Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show. I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate about helping you master your animal training skills using the most positive and least intrusive approaches. Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the vast challenges you encounter in training requires a comprehensive base of knowledge and experience. It's common to face obstacles and rough patches on your journey that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we have been on a mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide. We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their positive impact on all the animal and human learners they work with. We are excited to do the same for you. Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this free podcast episode as we explore new ways to help you supercharge your training skills, grow your knowledge, and build your confidence so that you can craft a life that positively impacts every learner you encounter. We will start today's episode where I'm super excited to welcome back to the show one Ulrika Andreasen.
If you haven't listened to the first part of our conversation, you can find it in the previous episode on whatever app you're listening to this show on. In that episode, we explored Ula's journey in getting started with positive reinforcement animal training and what led her to her current species. She's working with multiple species, but one of the species she's currently working with, reindeer. It's definitely worth a listen.
However, if you haven't listened to it yet, you are, of course, welcome to hang out and start here with part two. We also gain plenty of insights. We're going to be talking about cross-species insights today to help you grow your skills, knowledge, and confidence in animal training. Let's dive in. Ula has been practicing reward-based training for 25 years and currently works full-time as a teacher and trainer specializing in dogs, horses, and as mentioned, reindeer.
She has demonstrated the power of clicker training in some unique areas, including training the first Labrador to become a Swedish ski drawing champion, which we talked a lot about in episode one, and winning two gold medals at the Swedish National Sled Dog Championship.
Twelve years ago, she also began training reindeer for film and events and has since participated in several movies, performed twice at the Sweden International Horse Show, and showcased her skills at the opening ceremonies of the World Championship in Biathlon Alpine Skiing. Today, Ula trains hunting dogs not to hunt reindeer using a redirection technique known as tattling.
She also offers courses in gundog retrieving, obedience, and puppy training while continuing to train her reindeer for tourist events, film, and live performances. In her spare time, she practices academic riding with her two horses. Ula, thanks so much for coming back to hang out with us again on the Animal Training Academy podcast show. Thank you, Ryan. It's nice to be back. I'm really excited today to talk about, as mentioned, insights from training different species.
And I don't think there are going to be many listeners of this show, if any, I'm not sure, who have had the privilege of training as extensively with reindeer as you have. I'm not sure how many of our listeners have even trained a single reindeer, let alone the extensive training you've done. So I can't wait to dive in and learn from your experience today and hear your insights.
And I believe you put together a list for us of five things training a reindeer has taught you about being a better trainer. But before we talk about that, can you just... I mean, everyone knows what a reindeer is, right? Because it's Christmas. But people's idea of what a reindeer is because it's Christmas might not actually really represent the living, breathing species. Can you just share a little bit with our listeners about reindeer and what reindeer are? Absolutely.
So reindeer, they only come out at Christmas when they pull Santa's sleigh. So it is right. The rest of the time, they live in Santa Land. They fly without wings. No. Okay, actually, I had guests saying, oh, I only think reindeer were cartoon. So I understand not every country you realize reindeer is a real living animal. So let's dive into that. Reindeer is one kind of deer where they live together in big numbers. Most of the time, it can be 20 or 200 reindeer in the herd.
In Sweden, there are no wild reindeers. In other parts of the world, there is wild reindeer as well. In North America, for example. And they also have a few in Norway. But in Sweden, all reindeers are owned by someone. And it can be an animal trainer and zookeeper like myself. But all the reindeer roaming free in Sweden are owned by the Sami people, our indigenous people. But they live up in the mountains in summer time and down the forest winter time, eating lichen.
It's the only animal in Sweden we have that eat lichen. And they are specialized in that. So they are really resistant to cold and really well adapted to live in the snowy mountains of the north. And they lose their antler every year and new ones grow out. They don't keep their same set of rack, same rack of antler all life. They drop them every year and new ones grow out. Do you have any questions? Well, firstly, there's not a single reindeer in New Zealand, I checked.
Secondly, is it both male and females that grow antlers or just males? Exactly. It's the only deer where both male and female have antlers. And that's because they live in so big numbers. So after the rut season, the males drop their antlers. They fight about the females and then they don't need antlers anymore. So they drop them. And even though the females can have half the weight of a male, they get higher in the ranking system within the group when they have antlers.
