The APDT Chronicle of the Dog Summer 2020 | Page 14

ASSOCIATION NEWS | 2020 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
University College of Veterinary Medicine,
the Midwest Veterinary Conference, the
International Society of Anthrozoology
(ISAZ), APDT, the International
Association of Animal Behavior
Consultants, and many other animal
related groups. Ken has been going to
Japan since 2004 to teach trainers how to
better understand animal behavior. Ken
also assists researchers and senior care
staff in training wolves, coyotes and foxes
at Wolf Park, an education and research
facility in Battle Ground, Indiana,
established in 1972. The facility provides
researchers around the world the ability
to conduct cognition, behavior, and
comparative studies between wild and
captive animals. Ken has given annual
seminars there since 1996.
Ken, who is also an APDT member, was
“floored” when he was notified about
the award: “I’m completely thrilled to
be receiving the Lifetime Achievement
Award from the APDT. I was shocked. I
have known people who have received that
award and watched them get it. Just to be
in that class, I’m honored.”
Ken’s history with APDT started at
the fledgling organization’s second
conference in Chicago, Illinois, in 1995.
He was already in Chicago for ISAZ’s
conference on the study of the animalhuman
bond, and APDT’s conference
had the same agenda. He knew many of
the trainers, including APDT’s founder,
Dr. Ian Dunbar. “I was chatting with
them about what they were doing, and
because the mission was education
and they were totally open to bringing
anybody in, no matter what, to educate
them, I was highly interested in it,”
Ken said. “I’ve attended a dozen or so
of the conferences around the U.S. and
thoroughly enjoyed them, but for me,
APDT’s mission to educate trainers
on animals and animal behavior and
learning theory and things like that is
very commendable, but their totally
open attitude — not that we approve of
or endorse some methodologies out there
— but when the mission is, yeah, you can
come in and if you want to learn how to
work with animals we’d be happy to show
you, that has always been something very
important to have out there. … I was kind
of glad to have a national organization
that really embraced the science more
so than the simple methodologies than
somebodies’ what I call folk lore and
witchcraft about training.”
From Psychology to Zooology
Ken’s fondness of animals pushed him
into the direction of learning theory and
understanding how animals learned, but
the University of Akron (Ohio) only had
one basic animal behavior course at that
time, so he went into child development
psychology. “Halfway through my junior
year I was working with children under
the guidance of professors, and I really
enjoyed doing it, it was a really cool
learning experience for me,” Ken said. “But
I quickly discovered I didn’t like working
with the parents.” Ken recalled one child
who could have learned to be functional,
but the parent wasn’t doing anything to
reinforce the behavior of the child when
he returned home. Ken told the parent
that if something happened to him, the
child would be institutionalized because
he wasn’t verbal or able to feed himself.
“We were teaching him simple skills, like
feeding himself, tying his shoes and putting
his clothes on,” Ken said. “I told the guy he
needed to visit one of those institutions to
see what that world is like and said ‘your
child will be institutionalized if you don’t
become involved in this child’s well-being.’
And I was polite about it.” The parent
took umbrage at Ken’s suggestion. The
psychology department’s dean suggested
Ken needed to learn how to handle his
frustration dealing with parents who were
“clueless,” or he wouldn’t make it in that
field, and he should accept that some
children fall through the cracks. “That was
like fingernails down a chalkboard for me,
you’re talking about a life here,” Ken said.
“And that was when I decided to go back
and work with animals.”
At that time, Ken was already working
with one of the nation’s top German
Shepherd Dog handlers, Terry Hower, at
Lee Ray’s Kennels in Akron. “We worked
with up to 150 dogs every day,” Ken said.
The potential show dogs would come to the
kennel where they would be conditioned
for the ring, groomed and trained if they
had an issue with someone other than the
handler, such as a judge, touching the dog’s
feet, mouth or body. “I had a lot of contact
experience working with dogs, but I was
kind of winging it. They hired me to work
with these animals, but I wasn’t mentoring
with anyone, I was kinda doing it on my
own, and doing it pretty successfully,
especially with the show dogs. I used a lot
of luring, repetition, and conditioning.”
Also around then, Ken had a white GSD
named Snow who was clinically hyperkinetic.
“I worked long hours and would take
her to work with me. Back then, I didn’t
know much about neurobiology.” To keep
Snow from “bouncing off the walls,” Ken
trained her as a disc dog, and Snow became
one of the top 20 dogs in that sport
for five years. “We got as high as seventh
in the country,” Ken said. “We were beaten
twice in the regionals by a dog that won the
world finals.”
After working at Lee Ray’s Kennels and
as the medical ward director for an Akron,
Ohio veterinary clinic, Ken decided
to branch out on his own, debuting Four
Paws Animal Behavior Services in 1987.
But he knew he still needed more education.
“I kept going out and looking at different
educational formats. And in 1990, I
saw Gary Wilkes and Karen Pryor together
working as a team and introducing the
training world to clickers, and it was like
an epiphany for me. All of the conditioning
and reinforcing I learned at school, they
gave me the key on how to do that with
animals. So I took off in that end and really
started to do a lot of work in using markers
with animals (dogs, cats and birds) and getting
really, really good at it.”
By this time, Ken was volunteering at Wolf
Park, which was founded in 1972 by the
late Erich Klinghammer, Ph.D., a Purdue
University ethology professor. “I worked
with a contractor who built enclosures for
animals, everything from zoo enclosures to
private facilities. I did a lot of work at Wolf
12 Building Better Trainers Through Education