The Yimpsons

Countdown to San Francisco ………. that’s right, from the wet and wild of Northern Thailand, circa June 3rd 2011 to the, um .. well, uhh .. I don’t really know what adjectives to use as I have little idea what to expect; but it will be different, for sure. Though it’s not really San Francisco as such, though that is where I land; but nearby Oakland Zoo for a period of time, and then on to Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS).

The whole trip will take in three weeks, and is sponsored (read, funded) by ENP, which I am very grateful for; the purpose of which is to learn as much as I possibly can about their training programs, foot care regimes and basically anything that might presently, or subsequently, be useful and beneficial back at ENP. Training and foot care will be my particular emphasis, as the training has now become my day to day at the park. When I wrote last – if I remember correctly – I was on the verge of starting the program proper: well, the verge is now some distance behind me and there’s much to tell on how it got there.

I am assuming that readers will have been at least loosely following the blog so far, and are vaguely familiar with the training program I am referring to, so I will not go into all that again. If not, then I advise going back and reading the last few posts, and for the full experience, buy all three of my books too. It will make all the difference I assure you. Seriously. Someone; buy the books! I wasn’t joking about being broke, and … ah, sorry, I don’t know what came over me … and now I can’t find the delete key, so I will have to leave in that bit about buying all three of my books,  even though I feel really embarrassed that it slipped out.

But back to the training program. The training wall is now well and truly up and running, and – apart from a few adjustments to stop the elephants sticking their heads through the wall all the time, and one more major reconstruction after Mae Kam Puan in her blindness, crashed straight through the centre of the wall in a successful attempt to escape the onrushing Thong Suk – has been a roaring success. There are now ten elephants being trained daily at the wall, as well as the two babies each morning and evening, and Mae Kam Geaw and Mae Tee twice a day at the medical centre. So, as you can see, it is quite a full schedule, though there have been some adjustments to the line up since the beginning. before getting into that, let’s first look at the elephants in the program now.

There is of course, as I mentioned, the two babies, Chang Yim and Faa Mai; the two older girls Mae Kam Geaw and Mae Tee, who we talked about last time, and then there are the newbies; Mae Boon Ma; Mae Bua Loi; Mae Jan Peng; Mae Kam Pan; Mae Bua Kam; Mae Geaw, Mae Keaw; Jaruni; Danee and Sai Rung, our newest elephant. But the list initially also included Tilly, Mae KamPuan and Kam Sai. So let’s go through the whole list and see how they’ve all fared:

Mae Boon Ma; friend and confidant to Mae Bua Loi, Mae Boon Ma is a slightly suspicious elephant, and that has shown itself in the training. Initially, she took great offense to me waving a long piece of PVC pipe around her face, (I begin each elephant with their head) and varied between wanting to run, and wanting to reach through the wall and show me exactly what to do with my target. I don’t think her command would have been for ‘head’. She showed her displeasure mostly by taking the offered bananas as reward for simply standing there and allowing me to touch her head with the target, (notice that she always took the bananas), and trying at the same time to take as many of my fingers along with. Not literally of course; I mean, I don’t believe her motive was to part fingers from hand, but she always made sure my arm felt a little jolted by the end of it.

Another issue with Boon Ma is that she is easily distracted, and being a white elephants, her fair skin is always ripe for dusting, so she would spend a large part of the session covering herself with the fresh sand that we had used to raise the training wall above sea level, so to speak – this being the rainy season and all that; though you wouldn’t know it this past week where the temperature and humidity levels have risen way past the level that might be comfortable when your job requires you to stand in the direct sun for large parts of the day. However, Darrick is already on to providing shade for it, so that problem should be a thing of the past by the time I return.