So they keep them until May when their calf is born. And then they get to eat before the males do all winter long because they need the food better. So they can eat because they've still got antlers? Yes. And if you have antlers and they're small, you can tell a bigger guy to move away. And you do. Yes. And do the antlers grow bigger every year? Yeah, up to a certain point where they start to decline when the animal gets old. And it doesn't develop much from year five to nine.
Then it gets a little bit bigger every year, but not much. And then when the animal gets old, it declines a bit. And do they eat more things than just lichen? What else do they eat? Yeah, absolutely. They are specialized to eat lichen. But in summertime, they graze, they eat grass, leaves, mushroom, all kinds of herbs. In wintertime, they mostly eat lichen, but also blueberry bushes and stuff like that. But they have to dig through the snow to find it on the ground.
And they're not from Sweden originally or they are from Sweden originally? Originally, they've been here for a really, really, really long time. But I can't tell you from which country they came from first. So who are the Somi people and why do the Somi people own reindeer? The Somi people are indigenous people that lived here for a very, very long time. And back in the days, they lived together with the reindeer and they stayed in tents.
And when there was no more food for the reindeers to eat on a certain area where they were, they packed up their camp and they moved to another place together with the herd. And today, they don't live in tents anymore. They live in houses and they track their reindeer herds by GPS and they gather them with motor vehicles like helicopters and cross bikes and quads. Back in the days, they went on skis with a dog and moved with the herd.
But yeah, in Sweden and the north, like Norway, Finland, there's been Somi people. I can't tell you how long, but a long, long time. Okay, cool. So you grew up in this area where there are reindeer and you would see reindeer, but you knew that those reindeer were owned by someone, they were owned by... Yeah, I had a Somi boy in my school, for example, where I went to school when I was a child, there was also Somi boys. And I knew it was their reindeer.
And so one day you were just like, there's a reindeer, I'm going to start clicker training. How did you come to be... Because your business and your website and your business name is based around reindeer. So reindeer are, correct me if I'm wrong, reindeer are a significant part of your training, of your business, of your life. Absolutely. It was what made me unique as a clicker trainer because I don't know anyone else that trick train reindeer. And yeah, definitely not here in Sweden.
And I wanted to, ever since I was a child, I wanted to work with animal training and I wanted to teach them funny stuff for movies, for example. That was my goal since I was seven years old. And I figured out there were no trick trained reindeer in the world when I did some Googling.
And I thought if I'm the only one in the world having trick trained reindeer and the only one in Sweden, it should be possible to work at least part time with training them and doing movies and commercials, for example. Since the reindeer have such a strong symbolic value for the mountains, northern part of Sweden and Christmas time. So that's why I bought reindeer and didn't start to train any other breed because I live in the middle of the forest in the northern part of Sweden.
I could train a dog to do kind of anything and it would still be a well enough trained dog closer to the big cities like Stockholm. I have 600 kilometers going there. So it's quite a journey. It takes a whole day to drive. And it's also costly with gasoline and everything. So they would never hire me to do a job at a commercial with the dog. So if I wanted to train with that, I had to do something no one else does. That was kind of my idea. So I'm getting multiple motivations here.
One started when you were seven years old and you just thought, I want to train reindeer for movies or to do tricks. Train animals for movies. Could be dogs as well. And then there's this other motivation that is unique to you in so much as where you're living, both in the world with reindeer present there and just your location and your country that you had to be creative with a business idea. Yes. And I also think it's really motivating for me to train stuff that no one else trained before.
So you don't know how it's done. You can't read about it. You have to figure it out yourself. I really love that challenge. And by training an animal no one else trains clicker wise, you have that challenge every day. And sure, I learned a lot from this journey. Yes. Both about reindeer myself and the clicker training, of course. And you said that there wasn't anyone at the time that does trick training with reindeers.
Have people since then taken, followed your lead and started trick training reindeers? No, I don't know if anyone do it today. I went to Alaska to help a lady train her reindeer a bit, but I don't think she kept up with the trick training after I left. But I met Bob Bailey at a clinic and learned that he trained reindeer many years ago. Of course he did. He's done it all. So I wasn't first, but he also quit. You don't have a reindeer to hire if you want to do a commercial.
You said you've learned a lot. They've taught you a lot about training, about them as a species, about yourself. And you come up with a list of five things training reindeer have taught you about being a better trainer. Can you start us off with number one? Absolutely. OK, let's see if I can stick to just five. But the first one is about reinforcement. Reindeer taught me to consider carefully what to use as a reinforcer.
