Bob Bailey – Down Under Tour 2017 – Qld
“Make the Change”
25, 26 & 27 March 2017
This was certainly an awesome opportunity for us all. Bob presented on a variety of topics that pertain to principles and procedures of effective animal training. Bob has worked with 140 different species, so he had something to offer everyone interested in training animals. Everyone had the opportunity to learn some of the theory, and practice, that sits behind all training. A small number of handlers with dogs allowed themselves to be in the spotlight, training and growing new behaviours.
A few words from Bob about Bob
I describe myself as a behavioral-systems analyst and engineer, small-businessman, field biologist, animal trainer, and teacher, not necessarily in that order. My early years in the 1940s were spent trekking the Southern California desert collecting and studying animals. At UCLA (B.S. Biology and Chemistry) in the 1950s, I was a teaching and research assistant, studying animals in the Southwestern USA and Mexico, SCUBA diving for California Fish and Game, and surfing the California beaches. My behavior conditioning (training) experience at UCLA included crows, coyotes, and kangaroo rats in the wild, and captive cephalopods, amphibians, fishes, and reptiles.
After the US Army, I was a biochemist, (UCLA School of Medicine), and a Field Biologist (California Department of Fish and Game). I then became the US Navy Marine Mammal Program’s first Director of Training at Pt. Mugu, California, and conducted the Navy’s first open-ocean program. In 1965 I joined Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1943, Keller and Marian Breland founded ABE as the first commercial enterprises using B.F. Skinner’s then newly described operant conditioning. Keller Breland died in 1965. In 1968, I became ABE’s General Manager and Chief Operating Officer. ABE’s business was worldwide in scope, and I directed the activities of 50 full-time and 50 part-time employees. Marian Breland and I married in 1976. ABE was at the forefront of developing and employing various behavioral and hardware technologies when training animals and teaching animal trainers for commerce, zoological parks, the military and police, and other governmental agencies. ABE produced animal shows for major theme parks, created TV commercials (Buck Bunny, the banking rabbit is the longest running animal commercial in USA), and trained animals for theatrical productions. ABE personnel trained over 140 species and more than 15,000 individual animals. ABE continued operations until 1990, when we closed our doors. Marian and I continued to teach. Marian died in 2001. I have continued to teach and consult for companies and government agencies worldwide. I was awarded the Doctor of Science Degree (Sc.D. with full academic rank, equivalent to Ph.D.) from the University of Central Arkansas in 2013 for my work in physics, chemistry, biology and psychology, and for my research and development of training programs and hardware for biological systems.