But I digress …… Mae Boon Ma has then, been one of the slower progressing students, compounded also by the fact that she travels as a twosome with Mae Bua Loi, so it is not always easy for the mahouts to isolate each individual. However, she has now in this past week, really relaxed into it, has ceased to see it as some sort of fight between her and I and is paying more attention. She has head and ear down pat, though her right ear is a little more difficult as she is blind on that side, and has become comfortable with us starting on her feet, which is a big thing. Just getting the elephants used to the idea that we are not looking to stab their feet, that they are not expected to move their foot away, but towards the target, is more than half the battle in most cases. That is where Boon Ma has come to now.

Mae Bua Loi;  Mae Bua Loi has been a very different student to her friend Boon Ma; at once confidant and inquisitive. The biggest hurdle with Bua Loi to this point has been getting a good session in. All our sessions tend to only run at 5 – 10 minutes most of the time, for a number of reasons. It is always prudent to finish a session on a good note, so when there are so many distractions – other elephants crashing the sessions, dogs barking, volunteers cleaning shelters, overnight guests on their morning walks, day visitors arriving, tractors, vans and machinery all around – then there are many things that can shorten a session involuntarily; so I always try to judge the best time to finish up.

Bua Loi, for some reason, just never seemed to get a fair go. There were always other elephants pushing in on her – most often her friend Boon Ma – or some other reason why things just didn’t go smoothly. despite all of that, Bua Loi has been one of the quickest learners, is very thoughtful about it all, and has head, ear, holding her ears in place, and is raising both feet to the target. as things fall into a more settled routine, I think she will be a start pupil.

Mae Jan Peng; is one of the older elephants of the park, and is quite stiff in the legs, but very strong in her spirit, and that has come through in the training. Her elderly mahout, Patty (Karen for Uncle) has a great relationship with her, and is very happy to bring her to the wall as many times in the day as is convenient for her. I have asked just that each elephant comes once every day, though the mahout is welcome to bring their elephant back as much as they want, and some elephants get two or three sessions a day regularly.

Jan Peng is one of those. she is also one of the elephants who has taken the initial view that this is not a game, but a chance to play out old vendettas, and so a lot of the early sessions involved making d=sure I didn’t get too close to her trunk, which she occasionally tried to swat me with, and again, to try and keep my hand attached to my wrist as she wrenched the bananas from my hand. Note again that she always took the bananas.

She has since, like all the elephants, learned that there is nothing to fear about the target itself, and in the many training sessions she has had, there has been nothing but bananas and praise, and now she seems to really enjoy it, as long as nothing is pushed too hard. It’s all about pressure and release, so that if it is going on too long trying to get one behaviour, I have to quickly go back to one she knows well and can get easy bananas for, before she becomes frustrated and starts once more to resent my presence. It is, always, a balancing act of pushing just hard enough for progress, but not too hard that it defeats the objective, which is trust.

In that, it has been successful with Jan Peng, and now she ids very relaxed about it all, loves to throw her head at the target, has both ears down, and has moved her left foot a few times along the ground to the target; which, given her stiff legs and reluctance to move them once in place, is a great start.

Mae Kam Pan;  was from the start earmarked as one with the highest potential. Still highly active despite advancing years, she is an extremely relaxed, playful, curious and sweet tempered elephant, due in no small part to her wonderful mahout, Porn (also known as Angelo) who allows her as much freedom as he can. She never had any issue at all with the target, and was very motivated by the rewards from day one (though I should say that every elephant had issue straight off the bat when it came to toughing their feet, which they just don’t like) so her progress has been fast, and she is always a delight to engage with. The only issue, if you could say that, is her over eagerness at times which takes away some of her focus, so an even paced approach works best to bring her down a bit.

She now has head, as well as getting very good at moving her head to the target away from where I – and the bananas – are standing: a big step in the elephant being more focused on the target, rather than the reward. Her ear holds are perfect, and she is doing left and right feet on command, with some gentle reminders, and is only days away from resting her feet on the bars of the wall.

