#126 - Sarah van Herpt: Healing Bears, Changing Minds

What does it take to rehabilitate hundreds of bears and build an enrichment-forward sanctuary from scratch? In this episode, we dive into the world of moon bears, sun bears, shrimp paste, and cultural change with Sarah van Herpt, Director of Veterinary and Behavioral Husbandry Services for Animals Asia in Vietnam.

Sarah shares her incredible journey from zookeeper to director, the behavioral science behind their enrichment practices, and how Animals Asia is not only transforming animal lives but human perspectives, too. You’ll hear about cooperative care with bears (yes, bears!), why shrimp paste is an enrichment superstar, and what Vietnam is teaching the rest of us about compassionate progress.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 

1️⃣ Enrichment That Matters – Sarah emphasizes the importance of behavior-based enrichment with clear goals. For example, their bears receive seasonally tailored enrichment to support nesting, foraging, cooling, or hyperphagia. Shrimp paste, anyone?

2️⃣ Kindness in Action – Animals Asia approaches ending the bear bile trade not with blame, but with empathy and collaboration. Sarah explains how working with, not against, local communities creates lasting, meaningful change.

3️⃣ Cooperative Care for a Population – With over 140 bears trained using cooperative care methods, Sarah and her team demonstrate that medical procedures, weight checks, and nail trims can be stress-free—even for former bile farm bears.

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: we try to be behavior focused in our enrichment. So we are not just giving them things for the sake of giving them things. So for bears scent is really important. So we use a lot of scent based enrichment. So dilute sprays of like essential oils or coffee to investigate. One of their favorite, favorite things is shrimp paste.

Ugh, it's so stinky. But if we smear it around, they'll lick it, they'll rub in it. They just love it. So shrimp paste, dried shrimp and fermented tofu are huge hits. And I'm pretty sure they would be hits for dogs too if you could bear the smell and felt like bathing your dog afterwards.

[00:00:43] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:00] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:02] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:01:22] Emily: The voice you heard at the beginning of today's episode is Sarah van Herpt. Sarah has a BSC, biology and ecology. MSC, conservation Biology and Certificate in Veterinary Nursing. She's the director of the Veterinary and Behavioral Husbandry Services Department for Animals Asia and Vietnam, and has extensive experience in animal behavior and rehabilitation.

In particular, she is focused on cooperative care training in order to give animals choice and control over what happens to them and the rehabilitation of animals from either medical or psychological trauma. It is incredible to me how much depth of knowledge and experience Sarah has and how she just uses her many skills to just quietly change the lives of so many animals.

In today's episode, you're going to hear Sarah and I talk about animals, Asia, and all the cool things it does. You've heard of sun bears, but have you heard of moon bears? What American culture can stand to learn from Vietnamese culture? A day in the life of a bear and browse. It's not just for humans.

Content warning, there is a significant amount of discussion about bile farming in this episode.

Okay.

Tell us your name, pronouns, and pets.

[00:02:35] Sarah: My name is Sara van Herpt. She, her and I have two gorgeous dogs, rescue dogs from Vietnam called Anne, which means peace and Beto, which means pumpkin. 

[00:02:46] Emily: That is so cute. Peace and Pumpkin. I love that. All right, well, so tell us your story and how you got to where you are. 

[00:02:53] Sarah: So, I've always loved animals, like right from day one. My parents have always had birds and cats. Now they've moved into dogs as well. And I remember as a kid we had one masked love bird and we trialed him with a peach face love bird.

And we bought this peach face love bird home. And introduced them and I was sitting there in the kitchen watching them, observing them recording down how many times they picked each other or how many times they moved towards each other or away from each other, like doing my own little behavioral observation.

So I think I was destined to be in the behavior world. I did a master's of science and conservation biology through Massey University in Wellington. And I was actually thinking of getting more into sort of field work based jobs, conservation jobs in New Zealand. But there's not a lot of those around and they're really, really hard to get. I, as, as I worked as a zookeeper, I did in the middle of that, I think it was about two and a half years of zoo vet nursing. And then by the time I got to the end of my seven and a half years, I was a little bit. Reached the end of what I thought I could learn at, at that facility. And so I started looking for a bit of an adventure because, I didn't have kids or a house or a partner or sort of anything, so I thought, right. Adventure time it is. And um, I applied for Animals Asia, where I've been for over eight years now.

