Fort Worth Zoo has it all—the constantly upgrading zoo has been nationally ranked by Family Life magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, and has been commended as one of the top zoos in the South by Southern Living magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards. The 94-year-old facility is home to more than 5,000 native and exotic animals and employs 65 animal trainers and keepers/managers to work with its animals.

One important aspect of the zoo’s dedicated cooperation with animals is the ability of its animal keepers to also serve as animal trainers—two duties that are virtually inseparable for Fort Worth Zoo’s training coordinator, Angi Millwood. To effectively conduct animal training on-site, she says, Fort Worth Zoo must properly train its keepers.

According to Millwood, the first step in acclimating new keepers to the Fort Worth Zoo is to put them, along with all the other keepers and supervisors at the facility, through a two-hour workshop on animal training. The workshop is meant to introduce the zoo’s philosophies about training to new staff keepers and outline each position’s role in daily zoo operations. Additionally, she says, the workshop discusses basic animal training terminologies to give all staff members a common language at the zoo and touches on problem solving, the importance of training at the facility, and how to shape animal behaviors.

During the workshop, new staffers are given a workshop packet to take home with them, a training manual, and a book called Don’t Shoot the Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor. This is a book that encourages positive reinforcement in training situations, whether it involves a human trying to kick a habit, a parent dealing with an unruly child, or an owner trying to train a pet. For Millwood, the book encompasses many elements of what professional animal training is all about and provides a great reference for Fort Worth Zoo’s keepers.

Following the workshop, the fun begins. Millwood explains that the most beneficial training for the keepers is hands on, face-to-face interaction with the animals. But how do you ease keepers into interaction with an animal if they are new to the zoo and have not yet invested the time to build trust and a comfort level with the animal? You play a training game.

The training game involves keepers’ participation on many different levels, and “teaches the keepers patience with the animal, what it feels like to be the animal when you can’t communicate, and that there are 100 different ways to train every behavior,” Millwood says.

During the game, one person volunteers to be a trainer and another person volunteers to be an animal, then chooses which animal he or she will be. The animal then leaves the room while the remaining panel of players decides what behavior the trainer will train. The trainer is given several tools, including a target (a wooden dowel with a pool float at the end of it) and a clicker (a small box with a metal tongue that makes a cricket-like click-click sound when it is pressed). “When the animal returns to the room, the trainer must figure out the best way to train the animal without being able to speak to it at all, just using the clicker for communication,” Millwood says.

After the behavior is taught, a discussion session ensues in which the participant who played the trainer and the participant who played the animal talk about how the training session felt from each of their perspectives. The panel of observers also offers up suggestions and feedback on the training so that in future training situations, this feedback can help guide all of the keepers who participated in the game.

In response to the development of the Fort Worth Zoo’s keeper training program, Millwood explains that the philosophy behind training animals and training people is “exactly the same.” She mentions stomach rubs, alfalfa snacks, and lots of love that are given to Fort Worth Zoo animals who respond well to the behavioral training they receive from their keepers. Similarly, she talks of recognition cards, awards, and small parties that are given by supervisors to commend hardworking staff and to maintain a good morale among successful keepers. “There have been several studies that show that punishment is not really an effective way to train a child. You’re much better off rewarding and praising them when they do the right thing. So we kind of use those same principles. We base our training on positive reinforcement. We reward the animals for doing the right thing, so if I have trainers who are doing a great job, I will reward them just the same,” says Millwood.