"Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul." -- Max Ehrmann
Are you boring your goldfish to death? It seems we may have seriously underestimated the intelligence of our tiny, finned friends, who, it turns out, can be just as smart and playful as dogs.
"There is mounting evidence that fish are more intelligent than people give them credit for," says Dr. Dean Pomerleau. The 41-year old fish expert, who lives in Los Angeles, California, has developed a fish training program that will help owners realize the full potential of their aquarium bound pets.
"With the correct tools and the basic promise of a food reward, fish can very quickly learn complex tricks," claims Pomerleau, who used his techniques on Comet, the 2-year old common goldfish, who is featured in the promotional video for his owners' Fish School Training Kit (click HERE to view).
There is nothing common about Comet though, since the goldfish is well on his way to snagging the fish trick world record, which is currently held by fellow Fish School alum Albert Einstein, a 3-year old calico fantail also owned by Pomerleau.
"We've used techniques that we've customized for pet fish, but are based on those used to train dolphins and other marine mammals," explains Pomerleau, who uses fish food as an incentive for correctly executed stunts. "The basic idea is to reinforce successive, increasingly accurate approximations of a desired behavior…with a little time and repetition, the animal will learn to perform the complete behavior to receive the reward."
Pomerleau's Fish School Kit, which is available via Amazon.com, gives you all the apparatus, tools and training you need to teach your star swimmer basketball, fetch and football. With the help of an instructional DVD, which is also included in the kit, you'll also learn how to teach your fish new skills such as the limbo, slalom and tunneling.
With Pomerleau’s Fish School raising the bar on the fun that can be had with fish, he hopes that people will see these innately social and curious creatures in a new light. "Now people in the market for a dog might want to consider a fish instead.”
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