And I love every second of it. So I started as a bear team manager. So managing the team who were looking after the Bears e each day and making bigger picture decisions on nutrition and who meets who and when and that sort of thing. And then became the Senior Bear team manager. And then last year I became the director of a new department within Animals, Asia, Vietnam, called the Veterinary and Behavioral Husbandry Services. Department, which is a very long title, but basically all it means is that instead of all of our expatriate technical expertise being based at one location, now we are based across Vietnam sharing our knowledge with all of our programs and all of our partners. So yeah, it's been quite a journey.

[00:05:13] Emily: That is amazing. And I love, one of the things that you and I have in common is being a lifelong learner and just pursuing the things that we really love and ending up in these really cool jobs that I like. As a child, I never would've foreseen this for myself, but now I'm like, well, obviously this is what I ended up doing. Right. And it sounds like you're in a similar situation. 

[00:05:36] Sarah: I feel so lucky. I honestly, I don't, I'm, I. I am passionate and I try really hard and I work my best. But honestly, I do think I've been just so lucky. Who, who sets out to do field work and accidentally ends up a zookeeper, like that's such a competitive industry.

And in New Zealand as well as a lot of other places. And then when I was looking for, for jobs after that, animals Asia was the first one I applied for. First one I interviewed for and got it straight away and like I just, there's, I don't know, maybe I've got some good karma or something.

[00:06:10] Emily: Yeah. That's beautiful. So tell me more about Animal Asia, the work that that organization does and what you do for that organization. 

[00:06:21] Sarah: So, animals Asia is an NGO that primarily operates in China and Vietnam. I'm just gonna talk about Vietnam today because that's my sort of area of expertise. China is a different kind of situation.

So, we have three main projects that we work on. So our flagship project, which most people know us for, is ending bare bio farming. And our other two programs are cat and dog welfare and trying to end the meat trade cat and dog meat trade, and then also and trying to end the use of wildlife in like entertainment performances and that sort of thing.

And so we, or improve captive animal welfare. So we have an ethical elephant tourism program where we've rescued elephants from elephant riding and now they are. Loose free in the forest and people can come and just watch them be elephants and it's really cool. But ending bare bio farming is like our biggest project and we're seeing really a lot of success.

So we are the government's official partner on this project. We have an MOU memorandum of understanding or basically an agreement with them that we will provide the space and the care for all of the bears if they in farming and basically get the bears to us. So, it's very cool. We're, we're on track to do that by the end of 2026.

Not barring another, covid or something happening. We've built our second sanctuary now. It's so our, our initial Vietnam sanctuary is about an hour north of Hanoi, which is in northern Vietnam. And our second sanctuary is in BH ma, which is between Hui and which is central Vietnam.

So we're a bit spread out. We've rescued 282 bearers in Vietnam so far. We've got a little less than 200 still alive. We've got eight at our back, ma sanctuary 'cause it's just new. And I think we're at 180. Six at our Tamar Sanctuary we rescue Asiatic black bearers or moon bearers and Malayan sun bearers.

So we have only 13 sun bearers and everything else is a, is a moon bear. So a little bit skewed there, but I like to say that our sun bearers cause just as much damage as our moon bearers. Little bundles of energy. Yeah, so that's a little bit about animals Asia and I talked before a little bit about my department.

So, historically all of the expats in country just worked at our Tam Dow Sanctuary and then we had one one working at the Elephant Project and that's where all our expertise was and something really important to animals Asia is not just working. For the animals, but working for the people as well.

And so we aimed and have really focused in the last six or seven years in getting our sanctuaries to be Vietnamese run and lead. So we did that with B ma, it was set up that way. And we are slowly transitioning each program to be Vietnamese run and lead. So the next one will be our sanctuary. Once our veterinary interns graduate in October, then that will be fully Vietnamese run and lead.

