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

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 "Training Tale" about a hippo who learned to go on a scale in a unique way! For questions or suggestions about the podcast email ⁠⁠abc@theabma.org⁠⁠ and to reach Heidi email heidi.hellmuth@yahoo.com

6:55 Introduction to Heidi Hellmuth 

13:50 Definition of resiliency 

18:50 The importance of proactively vs reactively building resiliency

20:35 How an individual’s resilience can be an indictor of an animal’s welfare and mental state

24:00 What resiliency is not

27:40 The positive effects that building resiliency can have

31:35 Aspects of an animal’s life to focus on building resiliency

45:00 How can giving animals more control and agency in their life positively affect their resiliency 

49:30 Potential risks involved in resiliency building 

53:00 Ideas to start resiliency building 

58:35 “Training Tales”