Nicky Plaskitt a zoo consultant and certified zoo animal training professional (Shaping Behaviour) with over 20 years of experience, will be combining her knowledge and expertise with Shackleton Veterinary Physiotherapy (Zoo consultants, Veterinary Physiotherapists and University Lecturer), to bring you a new unique workshop based at the ground-breaking Wildwood Trust, home to a variety of historically native keystone species.

Nestled in 40 acres of enchanting woodland in the heart of Kent, Wildwood is home to over 200 fascinating British species. Their animals live in spacious, natural enclosures that mirror their habitats in the wild. Home to species such as Brown bears, wolves, bison, elk, badgers, arctic foxes, wild boar, deer, lynx, wildcat, owls, storks, and snakes. Here we hope to deliver a workshop that helps to demonstrate the link between behaviour and health, and how fundamental duties of a keeper such as training, enrichment, and environmental management are often overlooked in their importance both throughout life, to support life-long health and longevity.

Training for life will combine both theoretical teaching, demonstrations, and practicals to help cover such areas as:

• Life stages: The importance of behavioural and physiological changes throughout an animal’s life stages, and how this may influence learning, training and management decisions.
• Innovation: The importance of creativity and innovation within both environment and management, can help to positively influence our training, continual assessment, and management of welfare.
• Function: The importance of considering function in relation to our training goals, as well as the animal’s adaptation and physical health, and how that may cause us to reflect on how we influence behaviours and activity.
• Enrichment: How our goals with enrichment design should be influenced by not just increased activity, but species innate behaviours, individual behaviour, physical fitness and health