Description
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Presentation Details:
Regardless of species or why we keep them, the animals we keep in captivity are dependent and vulnerable. They rely on us totally for their physical and psychological welfare. They do not have choice in where or how we keep them or in interacting with us or anyone else. The bottom line is that our behaviours directly and profoundly affect the quality of their lives. We may think is this simply an issue of choice, that it is entirely down to the human’s free will to decide how they will care for, interact with and react to this dependent other, but this is not the case.
Psychology is the study of humans. Our interactions with other humans and non-humans are greatly influenced by factors of which we are not aware, and which stem from our genetics and our, pre and post birth, experiences and the interactions between these. The more we learn, the more we realise that free will is more fantasy than fact.
In our animal orientated role people are our clients and success requires understanding and working with individual differences in peoples’ abilities to change their perceptions, attitudes and /or behaviour. This is as true whether we are encouraging changes in husbandry practice or requiring the caretaker to learn and enact new skills involved in training or behaviour modification programmes. Myriad factors can affect the outcomes of people-animal interactions, including personality, self-esteem, locus of control, decision making, risk taking, cognitive, social and emotional intelligence and the list goes on.
As current or future practitioners we are likely aware that we need to ensure the client’s basic needs for physiological comfort and safety are met, before we begin to get down to the task in hand. For example, that they are comfortable, not thirsty, have had a chance to ‘relieve’ themselves. Next up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is that of belongingness, which we try to address through building a rapport with the client based on Rogerian principles of respect, congruence and unconditional regard and trust (including confidentiality). Being effective here means learning to recognise and appropriately respond to the subtleties of human communication signals be they verbal, vocal or body language. To facilitate success and enhance motivation to continue with the programme, we need to help the client meet their Esteem Needs, their feelings of accomplishment in relation to their animal’s behaviour.
In this talk I will give a brief introduction to three other inter-related factors which can affect belongingness and self-esteem, namely the concepts of attachment, empathy, and parenting styles. These have profound effects on our adult relationships, with people and animals, and our resilience to the vagaries of life and flexibility to change attitudes and behaviour. I hope this talk facilitates further understanding of why we see differences between clients when supporting them in developing and maintaining new ways of interacting with their animals.
Presenter Bio:
Based at the University of Southampton, School of Psychology, Dr Anne McBride is a senior lecturer in the field of Applied Animal Behaviour and Human-Animal Interactions.
She began practising as an animal behaviourist in the mid-1980s and founded the PG Diploma/Masters in Companion Animal Behaviour Counselling at Southampton, the first British academically recognised qualification in the field which ran from 1994-2015.
Since its inception in 2010, Anne has been an active supporter of the Animal Behaviour and Training Council – whose aim is to raise standards of knowledge, understanding and skills in the profession in a robust yet accessible manner, as evidenced by its Assessment of Prior Experience and/or Learning (APEL) route.
Anne is extremely proud to be the current Chair of the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors – of which she has been a member for 35 years!
Price: APBC members £17.50; ABTC members £30; Non-members £40
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