<em>By Jenna Schmidt
Keeper
Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure
Salina, Kansas</em>

Jaffna, a sloth bear (<em>Melursus ursinus</em>), arrived at Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure in May of 2003. It was quickly established that she was not happy on exhibit and would be much more comfortable away from the public’s eye, so she was moved down to off-exhibit holding (called the Main Barn) in October of the same year.

The Main Barn is a huge horse barn and show arena left over from before the zoo was established, when the founder of the zoo bred Belgian horses. Over many years the barn has slowly been converted into off-exhibit animal holding, among many other things, by retrofitting the spacious horse stalls in different ways. The four stalls that have been converted into spaces that can handle dangerous animals are split in two, each with a north and south side, so the animal can be shifted away from the keeper. The south sides have small keeper areas that also act as secondary containment (Figure 1). All the stalls in the barn have long narrow fenced-in runs so animals can have outside access.

I joined the Rolling Hills Keeper Team in late July 2011. The only training Jaffna had received before my arrival was target training, started in July 2010, to assist with shifting issues that sometimes arose during her false pregnancy behaviors and the sleepy winter months. I was eager to start training Jaffna and by October I was training her almost every day. By the end of October we had covered target, sit, stand and open. Even though I was technically the trainer in these sessions, it became readily apparent to me that Jaffna was a very patient teacher and I learned a lot from the finicky sloth bear I had only known for four months.

Jaffna was on a surplus list and in October the Sloth Bear SSP approved to move her to Little Rock Zoo in Little Rock, Arkansas. Thoughts were turned to how we could make this transition as stress-free as possible. We devised a plan that had Jaffna walking into the crate Little Rock was sending to us with no knockdown needed. Time was an important factor in this, so it was disappointing when the crate delivery date was delayed a few times. The crate finally arrived a week or so before the big move.

Once the crate arrived, we measured the dimensions of both it and the doors to the stall. It was not going to fit. Even if we did somehow get it into the stall, we would have the problem of hand-carrying a 226 kg (500 lbs.) crate in and then carrying it back out with an added 118 kg (260 lbs.) of sloth bear.

After coming to this realization, our efforts shifted from planning to crate train Jaffna to coming up with ideas to minimize stress for her upcoming knockdown and move. I was eager to utilize her new training behaviors to help us, and after a short meeting with our veterinarian Dr. Danelle Okeson and our vet tech Sara McGinnis we had a game plan: I would train Jaffna on the south side of her stall and our tech, Sara, would blow-dart her while she was focused on the session. Sara would be the one darting her as Jaffna still had ill feelings towards Dr. Okeson since the pre-ship knockdown a month earlier. Sara also works as a relief keeper, so it was an added bonus that Jaffna knew her and was comfortable with her being around the stall and working her.

Working in a time crunch once our plan was established, and knowing from previous experience that other people and noises were huge distractions for Jaffna, Sara began standing outside Jaffna’s stall as I did training sessions to desensitize her to Sara’s presence. Our first desensitization and training session took place just six days before Jaffna was scheduled to depart. I trained Jaffna while Sara stood outside the stall, holding a broom loosely by her side to represent the blow dart gun. Jaffna’s entire focus was on Sara for the first 5 minutes of that session and I finally had to bring in the “big guns,” peanut butter, to get a response. We stayed with targeting as I slowly moved her the length of the stall away from Sara. I cued for a stand and as Jaffna responded she noticed the broom Sara was holding. She rushed the wall. I attempted to call her back twice as she ran, paced, charged, and huffed at Sara. Sara moved away and I sat calmly for a few minutes before officially ending the session with our “okay, done, thank you.” Sara and I wanted to get as many sessions in as possible before move day so we tried again that evening in a more casual setting. Instead of locking her over and training from the north side, I trained from the keeper area with the coveted peanut butter. I received perfect responses with no attention paid to the broom-less Sara.

The next day I was scheduled to come in late so, not wanting to miss an opportunity for desensitizing, Sara stood by with a broom as my partner Zack Marks did the regular cleaning for the day. Jaffna charged the fence once half-heartedly. We were making progress already.

The next two days were our weekend off, so that left us with one day of desensitizing/training before Jaffna’s big day. To compound the time crunch, Jaffna was acting slow and disinterested, characteristics common when she was about to go through one of her false pregnancies. This meant we had to go all out in finding a motivating reinforcer. On the day before Jaffna’s move, peanut butter barely worked in the morning, but Sara was able to raise the broom (“dart gun”) three times for a “shot” as I trained our sloth bear. Knowing peanut butter wasn’t going to be enough of a motivator for long, I consulted Jaffna’s previous keepers and found that blueberry muffin mix was historically a very special treat for her. We needed something that we would only have to give a little of for a reward since ideally she would have an empty stomach for her knockdown. We procured some muffin mix by that evening for our last dry run before the next morning’s move. Jaffna was incredibly slow to get up and going for our session, again showing signs of her false pregnancy sequence of behaviors. Once she realized I had muffin mix, a treat not had for years, she was willing to train. She targeted great with solid hits. Sara got four practice shots lined up with the actual blow dart gun. We were as ready as we could be for the next morning.

The next morning, as soon as the Little Rock Zoo van pulled in, we shut down the barn for all personnel except Sara and me to eliminate distractions. As planned, I targeted Jaffna down the stall wall, me down the south side and her on the north (Figure 2). <img class="alignright size-full wp-image-2722" title="jaffna" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/jaffna.jpg" alt="jaffna" width="465" height="352" />

I started with offering peanut butter but she refused to accept it and looked pointedly at the muffin mix. She targeted solidly five times with…

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