The Sea World Whale Tragedy

You many not think that the Sea World accident has any relevance to your life with your dog. Yet whale trainers and dog owners share real difficulties involved in inter-species relationships, and the same need to predict and respond when our animals occasionally behave like….well, animals.

Nowadays, dog owners and whale trainers essentially train their animals the same way, using food, praise, and positive reinforcement to encourage good behavior or performances. However, the success of this shared technique cannot mask the underlying tension that results when one species leads/dominates/trains another.

We forget how completely abnormal this is in nature, yet we consider owning an obedient dog to be perfectly normal. We want our trained animals to behave, just as we have commanded. And whether the behavior is a sit, down, or leap out of the water – we expect it to be done correctly and safely 100% of the time. That Sea World trainer did. After all, her life depended on it.

There are conflicting reports of what happened at Sea World. All agree, however, that the whale was expertly trained. He was being positively reinforced for good behavior with handfuls of herring. However, in an instant, either via predatory drift or other interruption of the human-whale relationship, the whale became fatally unsafe.

Sadly, dogs can just as instantly become unsafe, and it happens all the time. Ask someone who owns a dog who guards a food dish. Like the whale, the dog can be expertly trained. The owner asks the dog (different species) for a behavior (sit), the dog is positively reinforced (food bowl is set down), yet becomes unsafe (growling) when the family toddler crawls near.

Thankfully these dogs do not often escalate their resource guarding to a deadly degree. Most undesirable pet behavior can be either managed or modified successfully to avoid life-altering consequences. Unfortunately, this is not true of whales. Killer whales are just plain dangerous. All the time.

Ultimately, the Sea World disaster reminds us that as dog owners, we must always be aware of the underlying tension between two species who are working together. To understand our dogs is to know that this tension precludes our dogs from ever performing willingly, correctly, or safely 100% of the time. We’re doing darn good if we are getting expected behavior more than 80% of the time from our Canis Lupis Familaris.

This is not to say we shouldn’t strive for better than 80% - we should! But remember not to be surprised or overly frustrated when you get less than that. You dog is just being a dog. Which, after all, is kind of like being a whale.