Disguising your face

[Minkenry]

I know this topic is about birds of prey and associating a bad experience with the falconer, but let me chime in here with an off topic example to confirm the belief that it helps to avoid associating a bad experience with the animal's new handler.

When taming mink I have often had the internal battle of how to put a harness on a mink with out holding them down. With a falcon you can avoid the negative association by not letting them see you when you cast them to put on their equipment. With a mink, however, they see more with their nose than they do their eyes,and there is nothing you can do to block their sense of sell. So throughout the years I've struggled to find a way to put a harness on a mink in the least stressful way possible to avoid that negative first impression. Years later when I finally found a way to do it (I created a little device they run through and it basically puts the harness on for me) I found that the mink did tame down MUCH sooner than the ones that had to be stressed out to put the harness on.

Avoiding that negative association could save me a week or two in the training/taming process with a new mink, and save me a few unexpected bites when I decided to take the glove off.

[BestBeagler]

I know this topic is about birds of prey and associating a bad experience with the falconer, but let me chime in here with an off topic example to confirm the belief that it helps to avoid associating a bad experience with the animal's new handler.

When taming mink I have often had the internal battle of how to put a harness on a mink with out holding them down. With a falcon you can avoid the negative association by not letting them see you when you cast them to put on their equipment. With a mink, however, they see more with their nose than they do their eyes,and there is nothing you can do to block their sense of sell. So throughout the years I've struggled to find a way to put a harness on a mink in the least stressful way possible to avoid that negative first impression. Years later when I finally found a way to do it (I created a little device they run through and it basically puts the harness on for me) I found that the mink did tame down MUCH sooner than the ones that had to be stressed out to put the harness on.

Avoiding that negative association could save me a week or two in the training/taming process with a new mink, and save me a few unexpected bites when I decided to take the glove off.

That's cool. I am sure it can make a difference with some individuals maybe to all but to a different extent with each.

[goshawkr]

I know this topic is about birds of prey and associating a bad experience with the falconer, but let me chime in here with an off topic example to confirm the belief that it helps to avoid associating a bad experience with the animal's new handler.

With a mink, however, they see more with their nose than they do their eyes,and there is nothing you can do to block their sense of sell. .

I don't want to belabor a non topic tangent, so will be very brief, but if you think there is nothing you can do to block the sense of smell your just not being creative.

As an example, horses being prey animals themselves, are very sensitive to the smell of blood and raw meat and dead things. An old cowboy trick that is extremely effective to get a deer or elk carcass loaded onto a pack horse is to quickly and gently smear a lot of fresh blood just outside their nostril. Then all the horse can smell is blood, they calm down quickly, and you can load them up. By the time the smell in their nose disappates they are fine with whats on their back.

I have pulled similar tricks with wild (as in barely tame) ferrets when starting to work with them. Not using blood of course. It is pretty difficult to shut downt he sense of smell through something like a hood, but its a cinch to overload it and make it irrelevant.