 Mae Bua Kam; is the undisputed start of the show so far. It was neck and neck for a while with Kam Pan, but I have to say, whenever a session with Bua Kam is about to start, I feel a wave of anticipation come over me, because she just gets it, pure and simple. Initially she was just a bustling, barging presence, often crashing in on someone else’s session, highly motivated by the food reward, and a bit of a pain; but quickly she changed, she saw what it was we were doing, and she made a conscious choice that she was going to figure it out. And she did; very quickly. In the afternoon some of these girls are placed inside the new steel shelter while their mahouts shred corn for their evening feed.

On one of these occasions, I was training Jan Peng in the shelter – it is an adequate substitute for the training wall when no elephants are lining up waiting – with Bua Kam behind me in the next pen. While Jan Peng was struggling to get the behaviour I was asking, Bua Kam was banging on the steel bars behind me, as if to say, “ask me, ask me, I know it.” She looks forward to her sessions  in a very obvious way, and as soon as you approach you can see her start to focus and wait for the commands.

And then there is the grace of her movements. If I stretch the target way off to the side while I still stand in front of her, and ask for her head, she will ease off to the side, stop just short of the target, and slowly stretch her had out until it delicately touches the end of the target, then glide back to get her reward. When she lifts her feet, she never kicks out, she lifts them slowly, reaching out and looking for the target, and knows exactly that as soon as she touches it she can relax and get the reward. And food motivated as she might be, you can really see the pride she takes in it all, and the delight she gets from the praise.

She has now on a few occasions lifted her feet onto the bar of the wall, and we will start her side now so we can then work on her back feet. She is the benchmark, and even her mahout, Antonio, seems to be taking more pride in it, and other mahouts are starting to watch her sessions, and see the benefits and possibilities of the training, even for an old girl purported to be hovering around her seventies.

Mae Geaw; has been hilarious. Feisty to the end, she decided from the beginning she wasn’t going to take any shenanigans of this sort. Always willing to throw her head at the target, or fling her ear with full force is that was what was asked, she seemed more focused on ways to get the bananas, and me if possible, without playing these silly games.

Regularly, she would call a halt to a session while she prowled either side of the wall trying to figure out a way to get at me – much to her mahout’s – Dolay’s – amusement, not realising that each time she came around to my side of the wall, I would just slip through the gaps and she would still find me on the other side iof the wall, target up, asking for something; at which point she would give up for now, violently give the body part asked for, and equally violently accept the reward. It provided myself, Dolay, and I suspect Mae Geaw herself, with a lot of laughs. As such though, her progress has been slower, and she has only recently decided it is all ok with her as it goes, and is now politely taking the bananas, though still on occasion trying to catch us out and snatch the target hovering around her feet.

She is still at the head and ear stage, but I suspect her feet will come in the next days.

Mae Keaw; has been the most difficult of all. She, you might remember, recently lost her close friend of many years, Lily, and this has resulted in a massive change in Mae Keaw. Always a very confident and dominant elephant, she is now so insecure and jumpy, it is painful to see. It took the best part of a week to even get her to come to the wall. I would initially just go to where she was and do a simple click and reward session, just to introduce myself; always trying to encourage her towards the wall.

The slightest thing – a dog moving, an elephant in sight, a mahout yelling – would put her on edge, and often send her running. Her mahout insisted she wouldn’t be able to do it, she was too scared, and especially with my pack of dogs nearby; but a large part of this whole process id desensitising the elephant, and not just to the target. So after about a week, I got her to the wall, and in a few more days I was able to touch her head with the target. her ear proved more difficult, and she would freak out as soon as she saw the target coming alongside her head. I had to lift the target slowly up, inch by inch, clicking and rewarding each inch of the way until she allowed me to touch her ear. It was then days of reinforcing that this would never hurt her.

She is now more than willing to come to the wall, is much more relaxed about the dogs, as long as they don’t all suddenly run at something, is great with her head and left ear, but for some reason hates me going near her right ear. On top of that, I got a little over confident and tried to start on one of her feet to speed things along, which she became very angry about, charged me once and then took off. I thought I had blown all that good work, but with Michelle at the target the next day, she came trotting back like it had never happened. (Yes, Michelle! I will get to that. All in good time)

Jaruni;  Always a pleasure, the sweet Jaruni, as you should all remember, is totally blind, and as such, far from the ideal candidate for target training. However, through the wonderful work and patience of Tony Verlhurst (I hope I spelled that right Tony) she made a great start to the process. At the time I started with her she had head and one foot down pat, and since then, she has started with her ear, which is a good way to break up her preemptive foot lifts.

