The Animal Behavior Center, LLC is an educational training center located in NW Ohio for all people interested in animals and increasing their relationships and quality of care through positive reinforcement interaction. We promote and focus on force free training and interaction with animals not only through positive reinforcement training, but understandable approaches and applications in behavior analysis.
Do Animals Have Emotions?
Imagine, what would life be without emotions? Emotions are a state of consciousness that coincide with physiological changes. Our emotions affect mood and how we interact with our environment. They both reinforce and punish behavior. They can be deciding factors in...
read moreMy top 10 Checklist for Healthy Animal Behavior
The new year is here! Many people don't like this time of year because the days are short and cold. The nights are long and linger. I LOVE this time of year. Are you kidding me? The animals sleep longer and this gives me the few months I need each year to plan and...
read moreMy Concern With Using Force With Any Animal
As a professional animal trainer and educator using approaches in Applied Behavior Analysis with any animal, I share many concerns in using force and coercion with any animal. I train a lot of zoo animals. Many of these animals could easily cause harm, whether...
read morePreparing Our Animals For The Fourth of July & The Unexpected
The celebrations of the Fourth of July can be pretty stressful for animals in our care. I did a Facebook live-stream for Coffee With The Critters a few weeks ago on this subject. It's about an hour long, so if you can bear with me, I give a lot of tips and tricks I...
read moreOstrich Chick Enrichment
We have four ostrich chicks here at The Animal Behavior Center for training and exercise and to identify ostrich enrichment. They are three weeks old and here from Indian Creek Zoo in Lambertville, Michigan. We are quickly learning about ostrich, their reinforcers,...
read moreAn Interview with Trevor Smith on Designing Training Plans for Animals
Training is communication. Positive reinforcement training is the best form of communication I have found with any animal. Animals read our body language and respond to what they interpret we are communicating. I take the same approach with any domestic animal as I do...
read moreTestimonials
As a future veterinary behaviorist, I aspire to reach Lara's level of finesse, expertise, and thoughtfulness in every aspect of animal training and husbandry. She is truly in it for the animals."