Susan G. Friedman, Ph.D. is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University and owner of Behavior Works Consulting, LLC. Susan has co-authored chapters on behavior change in five veterinary texts, and her popular articles have been translated into 17 languages. She teaches seminars and courses on animal learning online (How Behavior Works: Living & Learning with Animals), which has been attended by students from 64 countries so far.

Susan consults with zoos and animal organizations around the world and teaches yearly for the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) Level 3 Animal Trainer Accreditation program. She was appointed to the Fish & Wildlife Service’s California Condor Recovery Team from 2002 – 2010, after which time the team was retired due to the success of the birds in the wild and is currently the Chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Committee of American Humane Association (AHA) Film and TV Unit.

In 2022, Susan was honored to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. See behaviorworks.org and facebook.com/behaviorworks.


Join us for an evening with Susan G. Friedman, Ph. D. as she presents:

The Animals are Waiting: A “Freeing Up the Operant” Approach to Environmental Enrichment for Companion, Domestic and Zoo Animals

Discrete trial training (DTT) is an essential strategy for teaching animals to be active partners in their medical and husbandry care. This approach has resulted in extraordinary welfare benefits and is now the standard of care in modern zoos. However, DTT is restricted by the trainers’ decisions. Trainers provide the cue, they set the behavioral criterion, they deliver the reinforcers, and they control the number of repetitions per session. Additionally, DTT occupies a relatively small portion of any zoo animal’s day. When training is the high point of their day, relative to the behavioral opportunities in their habitats, animals often do little more than wait for the next training session to begin.

After a training session has ended, animals are typically turned-out into less controlled habitats where trainers have prearranged so-called enrichment opportunities (devices and conditions) intended to induce active animals who behave similarly to their wild counterparts. However, the goals of environmental enrichment, as suggested by Markowitz (1982), have never been realized.

Recently at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, we have taken a free operant approach to environmental enrichment. With this approach, trainers engineer environments so that animals are free to make any possible operant response and to vary those responses as described by Lindsley (1996), such as the freedom to form and to speed responses. Three important dimensions have emerged when selecting and creating enrichment opportunities, i.e., time to satiation, time to depletion and “dosage.”

Both strategies together, that is, 1) borrowing animals for discrete training sessions to meet our medical and husbandry goals, and 2) returning them to environments that free up their operant behavior, can greatly improve the welfare of animals in human care.


What’s included:
*90-minute presentation.
*30 minute Q&A.
*Coffee and tea.