Debbie Sykes

speaker

340 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 6 Aug

Debbie Sykes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Animal Training Academy: Making Ripples · Shifting Perspectives in Wildlife Rehabilitation with Debbie Sykes [Episode 73] · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

They would offer us kind of simple solutions, though.

You know, you just need to change the diet, make sure you're doing this diet instead of this diet, add more hiding places, those kinds of things.

And again, I was very grateful to those people who were willing to help, but these never solved the actual problem.

And when Elisa took over the center, it all made sense why.

So for me, and I think for all the animals, all the staff, everything changed in 2017 when we hired a new animal care director who's professional.

personal mission is really to improve quality of care in wildlife rehabilitation centers.

So she would go into rehabilitation centers all over North America, so United States and Canada, and just help make them better and then move on to another center.

And for that, she became really one of the most influential mentors in my career.

And even to this day, I call her at least once a week for advice and help.

She taught me to stop looking at care from our perspective and to start taking a step back and learning it from the animal's point of view.

So originally, we were checking boxes.

Did we give this squirrel a stick?

Did we give them the diet, those kinds of things, but really learning how to actually meet their needs from their point of view.

So that shift completely transformed the way I approach wildlife care.

And after working with her for a bit, she eventually empowered me to overhaul our education animal program where I was incredibly fortunate to work with another wonderful mentor, Gail Buell, who I consider the screech owl queen.

She is when it comes to the Lima, the least intrusive, minimally aversive approach.

She is so knowledgeable and has so much experience with them.

So at the time, believe it or not, there weren't many people doing positive reinforcement training with wildlife and rehabilitation centers.

So most of my learning was done through trainers at the Nashville Zoo.

I also, like you mentioned earlier, had the opportunity to work with a board certified veterinary behaviorist with cats and dogs, and then also would send countless videos of me training with wildlife trainers.

Showing 21–40 of 340 · page 2 of 17