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- TRAINING CLASSES
- REACTIVE DOGS
- BEHAVIOR CONSULTS
* Ken Ramirez, the senior vice-president of animal collections and
animal training, develops and supervises animal care programs,
staff training and development as well as public presentation programs
for the entire animal collection at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.
He joined Shedd Aquarium in 1989.
* A 30+ year veteran of animal care and training, Ramirez is a biologist
and animal behaviorist who served nine years at Marineworld of Texas. He
also was a trainer and coordinator at Ocean Safari in South Padre Island, Texas,
as well as acting as a consultant to many zoo and aquarium programs
throughout the world.
* Ken began his training career working with guide dogs for the visually
impaired and has maintained a close affiliation to pet training throughout his
career. He hosted two successful seasons of the pet training television series
Talk to the Animals that compared pet training to the important work done with
training and caring for animals in zoological facilities.
* He has also recently worked closely with several search and rescue dog
organizations, service dog groups, as well as with bomb and narcotic dogs.
* Ramirez has been active in several professional organizations, including
the International Marine Animal Trainer’s Association (IMATA), of which he is a
past president. Ken has been actively involved in the creation of a certification
process for animal trainers in zoological settings. He has been on the faculty
of Karen Pryor’s
Clicker Expo since 2005.
* Ramirez has written for numerous scientific publications and popular articles and
has authored the book ANIMAL TRAINING: Successful Animal Management through Positive
Reinforcement, published in 1999. He also teaches a graduate course on animal training
at Western Illinois University.
WHO IS KEN RAMIREZ, you ask?
Clicker Expo Faculty - scroll down to find
Ken's bio. That's a start at answering the question: "Who is Ken Ramirez?"
Here is a link to Ken's book. It's an awesome book - thorough complete,
applicable to our domestic animals as well as zoo and exotic animals. Still not enough to
answer the question?
In addition to his position at Shedd Aquarium (which, by the way, does not
require him to continue training - but he works extra days so that he can
continue training along with his VP job), Ken consults and teaches at zoos
and aquariums all over the world. He also finds the time to consult with
service dog organizations and Search and Rescue groups. He has to get
vacation days off from Shedd to do so - yet he makes it work. He writes, he
consults, he travels - those who know him are convinced he does not sleep.
Yet he is not your typical Type A personality. Ken is mellow, calm,
laid-back, caring, positive in all interactions, humble. We tease him at
Clicker Expo that there is a huge body of "Ken Groupies" and he blushes. :)
Ken Ramirez is the most grounded, the most consistent, the most systematic
and thorough trainer I have ever met or observed training. He is The Best,
period. Ken always always always has the animal's best interest as his top
priority.
In late 2009, I was privileged to attend the week-long
Professional Training
Program at Shedd Aquarium (Aug 22 - 26 this year). This is normally attended by zoo professionals
and aquarium professionals but dog trainers have talked Ken into letting us
take the program too. I *loved* it! I constantly come back (in my mind) to:
"What would they do at Shedd?" or "What would Ken do?"
Ken is also the Maestro of concept training - teaching dogs (along with
marine mammals) abstract concepts such as big vs small or left vs right or
sentences made up of noun-verb combination (bear-push or ball-fetch or
bear-fetch). You might know of Ken from his Modifier Cues and Compound Cues
presentations and labs at Clicker Expo.
Along with his concept training, he is now training and painstakingly
documenting teaching dogs to mimic what another dog does. This is trained
using a cue, "copy", that tells Dog A to copy what Dog B is doing. It's
astounding!
When I took the program at Shedd, people asked me why would I spend that
much money? How could that possibly relate to training dogs? I had already
been exposed to Ken many times at Clicker Expo. I wanted more. The Shedd
program is a solid week (all day and evening) of How Ken Thinks - just
exactly what I wanted more of.
To have Ken come spend two days doing a seminar for us here in Oregon is
unbelievably special. If you thought a two-day seminar for clicker trainers
on Competition Obedience was a once in a blue moon occasion, having Ken do a
seminar is even more so. Check the events section on Ken's website - notice the
lofty events planned for this year and next with our Oregon seminar tucked in the
middle of all of that! Also check out his media page - there are some nice clips
from his television show (that did not air in the US).
All of this was to say: Plan now for the October seminar with Ken!! Trust me
- even if you don't know who he is at this time, you won't regret attending.
A rare opportunity indeed!
Created JULY 2009
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