"Hi - great news!"
I literally leaped out of my chair before I read the rest of the email, almost too excited to read what followed.
"You got one of the scholarship spots for the Animal Emotions course! You had written one of the most compelling applications, and I really feel that this course could make a difference for you, and hopefully a splash in your community, too!"
I have been dreaming of taking this online course for several years, ever since I first saw Karolina Westlund's videos introducing the topic of emotions in animals. I was immediately fascinated at the time, and now I can't wait to dive even deeper into the subject through her full course.
The introduction of the course has already convinced me that I need to reframe how I understand animal behavior. Traditionally, animal trainers don't like to prescribe human-like characteristics to the animals in our care. Instead, we only look at what we can objectively observe. For example, Aldo the American Kestrel dislikes seeing anyone shoveling snow outside his mew. Snow shoveling causes Aldo to try to escape:
This framework is a simple trigger causing a behavior. To prevent him from trying to fly away, we could just stop shoveling. Or I could put him in his crate so he can't fly.
But in reality, shoveling itself doesn't cause Aldo to fly away. What causes him to fly is his emotions. Shoveling causes him to feel FEAR, which causes him to fly away:
Emotions color a behavior. This gives us whole new way to address his escape behavior. If we want to continue shoveling sidewalks and reduce Aldo's behavior of flying away, we need to address the FEAR that is spurring the behavior. By associating shoveling with positive emotions, he wouldn't feel the need to escape. How do we change his mind? I think I'll need to go beyond the course introduction to find out!
If you would like to learn more about animal emotions, Karolina provides a free 16-minute introductory video here on her website.
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