And then the elephant sort of advisor will be the last one to phase out. And so what that means for us is that we've trained ourselves out of that specific job. But what we've done is we've really moved our focus. So, we. We still work across all of those projects in the sanctuaries and stuff.

There is some sort of high level technical skills that we have that are, a little bit more time consuming to pass on. So there's still things that we help to oversee and manage or troubleshoot for them. And but now we work across a lot of government rescue centers with more species, a lot of mechanics and just trying to share our knowledge even wider.

[00:10:25] Emily: I love everything that y'all are doing and there are so many things I wanna ask you more about. First of all, I'm intrigued by your comment that the sun bears make as much mess as the moon bears. So tell me more about their, the different like species, typical behaviors between the two, and why are the sun bears more active for less, for lack of a better word? Like, what's going on there? What, What, what's their deal? 

[00:10:49] Sarah: So I I, it's been really interesting. So my previous bear experience before I moved to Vietnam was not very much but it was with sun bears and I feel like they're very emotional species.

They live like on the very sort of edge of their skin, very. I would call them maybe high strung. But in generally they're super active. Their sort of foraging technique is very destructive. They like to get into logs to get bugs and hives and all that sort of stuff. They like to climb and they're just, they're just a lot more active than the moon bears.

The moon bears, oh, they have the same foraging techniques. They'll tear apart logs and stuff, but they're just so laid back, like they're just they're just chill. Like, they're. Have, have a forage, have a play, make a knee slide down, whereas the sun bears do the same things, but at about like double speed, the world's smallest bear, but world's biggest bear personality.

I'm sure of it. Yeah. So, I don't know how much your listeners know about bear species, but Yeah. So some bears are the smallest bear species. They're named for the crescent on their chest, which is like a, a yellow big circle depending on the bear. They have extremely long claws and they tend to be a little bit more arboreal.

I guess they can because they're so small. They have the world's, they have the longest tongue in relation to their body size of all the BPCs. And that's I think, a. Part of that is because they're, getting into the honey and getting into the hives and getting into the nooks and crannies to get all the bugs and things like that.

They have short fur and small ears whereas the moon bearers are much bigger. So sun bears may be 50 to 60. Kgs is good. The moon bears for a female, maybe one 20 to one 40 is good male, one 60 to 180 kgs. And they have longer fur. They have the females especially have these big, beautiful roughs around their neck.

They have bigger ears. They have a, they also have a crescent on their chest, but it's a pale yellow, almost whiteish. And it's just like a half crescent is why it's called a moon bear. They are more arboreal when they're younger than when they're older. And for us, some of the differences as well relate to the conditions that we get them in.

So for the sun bearers, they don't tend to be kept as bio farm bears whereas the moon bears do. So. A little bit about bile farming is the bile from the bear's. Gallbladder is used in traditional medicine and it actually has a chemical in it. UDCA, which is helpful in treating liver disease.

However, there are synthetic alternatives available as well as herbal alternatives that have the same thing. That do the same thing. So there's no need for taking bile from the bears. Kept in really. Horrible conditions, dark rooms in a cage, no solid ground. Not feet every day, not given water every day.

When they anesthetize them to take the bile, they rope them down and it's very cruel. And so when, when they come to us, generally our sun bears are in a much better condition than the moon bearers. They still have the same things. The sun bears are still kept in those same sort of conditions.

They're just not extracted from so much. And so we see a lot of issues with the bears cancers. So a lot of liver cancer. We see we are very, we have to remove their gallbladder sometimes because it's just too diseased. A lot of dental issues. A lot of hypertension, which we dunno why, but we assume it's from stress, prolonged stress, and a lot of mobility issues, a lot of arthritis and joint issues.

So, lots of different things that they're coming to us with. And it's really interesting training sun bearers versus moon bears. 'cause the sun bears are exceptionally smart and they get it really quickly and the difficulty of training them is not, whether they understand it is whether they want it, want to do it, don't want to do it.