She is now more inclined to listen to what you are asking than taking an educated guess, and has also started on her other ear. I have also been working on ways of getting her into the right positions with minor movements, and she regularly rests her foot on the bar for as long as you want, and is perfectly comfortable with it being touched all over. Next for her will be distinguishing left and right feet.
One thing that is never a problem with Jaruni though, is attendance. Quite the opposite. Keeping her away from the training wall has been the hardest part.

She really seems to love to engage in it, and in her down time is often seen waiting at the wall until we return. This was compounded by the fact that her friend Malaithoing was laid up at the medical centre for foot treatment for a week or more, so she was looking for distractions. She very often crashed in on others training sessions, though she was always easy to lead away with some bananas, and then would happily take her place as next in line. Now that Malaithong is back in her company, she is mostly a once a day student again, but given her reason, it is a welcome drop in attendance to see her back with her friend.

Danee; is a real sweetheart in every way and the only draw back in her training has been keeping her awake!! I say that only half jokingly. Danee likes nothing more than to rest her head against the uprights of the training wall, only lifting it to give you the asked for body part, then replacing it, and almost as an afterthought, taking the bananas.

My first impression of her was one of great sadness, which is understandable given she was fairly recently taken from her daughter and granddaughter to come to ENP, which was a better option than being sold off to Surin as she was about to be; but to Danee, I am sure, the only thing in her mind would have been the breaking up of her family.

Having said that, she has over time become much more engaged in the training, trots over to the wall at least two or three times a day, and seems more alive than ever during the sessions. She has also made great strides in her dislike of dogs, and my regular pack which accompanies me to the wall each day don’t even draw the slightest rebuke from her. So there has been more advantages to the training than just the learned behaviours.

She is now proficient withe her head, ears, and left foot, and her right foot is well n the way too. She is a real delight to work with, and her demeanour just naturally draws changes in your own, making you come in closer to her, speak in an even softer tone, and offer encouragement at every turn.Danee, like each elephant in the program so far, adds another dimension to the training procedure, and she is teaching bus as much as we, her.

Tilly and Mae Kam Puan;  The terrible twosome (said with tongue firmly planted in cheek) Tilly and Mae Kam Puan were every bit a part of the initial program, which drew on elephants who spent a lot of their day around the area of the first wall. However, this early qualification proved to be premature, and the fact that Tilly has come to enjoy racing from one end of the park to the other at great speed, with almost completely blind Mae Kam Puan in fast tow, proved to be a difficulty too difficult to overcome.

Given their high level of self motivation, and the speed with which you could always guarantee getting them to the wall, you might expect them to be perfect candidates; this however proved to be a false assumption. The biggest problem came when the mahouts tried to stop them at the wall, which turned out to be nigh on impossible. After a week of this, I decided it best to not push it too hard, and drop them from the program for now, until they become more relaxed about it, and so decided to replace them with Sai Rung, our newest arrival until then;

Sai Rung;  is the gentlest elephant I have come across. Everything about her screams gentleness; if that can be a sentence. When she takes the bananas from your hand, it is almost as if they just disappear by themselves, so gentle is the trunk that removes them. I can imagine her slow movements through the park not in terms of years of trekking and heard labour weighing on her joints, but rather a conscious effort to not accidentally trod on any stray butterflies of grasshoppers hidden in the grass.

It is early days in her training as she was a latecomer, but I think she will make steady progress due to her relaxed and calm demeanour, though some of the more strenuous behaviours, such as lifting a leg onto the higher bars and holding in place, might take some time before she stretches out those old ligaments. Whatever the outcome, it will be Zen all the way as she draws us all into her daily meditations.