And I think no matter what animal you're training, you have to think about that. And reindeer, they don't generally like being touched. It's really few times that my animals ask me to scratch them, for example. They like to stand close together because that's safe. There's more eyes to look out for wolves and bears and whatnot that want to eat them. But they don't interact like dogs or horses would, scratching each other, licking each other. And they don't themselves like being pet by nature.
I taught all of them to be pets because I have to make sure they're fine and, you know, do husbandry training with them. But they don't appreciate it as a reinforcer. And I think a lot of us, when training dogs and horses, for example, we think that all of those animals like being touched and that it is a reinforcer to being scratched, for example.
And I see a lot of my horses and trainings, people, most of the time they click, they give a dog a treat and then they try to also pet it on the head or under the cheek. And the dog back away and says like, no, I don't want scratches right now. But the humans fail to see it and they do it again. And I have to say like, yeah, I see your dog backing off. I don't think it appreciates being touched right now in this setting. And they're like, oh, well, I always used to scratch him.
And of course, in other situations, they appreciate it, but not in a training session where also food is available. So to think about like what is reinforcing for my animal right now in this situation. And can also be people telling me at a class, oh, my dog isn't interested in the treat I have. OK, what do you have? Yeah, I have meatballs and he doesn't want it. And I say, OK, give me the meatball and I play with it a little bit and let the dog chase it and like steal it from me.
And it goes wild. And OK, like that. And they're like, oh, you can serve it like that as well. And I say, yeah, sure you can. And to be really interested in noticing what this animal you have in front of you like, like at this specific moment and in this situation, what you were planning on reinforcing with, is it a reinforcer at this time or is it not? It's the animal that decides if it's a reinforcer or not. And I think quite often I see people fail on this topic.
And so what is the reinforcers that you use for your reindeer? OK, so reindeer, they love to eat lichen and lichen. There are hundreds of types of lichen and we have one growing on the ground called the reindeer lichen. It's easy to pick and quite often I use that as a reinforcer. But up in the trees, it also grows lichen called beard lichen because it looks like beard hanging there. And quite a few of my reindeer consider that an even better treat.
So whenever and it doesn't get OK, the white lichen growing from the ground can easily split up in small pieces that end up on the ground. So if I'm doing a movie job, for example, it's not good if I if I have the reindeer standing on the platform and then treat end up on the ground in small pieces because it will be distracting for them.
So if I'm teaching something hard or doing a job where it has to be like really clean loops in the training, I climb trees and pick this beard lichen and then I have like one step higher of reinforcement value for my reindeer. And depending on which one, two of them also love pelleted food. They can use pellets as a reinforcer. So it depends on which reindeer I'm training. I have one reindeer and he love Icelandic lichen and that's another type that you have to find and pick.
But knowing what kind of lichen or pelleted food have the highest value for this special reindeer I'm training right now is going to be crucial for doing good sessions. But never scratches. No. Never scratches? No. How would you describe the average reindeer in terms of its behaviour around novel stimuli that one might label as a little bit scary? Are they standoffish? Is proximity a big reinforcer? I want space from things or are they quite inquisitive animals?
They are really curious and I think they are less spooky than horses for example. And of course I also quite early reinforce them for interacting with different objects. And they are curious to interact with and play around with different things. Absolutely. Really curious. So how many reindeer do you have? Right now I have four reindeer but in total I've had ten reindeer that I've trained. And has there been an individual from that ten that has been different?
Has kind of stood out as having some novel reinforcer that the others didn't? Like one that liked pets? My first reindeer, Rudolf, he could ask me to pet him behind the ear. And some of them I have now can do that too but it's quite rare. But him and I, we spent so much time together. I don't even know how many hours. But he was a real special reindeer that came really close to my heart. And I think that often happens when you spend a lot of time together.
You get really close and you get to understand each other on a different level than if you only hang out now and then. He could ask me to scratch him but not as a reinforcer. It was more like when we hang out together on a walk or just chilling in the enclosure or something. Then he could say, yeah, can you scratch me behind the ear? But as a reinforcer I would never guess on that because most of the time I would guess wrong. So I only did it when he asked me to.
