Introducing our 3rd Keynote Speaker
Heidi Hellmuth
Zoological Curator - Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, WA, USA and Founding Director - Animal Behavior Management Alliance
Heidi has been involved in the animal care and training field for 25 years, in positions including marine mammal trainer, zoo keeper, wildlife educator, supervisor, and curator. She began her career working with a wide variety of marine mammals at facilities including Sea World of Florida, and then transitioned into a mammal keeper role at Zoo Atlanta to expand her experience with new species and new positions. From there she had a unique experience helping to start and run a wildlife education program at a ski resort in New Hampshire, working with a wide array of North American wildlife.
Heidi later moved into curatorial roles at the Philadelphia Zoo, National Aquarium in Baltimore, and Smithsonian's National Zoo - including six years as the National Zoo's first curator of enrichment & training. Heidi is currently the zoological curator at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Washington State, a unique facility that includes a 435 acre free-roaming area with Pacific Northwest hoofstock species such as moose, elk, bison, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep.
Throughout her career Heidi has focused on the welfare of animals in human care, and is one of the founding directors and a past president of the Animal Behavior Management Alliance (ABMA). She has also given presentations and helped organize workshops on enrichment and training in Australia and Argentina, as well as at numerous zoos in the United States; and has given talks at conferences including the International Conference on Environmental Enrichment (ICEE), International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA), American Association of Zookeepers/International Congress of Zoo Keeping joint conference (AAZK/ICZ), Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), and of course the ABMA.
For more information on Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, visit www.nwtrek.org; and to learn more about the Animal Behavior Management Alliance please go to www.theabma.org.
1st International Animal Training Conference are pleased to announce our 2nd Keynote Speaker
Thad Lacinak!
In 2008, Thad retired from a 35-year career at Busch Entertainment Corporation (BEC), as Vice President and Corporate Curator of Animal Training where he directed animal training and enrichment efforts at all U.S. Sea World and Busch Gardens Theme Parks. Thad oversaw and coordinated the efforts of over 450 animal trainers and keepers at these parks. In short, Mr. Lacinak had the world's largest animal training staff as well as the world's largest collection of trained animals under his purview.
Lacinak was instrumental in developing Sea World's and Busch Gardens' industry-leading behavior and training techniques, husbandry procedures, and spectacular killer whale shows. Thad led the team that won the prestigious Thea Award from the Themed Entertainment Association in 2007 for the Believe killer whale show. In addition, he has won numerous awards for presentations and workshops at professional conferences.
In the past twenty years, Thad has traveled the country presenting dog training seminars specializing in aggression, agility, obedience, and many other areas in the use of operant conditioning for behavior modification.
Lacinak is a member of the International Marine Animal Trainers Association where he was Vice President 1986 and he was co-founder and president of the Animal Behavior Management Alliance.
Since the publication of the New York Time's best-seller, Whale Done! in 2001, which sold over a million copies in eighteen languages, Thad continues to present keynote speeches, seminars and workshops globally to major corporations explaining the Whale Done process, vastly improving working relationships. Whale Done Parenting was released in the Fall of 2009. Thad recently collaborated on a third book in the Whale Done series, The Whale Done School, which was release in the Spring of 2012.
Thad is also the founder and co-owner of Precision Behavior. In this role, he manages project development and consulting and works to advance animal behavior modification techniques and trainer safety within the zoological community. Thad is also integral to the instructional products of the Company, teaching positive reinforcement based courses to both zoological and corporate clients. His most recent projects included installation of the new dolphin show in the Harderwijk Dolfinarium in the Netherlands, revamping the dolphin and sea lion shows at both Zoomarine parks in Portugal and Italy and consulting on the movie set for a major motion picture featuring "Winter" the Clearwater Aquarium's star dolphin with a prosthetic tail. He currently consults at Parco Oltremare in Riccione, Italy and Sarkanniemi Adventure Park in Tampere, Finland. Thad also instructs seminars for a variety of US government agencies and is currently producing a documentary, Elephant in the Room.
For more information please visit the Precision Behavior website, www.precisionbehavior.com.
1st Keynote Speaker - David Jones
Director and Instructor - David Jones, IRTCW (International Rescue Training Centre Wales)
International Rescue Training Centre Wales (IRTCW) provides search and rescue dogs to the Emergency services. They train dogs in the following areas: Human Remains, Water Search, Urban Search & Rescue (USAR), Fire Investigation and Others - Avalanche etc.
IRTCW has also developed specialist training courses for Mountain Rescue Teams, Police Forces, The Military, and Forensic Scientists here in the UK and abroad. Our courses are designed to cover areas such as mountain search and recovery, rescue management, river rescue, earthquake victim recovery, human remains search and recovery.
The company is the brain child of its founder David Jones who has over 35 years' experience in Search and Rescue both in the UK and globally. David has had experience of working on earthquakes and other natural disasters in El Salvador, Italy with collapsed tower blocks and Mud Slides; War torn cities and villages in the Balkans and displaced families in Mozambique. He has also been an active member of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation for over 35 years which is one of the busiest Mountain Rescue Teams in Wales.
IRTCW will also being showing a demonstration of their dogs in action at the conference within the Zoo grounds.
David Jones background includes:
- Qualified Submerged Water Search Dog Handler (Current)
- Qualified Cadaver Search Dog Handler (Current)
- 35 Years in Mountain Rescue
- Holder of Gold Medal Professional Dog Handlers Award for Devotion to duty
- 15 Years SARDA Dog Handler/Instructor/Assessor
- Former Team Leader & Founder Member of British International Rescue Dogs
- Former Team Leader & Founder Member of the Charity Global Rescue Services
- Disaster Work including El Salvador & Turkey
- 19 Years working with Croatian Mountain Rescue Service including introducing Search & Rescue Dogs and Search Management
- Training of Search Dogs for countries including USA, Japan, Russia, Croatia, Hong Kong, Turkey, Spain, Switzerland
- Humanitarian Work in countries including Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Mozambique
- Awarded Croatian Silver Medal for Services to Mountain Rescue
- Course Assessor for Submerged Body Dog Detection Course for Guarda Civil et al Spain - 2009
- Technical Advisor for the current Saddleworth Moor search
- Lead Instructor - Disaster search dogs, Malaysian fire brigade 2010 / 2011
- Lead Instructor - Helicopter familiarisation course, Malaysia search & rescue 2011
For more information on the fantastic work IRTCW do please visit their website www.irtcw.co.uk