Of dolphins and men
By Amy Sutherland, January 2007
How exotic-animal trainers helped cure my husband's bad habits – and a few of my own.
As I wash the dishes, my husband paces behind me, irritated. "Have you seen my keys?" he snarls, then huffs and stomps from the room with our dog, Dixie, anxiously at his heels. In the past I would have been right behind Dixie. I would have joined the hunt while trying to soothe my husband with homilies such as, "Don't worry, they'll turn up."
But that only made him angrier, and a simple case of missing keys soon would become an angst-ridden drama starring the two of us and one poor, nervous dog.
Now, I focus on the wet dishes. I don't turn around. I don't say a word. I'm using a technique I learnt from a dolphin trainer.
I love my husband. He is well-read and adventurous. But he also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and mercurial. He hovers in the kitchen when I'm trying to concentrate on the simmering pans. He suffers from serious bouts of spousal deafness, but never fails to hear me when I mutter to myself on the other side of the house. "What did you say?" he'll shout.
These minor annoyances are not the stuff of separation and divorce but, basically, they began to dull my love. I wanted – needed – to nudge Scott a little closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a little less, who wouldn't keep me waiting at restaurants: a mate who would be easier to love.
So, like many wives before me, I ignored a library of advice books and set about improving him. By nagging, of course, which only made his behaviour worse: he'd drive faster instead of slower; shave less frequently, not more; and leave his reeking bike garb on the bedroom floor longer than ever.
We went to a counsellor. She didn't understand what we were doing there and complimented us repeatedly on how well we communicated. I gave up and resigned myself to stretches of slow-boil resentment and occasional sarcasm. Then something happened.
Reward and ignore
For a book I was writing about a school for exotic-animal trainers, I spent days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail clipping and baboons to skateboard. I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip, and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the husband. The central lesson I learnt from exotic-animal trainers is that I should reward behaviour I like and ignore behaviour I don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the husband.
Back home, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the laundry basket. If he threw in two, I'd kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any discarded clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.
I was using what trainers call "approximations", rewarding the small steps towards learning a whole new behaviour. You can't expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you can't expect a husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock. With the baboon, you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to praise every small act every time: if he drove just a bit slower, tossed one pair of underpants into the laundry basket, or was on time for anything.
Step 2 – analyse
I also began to analyse my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic animal.
Enlightened trainers learn all they can about a species – from anatomy to social structure – to understand how it thinks, what it likes and dislikes, what comes easily to it and what doesn't. For example, an elephant is a herd animal, so it responds to hierarchy. It cannot jump. It is a vegetarian.
The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy matters, but being in a group doesn't so much. He has the balance of a gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes naturally, but being on time does not. An omnivore, he is what a trainer would call food-driven.
Once I started thinking this way, I couldn't stop. At the school, I'd be scribbling notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf accept you as a pack member, but I'd be thinking, I can't wait to try this on Scott.
Incompatible behaviour
On one field trip with the students, I listened to a professional trainer describe how he'd taught African crested cranes to stop landing on his head and shoulders. He did this by training the leggy birds to land on mats on the ground. This, he explained, is what is called an "incompatible behaviour" – a simple but brilliant concept. Rather than teach the cranes to stop landing on him, the trainer taught the birds something else, a behaviour that would make the undesirable behaviour impossible. The birds couldn't alight on the mats and his head simultaneously. At home, I came up with incompatible behaviours for Scott to keep him from crowding me while I cooked. To lure him away from the stove, I piled up parsley for him to chop or cheese for him to grate at the other end of the kitchen island. Or I'd set out a bowl of chips and salsa across the room. Soon I'd succeeded: no more Scott hovering around me while I cooked.
I followed the students to SeaWorld San Diego, where a dolphin trainer introduced me to least reinforcing scenario (LRS). When a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer doesn't respond in any way. He stands still for a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, then returns to work. The idea is that any response, positive or negative, fuels a behaviour. But if a behaviour provokes no response, it typically dies away. In the margins of my notes I wrote, "Try on Scott!"
It was only a matter of time before he was again tearing around the house searching for his keys, at which point I said nothing and kept at what I was doing. It took a lot of discipline to maintain my calm, but results were immediate and stunning. His temper fell far shy of its usual pitch, then waned like a fast-moving storm. I felt as if I should throw him a mackerel.
After two years of training...
Now he's at it again: I hear him banging a door shut, rustling through papers on a chest in the front hall, thumping upstairs. At the sink, I hold steady. Then, sure enough, all goes quiet. A moment later, he walks into the kitchen, keys in hand, and says calmly, "Found them." Without turning, I call out, "Great. See you later." And off he goes, with our much calmer pup.
After two years of training, my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love. I used to take his faults personally: his dirty clothes on the floor were an affront, a symbol of how he didn't care enough about me. But thinking of my husband as an exotic species gave me the distance I needed to consider our differences more objectively. I adopted the trainers' motto: "It's never the animal's fault." I brainstormed new strategies, thought up more incompatible behaviours and used smaller approximations. I dissected my own behaviour, considered how my actions might inadvertently fuel his. I also accepted that some behaviours were too entrenched, too instinctive to train away. You can't stop a badger from digging, and you can't stop my husband from losing his wallet and keys.
The trainer becomes the trained
Professionals talk of animals that understand training so well, they eventually use it back on the trainer. My animal did the same.
When the training techniques worked so beautifully, I couldn't resist telling my husband what I was up to. He wasn't offended, just amused. As I explained the techniques and terminology, he soaked it up. Far more than I realised. Last autumn, firmly in middle age, I learnt that I needed braces. They were not only humiliating but also excruciating. For weeks, my gums, teeth, jaw and sinuses throbbed. I complained frequently and loudly. Scott assured me that I would become used to all the metal in my mouth. I did not.
One morning, as I launched into yet another tirade about how uncomfortable I was, Scott just looked at me blankly. He didn't say a word or acknowledge my rant in any way, not even with a nod.
I quickly ran out of steam and started to walk away. Then I realised what was happening: he'd given me an LRS. The husband had begun to train the wife. From "The New York Times" (June 25, 2006) ? 2006 by The New York Times Co, New York
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