Amy Sutherland’s June 25, 2006 column, “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage,” had a remarkable run at the top of The New York Times’s most emailed list and enjoyed wide circulation among behavior analysts. Ms. Sutherland wrote about using the techniques exotic animal trainers use on animals to improve her husband’s domestic behavior. She came upon the applicability of behavioral methods while researching her book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World’s Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers (Viking, June 2006). Both the book and the column have raised public awareness of animal training and the behavioral principles used at the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program at California’s Moorpark College—where she spent a year following new students as they learned to work with the animals in the teaching zoo. Ms. Sutherland has held staff positions and written for numerous notable publications. She has received awards including the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and the John D. Donoghue Award for Arts Criticism.
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