jo Mackenzie — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 11:03:29 GMT

I came across a lot of vets refusing to handle animals both in India and when I worked in Sweden. In Bosnia we will have them on rotation through different areas, so they will all be encouraged to take their turn with handling and restraining. Thanks for the tips, using a friendly dog to assess their existing skill level is a good idea, and we will be working with some pet dogs as well as strays, so hopefully will have a nice, patient, friendly one early on!

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Jo Mackenzie — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:57:21 GMT

Yeah, when I re-read my original post I could see how it may have come across that way. Ive done quite a lot of charity trips and this is one of the best-organised ones Ive been involved with, loads of pre-placement info and will have plenty of support over there too. Ive heard some horror stories about other trips so I'm always careful to do my research before I pick a project, and have been lucky enough never to have had a bad experience. Thank you :)

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Ian M — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:41:23 GMT

Ah that's good to hear. I'm afraid that when I saw you'd written that they may not speak much English, that I assumed you weren't sure / hadn't been told. Also, it's not been unusual for people to turn up from the UK on projects sometimes to places and no translation being arranged and the organiser in the UK offering no support. You'll have no problems if the Dogs Trust is organising.

A useful thing if you have lots of people there is to nail exactly what their roles are and what training they had, early on. There are sometimes lots of handlers who are not animal people and may have ended up in the animal section having been shunted from somewhere else - eg I did a project in Eastern Europe where the animal services were par of the fire brigade and the handlers were basically ex-firefighters.

A trick that works for me is to take some paper labels (like address labels) and a marker pen and give everyone a name badge with their role written on so you all know who you are (EG - "George, Tech."),

The other thing is to try and find a friendly demo animal early on and use that in the training - we had this little guy once who was part hand-reared so very confident around people and so we handed him round the room and let him interact with the training group (30 guys). It was useful to watch them around him and handling / making friends with him to see what the skill levels were (lots of gratuitous scruffing for example) and who the people were with affinity to animals or not. In a few macho cultures (either nationally or within the workplace) you'll get guys that will not show affection or compassion to the animals.

Another issue is that in a lot of professional scenarios the vets won't lift, handle, carry or restrain animals and regard this as the technicians' or handlers' role (in some extremes I've seen vets that won't even palpate an abdomen themselves and get handlers doing it and reporting back on whether it's tense etc). So it's also helpful to make sure that the vets are drawn into the handling and restraining parts as well, rather than just gathering round the ops filming on their phones.

Have a good time and enjoy.

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Jo Mackenzie — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:19:49 GMT

Hi Ian

I would be extremely worried too if I hadn't been told that stuff!! Its the Dogs Trust project that I'm going out to do, I have already had several phone briefings and all their SOPs etc sent out to me, but the emphasis of all current SOPs and coursework is on anaesthesia and surgery. We will have translators available at all times, but the students are coming from different practices across the country, and will have varying standards of English from pretty good to non-existent, which is why I want to use simple resources that can be given to them all regardless of their grasp of English.

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Ian M — Sun, 11 Jan 2015 23:06:59 GMT

I would be extremely worried that you are only a week away and you haven’t been told what arrangements there are for language, if your trainees are English speakers or not, or what kind of interpretation you will get. I would expect that to be paramount in any project. You may find it useful to make contact with the International Department at Dogs Trust HQ as they have a major project in Bosnia with a country office and local staff employed and they may well have professional behavioural training planned using their staff or consultants from the UK. I think IFAW are also working in Bosnia as well at the moment so same applies. Both tend to run very well organised and holistic programmes and are used to operating in non-English speaking situations, which may be useful.

RE: Behaviour and animal handling training resources

Louise B — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 19:41:46 GMT

Hi Jo,

https://www.facebook.com/pages/APBC-veterinary-team-page/321642461263775?fref=ts - if you contact Stephanie Hedges (page admin) through this site, she can supply you with cat and dog posters aimed at achieving exactly that. Tell her Louise with the emus recommended her!

http://www.aspcapro.org/recorded-webinars.php May be of use for longer term education. Loads of videos, some will be helpful.

http://eileenanddogs.com/2012/08/29/does-your-dog-really-want-to-be-petted/ Lovely video, good commentary. very visual.

Lots of resources available through the now deceased Sophia Yin's website: http://drsophiayin.com/lowstress if you can borrow a couple of her 'low stress handling' book (very expensive), it is also very visual with good and bad ways of doing most vet procedures that involve handling conscious animals.

Good luck.