When Ken Ramirez is not training elephants to avoid poachers, teaching dogs to count, coaxing polar bears out of suburban garbage cans or getting butterflies to fly on cue, he is mentoring and educating dog trainers. Ken is the Executive Vice President and public face of Karen Pryor Clicker Training, which operates the Karen Pryor Academy, among other things. In this episode, he and Annie discussed his new book of essays, how he almost got The Dog Whisperer's time slot, the existence of free will, sleep training a baby and more. 

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Notes:

The Eye Of The Trainer: Animal Training, Transformation and Trust, by Ken Ramirez - On My Mind: Reflections on Animal Behavior and Learning, by Karen Pryor - Ken Ramirez on Hannah Brannigan's Drinking From The Toilet Podcast - Ken Ramirez on Ryan Cartlidge's Animal Training Academy Podcast - KenRamirezTraining.com - Ken's Letters - Training Lessons From Pokemon Go - Talk To The Animals clip -  Find the ukulele-duo Toast Garden on Youtube!  If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review! 

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Partial Transcript:

*Intro*



Annie:

So if you are a professional animal trainer or aspiring to be a professional animal trainer, I'm guessing that you've probably heard of my guest today. If you're not, you probably haven't.  Whether you're in one of those categories or the other, I am really excited to get to share this conversation with you with this pretty remarkable man.



Now, I normally like to ask people how they first got into the field of animal training or dog training in particular, but I didn't go into that with my guests today only because there were so many things I wanted to talk to him about, and you can also get his backstory on a couple other great podcasts, including the Animal Training Academy Podcast with Ryan Cartlidge and Hannah Brannigans podcast, Drinking from the Toilet. The short version is he grew up on a ranch, began volunteering, working with a guide dog organization when he was still a teenager, and then kind of lucked into a job working with exotic animals, which then helped mold his choices of what to study in college. He then spent more than two decades working at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, where he eventually was the Executive Vice President of Animal Care. And well, I'm just gonna let him introduce himself and talk about what he's doing now.



Ken Ramirez:

My name is Ken Ramirez and I am the executive vice president and chief trading officer for Karen Pryor Clicker Training. And I have been training, gosh, for over 40 years now.  Worked in the zoological field. I work as a consultant for zoos and aquariums.  I work as a consultant for search and rescue dogs and law enforcement and guide dogs.  And I do a lot of work in the conservation arena, so I have a lot of interests and I keep very busy.





Full transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

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