How Moods, Emotions and Learning Relate to Undesired Behaviour with Dr. Karolina Westlund

How Moods, Emotions and Learning Relate to Undesired Behaviour

with Dr. Karolina Westlund

CEUs - PPAB 1, CCPDT 1, KPA 1, IAABC 1, and PMCT 1

Challenging behaviour in animals can range from inconvenient to embarrassing to exasperating - to the people who have to live with them.

To the animals involved, those behaviours are often not problematic at all, but rather their solution to a problem that they're experiencing - and our task is often to help the animal find another solution that's less annoying to us - or to remove the animal's problem altogether.

This webinar will provide a framework for how to approach behavioural challenges. Using a holistic perspective involving ethological, affective and behaviour analytical approaches, we will discuss the following:

* how mood states influence perception, decision making and behaviour, and how we can help change the animal's mood.

* how emotional reactions to triggers in the environment affect behaviour, and how we through carefully addressing those triggers can change emotions.

* how understanding the function of the behaviour can help explain what's going on - and how we can change that function.

* by changing mood states, emotional reactions to potential triggers and the function of the behaviour in the challenging context, the animal will in turn change his behaviour.

The different techniques and perspectives used at each of these three levels of approach will be outlined in the presentation.

About The Presenter

Dr. Karolina Westlund

Karolina Westlund helps pet lovers and animal professionals get happier animals that thrive in the care of humans. She grew up pining for a kitten for several years, and pestering her parents until they gave up. The green-eyed black half-siamese cat that she got for her seventh birthday became a true friend who lived to be 21 years old, but an easily startled cat who often went into hiding when there were visitors.

Karolina had grand ideas about becoming a field biologist, but that never came about – the closest she got was working as a trekking travel guide in France and Madeira. Instead she majored in Ethology and developed a passionate interest in animal welfare seen through a multidisciplinary lens, including Behaviour Analysis and Affective Neuroscience. She is now an Associate Professor of Ethology at the University of Stockholm, mostly teaching how behaviour management can be used to improve animal welfare.

She offers live seminars, free online webinars and masterclasses in addition to more extensive online courses, as well as the occasional blog post or scientific publication on the topic of enrichment, animal training and wellbeing. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with her husband, two kids, and, hopefully soon, another cat.