1980. This handler is using a "cane hook." The business end seems in my eye to be quite severe and much to big.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Knoxville Zoo Elephant Ride
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Wade G. Burck
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A Blog designed for discussion of topics related to, but not limited to, Circus, Zoos, Animal Training, and Animal Welfare/Husbandry. Sometimes opening up the dialog is the best starting point of all. And if for nothing else when people who agree and don't agree, get together and start discussing it, it will open up a lot of peoples minds. Debate and discussion even amongst themselves opens a window where there wasn't one before.
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2 comments:
In 1969 I trained a great elephant "Carolyn" at the STL Zoo. She did a nice routine a couple of times a day in the new Children's Zoo. Buckles came over from the James Bros. show at the Arena to see her. He said she probably worked out of fear of the large hook I was using, looked like a harpoon. At his suggestion I made up a light hook that resembled a "tap-dancing" cane with a small hook. Carolyn continued to work quickly. One guest even asked if the new hook was "electric". You can't win.
I'll bet big cane hooks were the only one available at the zoo. Get a golf club hook and look like you're in sho-biz, not a zoo behaviorist.
Jim,
I was mostly referencing the point of the hook. A fallacy is that a small hook is less severe. just as a fallacy is that a big spur rowel with many points is severe, and a small rowel or a dressage spur with no rowel is less severe. A golf club hook, I personally have found to be worthless, and as a rule something else has to be within reach for it to be half affective. Of greatest importance is the hands it is in, and the knowledge of those hands.
Wade
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