Lichen takes a decent amount of time to grow, right? You can't pick lichen and then go back there next week and pick more lichen. No, no. It takes a year for it to grow back, a year or two. So you don't pick on the same spot. But there are areas in Sweden where it's totally white. It's white as far as you can see. So if you pick 10 bags there, you can't even tell someone was there because it grows a lot. And from the trees it grows also a lot.
So picking from the trees, you can only climb so high and there will be plenty, plenty of lichen further up the tree. So wintertime, the reindeer that roam free, if they are lucky, there's a storm where all the branches break from the trees and fall down on the snow with lichen on. And then they can eat lichen on top of the snow instead of having to dig through the snow to get to the ground. So lichen hanging from the trees is a really good source of food for reindeer, also roaming free.
Amazing, amazing. What is number two of the five things and potentially more than five things that reindeer have taught you about being a better trainer? OK, so what I did a lot with my reindeer is training them to perform in novel and strange environments. Since I do movies, commercials and like opening the world championship in biathlon, it's really complex environments where the animals are performing. And I want them to be confident and happy at all times in new environments.
And then you have to do a lot of environmental training in really small steps, obviously, at first and do it more and more complex as you go. And I think both doing this environmental training where you just take them to different environments, having a Swedish fika, as we say, we just sit down, chill and have snacks is one part. But then to to perform a behavior in the new environments, I come back to that the key is a really fluent behavior.
If the behavior is fluent enough and of course, you had trained the animal to be in different environments, then it's OK. I wouldn't say easy, but in this context, anyway, easy to to succeed. If the if the behavior is fluent enough and the environmental training have been good enough, then you have a chance to put it together. But when you do like opening ceremonies for competition, if you do a movie, you can always do another take with a camera, right? You can you can film it five times over.
It's OK. But if you open a competition that's directly sent on TV as well, then you have one chance and you have to like nail it or it's a total failure. And at that times, I always I find it so interesting for me to see if I can pull it off. And and it's a lot of training. I trained my reindeer for one and a half year before opening this championships at the opening ceremony. He was supposed to walk up to the man doing a speech and grab his speech by the teeth with the teeth and throw it away.
And it was up on a stage with the choir. It was dark. There were big lights, cameras, 4000 people watching in front of us. And, you know, it was a really hard environment that my village with 10 houses. I mean, you can't you can't stage up a scene like that to train on. It's impossible. So you have to do environmental training in small step with all different kind of stimuli to be able to then put it together at the opening ceremony. Right.
But figure out with reindeer anyway, if you have like a school class standing three metres from your reindeer doing applause, it's kind of like having 3000 people on 15 metres doing applause. So you have to like do what you can and teach the reindeer to just walk up to a person and grab what is holding. No matter how the environment around this person look like, because it wasn't supposed to be on cue either. I was just walking up, standing next to this person.
So whenever I walked up to a person stood to his left, the reindeer would walk in front of me up to this person and grab this piece of paper. And it was so fun. I was in the class with Eva Bertilsson at that time. We were doing a class with both horses, dogs, and I brought the reindeer. And Eva said after this after this course, yeah, the horses had problems with reindeer and dogs and the dogs had problems with horses and reindeer. But the reindeer didn't have any problems with anyone.
And I think that's due to all this environmental training we did. It doesn't matter who or what is standing around. If I lined up with the person, he was walking up, see if he could grab something. So what I learned is you need the behavior fluent and you have to train it in so many different setups for it to be really resilient and what's the word in English? Like trustable? No, that's not the word. To make it work every time. Reliable. Reliable. Thank you very much.
Yes. And so did the behavior occur on the day, in the moment, during the opening ceremony? Yes, it worked out fine. He did so well. And, you know, at that time when they just nail it, then it's worth all the effort all the time. One and a half years training, you're like, yep, I did it. Next challenge, please. I don't think, I don't think you can feel better than those days when you train a lot and nailed it. I love that feeling. Did the audience find it hilarious? They did. Amazing.
What is number three? Number three, splitting. I think people think it's easy to use lumping when training animals. And I think a lot of dogs are checking out due to lumping. The reindeers taught me to be a splitter, like for real a splitter. If I'm teaching a dog to retrieve, OK, this is not an exact number, but let's just grab one. I might split it up in 20 or 30 different little pieces. And if I do it with the reindeer, it's at least 100, you know, split it, split it.
