82: Building Resiliency in Animals with Heidi Hellmuth, ABMA Founder

<p><strong>This episode Heidi Hellmuth, an ABMA founder, provides some great learning and advice for building resiliency, or coping skills, with animals.  This podcast is a companion to Heidi’s presentation at the 2026 ABMA-IAATE annual conference titled “Building Resiliency in Animals from Anemones to Zebras”. The episodes starts with defining resiliency and practical applications to building resiliency in animals while also explaining what resiliency is not.  Next Heidi discusses the importance of proactively vs reactively building resiliency and the positive effects it can have on an animals welfare and mental state.  The episode ends with advice on how to start resiliency building, ideas for parts of an animal’s life and environment to focus on, and the benefits of giving animals more control and agency in their life.  Stay tuned in for Heidi’s &quot;Training Tale&quot; about a hippo who learned to go on a scale in a unique way! For questions or suggestions about the podcast email ⁠</strong>⁠<strong>abc@theabma.org</strong>⁠<strong>⁠ and to reach Heidi email heidi.hellmuth@yahoo.com</strong></p><p><strong>6:55 Introduction to Heidi Hellmuth </strong></p><p><strong>13:50 Definition of resiliency </strong></p><p><strong>18:50 The importance of proactively vs reactively building resiliency</strong></p><p><strong>20:35 How an individual’s resilience can be an indictor of an animal’s welfare and mental state</strong></p><p><strong>24:00 What resiliency is not</strong></p><p><strong>27:40 The positive effects that building resiliency can have</strong></p><p><strong>31:35 Aspects of an animal’s life to focus on building resiliency</strong></p><p><strong>45:00 How can giving animals more control and agency in their life positively affect their resiliency </strong></p><p><strong>49:30 Potential risks involved in resiliency building </strong></p><p><strong>53:00 Ideas to start resiliency building </strong></p><p><strong>58:35 “Training Tales” </strong></p>