Mae Kam Sai (or Kam San to some); A determined loner, Mae Kam Sai will benefit greatly from engaging in the training in my humble view. Unfortunately, she has not had the chance as yet, due to the fact that her mahout thinks the idea of training old elephants to be a waste of time, and refuses point blank to bring her. Now, this is not meant to be a criticism of him, because his view point is as valid as any ones, and it is interesting to get as many viewpoints as necessary.

However, at the end of the day, all elephants here will be part of the program. The reason I have not pushed overly hard in this respect, and have not gone over Kat’s head to Lek or Darrick, is the value gained in getting the mahouts to take part voluntarily will, I believe, outweigh the benefits of simply getting the elephant there one way or the other. A lot of effort is going in to getting past many of the elephants hang ups about the training, as you have just read, and the same should go for the mahouts.

So at this point, I am leaving it in Michelle’s hands to try and persuade him while I am away. Michelle has always had an easy and friendly relationship with the mahouts here, and I think she will be able to find a way to encourage him past his resistance. Which brings me to;

Michelle;  As you would remember, in a recent post, Michelle had taken a good deal of one of her fingers off with a machete. this results in her having some time away from the elephant kitchen, and also got me, and others, to thinking on how little we desired seeing Michelle wield a machete in the way she had become so proficient at. Also thinking about the fact the 36 elephants is a hell of a lot of elephants to train, let me to the idea that Michelle would be the best candidate to become the first full time trainer alongside myself.

To cut a long story short – and this has certainly become a long story – Michelle agreed, then Darrick agreed, and then Lek agreed. And so, now, with me heading off to the States in a few hours to learn as much as I can from Oakland Zoo and the PAWS sanctuary, Michelle will be continuing on with the program. It has been a crash course for her, with the limited time we had, but she has taken to it like a …. (fill in your own analogy here, I’m getting tired) … and the most difficult part of it has been trying to wipe the smile from her face.

It’s been a great learning curve for me to pass on my limited knowledge and experience iun the training, given I’m on my baby steps too, but standing back and watching has shown me how many small variables are included in what is such a basic premise. Touch the elephants body part with target while saying the command, give reward, until elephant realises that touching the target themselves is more fun and gets more reward/praise. But so much comes down to your body language, body positioning, timing with the target and with the rewards, when to reward and when to hold off, how to encourage more and more from the elephant, to keep their attention and motivation, to never push them too hard, nor too little so they stagnate; I’ve learned as much watching Michelle this last week as I have doing it myself for months.

Of course, for a period, Michelle simply watched me with the elephants, and chomped at her bit – and if there wasn’t time constraints with me heading to the U.S. she may have done that for a while longer – but in the last few days she has done all the elephants on her own, including the babies and Mae Kam Geaw, as well as the pony (more on all of those next time) and is a natural for all that I can see. She will be a great addition to the program, and her natural ease with the mahouts will help to draw them in more, as well as her different approach being a great sounding board for us both to keep each other evolving.

I am wrapping this up quickly (yes, quickly, despite all evidence to the contrary, I know) because I am flying in a few hours, and am going out side to enjoy some sunshine before I get cooped up in a tin can for how many hours. I have left out the babies and Mae Kam Geaw and Mae Tee for now, mainly because of time constraints and a tendency to go on and on, as evidenced above, but will update on all of them and their progress with Michelle while I am away.

Oh, and Dam,  I almost forgot. I have left Mae Kam Geaw and Mae Tee in both Michelle and Dam’s hands, and early signs suggest, as I suspected, that Dam will be great!! We just recently taught Mae Kam Geaw her trunk and Dam delights in getting her to raise her trunk to all corners of the medical centre, laughing all the time. Great exercise for her too. But more on that will have to come later. For now, I am going to stop abruptly, as my back and hands cramp up from so long in front of this computer. I should also apologise for all errors still remaining in this post as I just don’t have the time or inclination to go back through it all.

Until next time, take care all of you, and I hope to have many exciting adventures to report form the wild west.