I think nowadays I split it just as much with the dog because it goes faster. But to keep a reindeer interested in training, you have to make the task so easy to make it worth for the reindeer to keep interacting and figuring out stuff. They don't have much interest of just hanging out. They could go search for reinforcers in their big enclosure if they want to.
And I think it's important for me that they always have the option to check out and go look for reinforcers in their big enclosure while training. So that I always know if they are comfortable and if it's interesting enough for them to do the training and keep interacting with me. And the big thing is splitting it up in so small pieces that they easily can manage to get another reinforcer. Sorry, go on. I think that's important for any animal that you train.
Split enough to make it worth the effort for the animal. What do you think? Is there any behavior you can think of that you were training with an individual reindeer where you had to split it up even more than you knew that you had to split it up? This reindeer that I opened the ceremony with, I spent a year teaching him to grab and pull something. He was so, so careful and he wasn't a really forward-going reindeer. He was really thoughtful, but he was quite shy and he wasn't bold forward-going.
He was a sensitive reindeer and for him to grab something, it didn't come easy. So it's kind of funny that he was the reindeer I did it with. But you know, I guess I liked the challenge to build that up with him. And yeah, we did splitting. Sometimes with some reindeer, you don't have to split. Like my little white reindeer I have right now, he offered me a rear standing on his hind legs. First time I accidentally put the target stick a bit higher and I was like, what?
I can work for months with that, with other reindeer, but he just offered it himself. So sure, sometimes lumping is the way. If they just throw the behavior at you, click and reinforce, come on. But there was one of those reindeer where I had to split it up a lot. Yeah, definitely. I can imagine that, not to name your five things for you, but one of them would be patience. Oh, yes.
If you're using the example of having to split a behavior for a dog 20 or 30 times and a reindeer 100 times, how did you find that decision making process in terms of knowing that you've just got to keep going with this training plan and the shaping steps that you have in your mind and maybe staying on whatever repetition you're on enough? How do you juggle that between going, oh, maybe this isn't working and I need to readjust my plan?
Of course, whenever I teach a reindeer, the first years when I trained the reindeer, something I never taught before, I wrote down the training plan with every criteria. And then I went out to train, checked in a box what criteria did I reach today? And when I got stuck, like, OK, why didn't I go from this criteria to the next? Then I came up with five or 10 new criterias in between, went out, did training. Let's see what I can check off. And what criterias didn't we meet today?
Can I come up with even more criterias if I'm stuck? And I like every day made the plan, did the training, went back to the plan and did another one. And if I have a problem I can't solve, I'm like just more motivated to solve it. I have to solve it to sleep at night. So I think this is what's so funny for me. If it goes too easy, I'm like, OK, I need a better challenge. Then it's not fun anymore. So, yeah, for example, we did. I had a reindeer, he loved to jump fences.
I taught him to jump fences like an agility dog. Frost was his name. And he had a lot of speed and energy. So I ran beside and guided him what fences to jump. And we jumped the course on Sweden International Horse Show. And he did great and it was fun. And the person there hiring us, he said, yeah, can't you come back next year and do a burning course? Jump a course that's burning. And I said, yeah, OK, let's do that. And I knew it's, of course, possible. We just have to do it in small steps.
And, like, the first criteria was eat your dinner five meters away from a burning candle. And then, you know, step it up piece by piece by piece by piece until he, like, jumped through fire. And small enough steps to make him comfortable all the way and never hesitate jumping, even though there was fire. Close by, under the fence, further, higher and higher on the fence. And, yeah, so on. And I think it's all about splitting and doing small enough criteria to help them succeed every session.
And with teaching my moose hunting dog to retrieve a dumbbell was also like splitting. She also taught me about splitting because she was like about to throw up when she saw a dumbbell. She had no interest in grabbing that. They don't have that in them at all. But in the end, she retrieved happily this dumbbell and had the highest score on the competition on grabbing dumbbells. So, I mean, it's just reinforcement history and splitting into small pieces.
That's like, I think if I have to name one thing to be a good trainer, it would be split, split, split, split. That's, in my eyes, one of the best. The best trainer is the one splitting it down in smallest, smallest possible piece. So it's easy for the animal to succeed. Yeah. Love it. Number four. Number four, let's see. Okay. What the reindeers taught me, number four. I learned a lot from reindeers when teaching them to interact with other people.
So most of our animals will interact with other people at some point. If you have dogs, it happens all the time, right? But no matter what animal, it's veterinarians and whatnot. And people are not perfect. So even if my reindeer are comfortable hanging out with me, they hang out with tourists. When we did movies, we hang out with the staff doing the production, and they meet a lot of people. And people are not perfect.
So training animals for interacting with not perfect people, I think that's a really big part of making animals comfortable through life. If they know that sometimes people come running, children come running, they slip and fall over next to them. Yeah, that's just how people are. And teach them what to do. And I train reindeers a lot. So like stand still, looking forward. Stand still, facing forward. Because they also have a huge rack of antler.
So if they turn around fast or if they move fast, it's a big risk of something getting stuck in those antlers, including myself. So at all times, just stand still, facing forward. I think that's a good basic behavior. And I teach them to offer that even if people like fall on the ground behind them, next to them, in front of them, come running, running away, screaming, singing, clapping their hands, you know, whatever.
Make them comfortable with doing this behavior, no matter what people around them are doing. Also to act in movies, like quite strange thing can happen around an animal. And when I do movies with the reindeer, there's quite a lot little elves and Father Christmas is staring, you know. It's a lot of little special creatures on those movies. And I want the reindeer to be comfortable around all of them.
So quite often I dress up like the Grinch or something and do training sessions to make them comfortable with everything and anything. And also teach them to be handled by other people. I want them to be able to come and duck into their head stall when another person offers it, to be touched by other people, to do their platform behaviors next to actors and stuff like that.
And I think it's a good idea for any animal to be trained to be in situations like that, because sooner or later you will end up in a situation where people doesn't behave as they are used to and they can be scared, they can be angry. You don't know until it happens, right? Wonderful. And I got lots of questions, but as per normal, we will run out of time if I ask more questions. So let's go on to number five, please. Okay, number five is like a big one for me.
And it's always listen to your animal. You have to be observant of any signs of them being uncomfortable, tense or even angry. To not put them into difficult situations and be quick to adjust the environment when it happens, because it will happen sometimes, of course, the world isn't perfect. And I have a story that taught me this, like the hard way. It's also a bit funny looking back. At the time, it wasn't funny at all. My first two reindeer, they go into rut every autumn, right?
So first year they are small and cute and they play around. The next year they play a bit harder and practice a bit more fighting in the rut season. But it's still okay. But when they're three years old, they are like grown up and then it's not fun anymore. Then it's like for real. And before I castrated my first reindeer males, they went into rut third year and I was just as usual bringing them from the pen.
We were walking up to the car, I was supposed to put them in the trailer and go training with them. And that had never been a problem. I just put the head stall on each of them, had a two meter leash to lead them with. I had one reindeer in my right hand, one in my left hand and off we went to the car. Easy peasy. But today, this day when I did it, I could see when I walked out of the enclosure that Rudolf, he was tense. He was like walking quite stiff with a little bit starry eyes.
And his friend, he was a bit smaller than him, Frost. He was a smaller reindeer. He were lower in ranking and he just walks as usual on my left side. It wasn't a problem, but Rudolf was stiff. And the thought crossed my mind like, okay, should I leave one in the enclosure and bring them one and one up to the car? But it was like a 300 meters walk. And I thought I didn't have the time. So I just said, Rudolf, come on, let's walk forward. A bit, you know, come on.
Don't be ridiculous kind of thought. And then you always slip, right? Don't be ridiculous. Whenever you think that about an animal, you lost your way. And I did because we walked maybe 10 meters and then Rudolf had it. He considered me at that time being like his little wife because I'm a female and he went into rut season. And he thought the other male was too close. So it was fine when they were alone in the enclosure and he held the distance.
But when a resource like myself entered, he didn't want him as close. So he attacked his reindeer friend. And unfortunately, I was standing in between them. So I ended up in his antler. They have a really strong neck. When they go into rut, it's like with bulls. You say they see red. You say that he was like not. It wasn't possible to contact him at all. He was just attacking this reindeer. And I didn't feel he even noticed me hanging in his antler over his head.
And yeah, that went out quite well since I'm alive. But I had one tip of the antler going into my bum. So I had quite a bad wound. When I stepped off the reindeer antler, I felt like, oh crap, this was no good. I put them in the trailer and I went to my veterinarian because I'm quite scared of the doctor. And I don't want to be stitched with the needle. I think all that's for me like horrible.
So I went to my veterinarian and I put my pants down and lay down over her table and said, you have to fix my bum and no stitches, please. And no, she laughed. She laughed and she laughed. But she said, yeah, I have quite a good glue. I can glue it together. So she cleaned it and glued it. And she gave my two bulls like a shot of hormone reducing thing like Depo or something. So they would chill out a bit with this testosterone. And yeah, and she was laughing.
But then she said like, OK, this was quite close to the big, big artery. You know, you have to be careful. And I got my two bulls castrated. And yeah, I learned about reindeer rut season, like the hard way. But I also learned a lot about reading the small signs because there were signs and I ignored them. And I shouldn't have. And if you ignore the signs of dogs, maybe it doesn't get as serious. But still, I think it's important to not make your animal uncomfortable.
And it's also important to keep yourself and people around you safe. And the big part of that is reading the small signs and make sure your animal is confident and happy in the environment you put them in. Yeah, well, it's a powerful reminder that sounds like it could have ended up much worse. Yes, much worse. Lucky that it didn't. So thank you for sharing that. It was also hilarious. Yes, it is. But scary and a great reminder, a great lesson and insightful story as well.
So thank you for sharing that. To go through the list again of the five things reindeer have taught you. Obviously, as you mentioned earlier, there's more than five, but five that we've talked about today. The importance of reinforcement and knowing your reinforcement for your learner. The importance of teaching them how to teach and for your reindeer, teaching them to perform in complex environments. The most important one, one might say, to be a splitter, not a lumper. Yeah, be a splitter.
And make sure you get the right behaviour. Teaching them how to interact with people and to always listen to your animal. Well, thank you so much for sharing this, all of us today. All of us. Sadly, though, this does bring us to the final question. And it's what I love to ask all our guests. And I'm wondering from your perspective, what would you like to see happen in the animal training world over the next five to ten years?
I would love to see more, a bigger number of species being trained with positive reinforcement. I mean, husbandry training with all kinds of animals, please. It's so easy to do it with positive reinforcement. I'd love to see that. And a big part of what I do is training bird hunting dogs to do this kind of redirection training when we teach them to not hunt reindeer. But when they encounter reindeer, turn around and contact with your handler. And I also teach them a lot of retrieving.
And back in the days, they were using electric shocks to train this behaviour, not to hunt reindeer. It's not legal in Sweden today. Thankful for that. But many people, they don't even have an idea that it would be possible to do with positive reinforcement. And the retrieve have also a history of being trained really harsh with a lot of punishment.
And I'm happy for every hunting dog coming here with an open-minded trainer to teach those things with positive reinforcement and click training instead. And I would love to see, of course, all dogs, but especially the group hunting dogs. I see a lot of hunting dogs and I know they are trained really harsh. And I would love to see all of them being clicker trained in 10 years. It's a big area of punishment still.
Well, I think every listener of this show resonates with that, whether it's with hunting or whatever area, industry, space, animals and dogs are treated like that. And I'm pumped to add reindeer to our library today and to make this episode with you, Ulis, to show what's possible with positive reinforcement in the species that we haven't talked about on Animal Training Academy before. So thank you for the gift of allowing us to do that.
Can you just, before we officially, officially wrap up, just remind everyone listening where they can go to find you online and get in touch. Yeah, on my website, it's easy to get in touch with me and read more about reindeer training and dog training. And it is ulisrudolf.se. And you can also find Ulis Rudolf on Facebook and Instagram. Fantastic. And we will, of course, link to all of us in the show notes as well. This has been so much fun for myself and on behalf of everyone listening.
Thank you so much. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your morning to come and hang out with us here at ATA. Thank you, Ryan. It was a pleasure to hang out with you. And thanks a lot for a great podcast. And thank you so much for listening as well. This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off from this episode of the Animal Training Academy podcast show. We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox.
Remember, every challenge in training is an opportunity to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery. Embrace the rough patches, learn from them and keep improving. And don't forget, the path to growing your skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this episode. Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive membership, where you will find a community of trainers just like you. Together, we're making a huge positive difference in the lives of animal and human learners worldwide.
Until next time, keep honing your skills, stay awesome. And remember, every interaction with an animal or human learner is your opportunity to create ripples. We're here, cheering you on every step of the way. See you at the next episode.