So you very much dependent on their mood, whereas the sort of the moon bears are a little bit more relaxed, like, oh yeah, cool, let's train. Yeah, let's do this. Oh, I'm a bit hungry so I'll be a bit faster today. And some of them it takes quite a while. We've got one gorgeous male called Jarvis and he's.

Such a sweetheart. He's got so many friends in his group. He loves everyone. But he is, he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. And it takes a very long time for him to understand things.

[00:15:49] Emily: That's hilarious and it reminds me of working with parrots because most parrot species, I tell my students who've only ever trained dogs like you should, you should, train some parrots Because you need to learn what it's like when your learner is than you are and they have like no latency. And then there's male tus parrots and I don't know why, but they're so contemplative and it takes them so long. Like their latency between when they're cued and when they do the behavior, can be so much longer. On average, of course there are outlier bird and of course sometimes even the most. Contemplative guy will be really eager to do particular thing in a particular context, but for the most part, they are so slow. Like you ask them to do something and they'll be like, hmm, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Let me think about that. Okay, I can do that. Yeah. And. Yeah. yeah, So what, so with the sun Bears and the moon bears do they have different diets? Do they forage in different ways, or are, is it pretty much the same, but the moon bears are just more chilled out about it? Like what's, what's the difference there?

[00:16:57] Sarah: Yeah, the, the, they basically do have the same diet. We do offer the sun bearers. S slightly more fruit and protein than the moon bears. They're both very they're both omnivorous. Lots of fruits, berries, leaves, vegetation, insects. Sun bears are definitely a lot more interested in getting the insects.

They, we, we set up their enclosures in the same way, lots of hiding the food, moving it around different locations. The sun bears, we, we give a slightly different enrichment calendar too. That's just a little bit more, more items, more complexity because they, they seem to need that of difficulty in their lives. But I definitely, I love one of my favorite behavioral concepts is contra freeloading. And so for anyone who's not sure what that is, it's basically the idea that most species that they studied prefer to work for their food rather than just be given it. So I have definitely seen our bearers, there's a tomato on the ground or there's a tomato in this puzzle feeder, and they're going for the puzzle feeder and it's really cool.

So we try to incorporate that a lot into how we set up their food and enrichment.

[00:18:20] Emily: Yeah, I love that. There's a science writer in the dog training world named Eileen anderson. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work. She just wrote a blog about contra, sorry. She just wrote a blog about contra freeloading and she was talking about kind of the more nuanced understanding of it. And one of the things that she said is that it appears that information gathering is part of the motivation behind contra freeloading. Like if if, you know that a food source is always gonna be here, but there's this new one that might have food source, it makes sense to go check that out and investigate that for the future. Right? And I love how much we see that in wild, not domesticated, but wild species that are in captivity. They're like, wait, you can get food over there too. Like I just, that was a huge aha moment for me that's like, oh Yeah, they're information gathering. That makes so much sense. I love that. So you mentioned that you have the, oh, you also work with the elephants and Macs. Is that at the location that you're working at or is that somewhere else? Like where are these animals? 

[00:19:26] Sarah: So, they're spread across Vietnam. So we have, so our elephant project is in National Park, which is south central area.

We work with a rescue center in Sspa, which is Northern Vietnam, one on the outskirts of Hanoi one in Fya Quebec, which is Central Vietnam. And then the Elephant project that we work on, there's our, our elephants in the national park, but we also work with the Elephant Conservation Center, which has three captive male elephants who can't be released into the park.

And they are setting up a new rescue center, a multi-species one. So we've actually been helping them to design that facility and, upskilling their staff to set them up on the right foot moving forward. A lot of the rescue centers that we work with, I said Macca's, definitely a big one. Also givens snakes which are definitely not my strong point.

And I'm a bit scared of coming from New Zealand 'cause we don't have snakes in New Zealand. So this is new and not so fun. A lot of small carnivores, leopard cats, civets been to wrong. A lot of reptiles, iguanas different turtle and torish species. So it's, it is very mixed. And they're all in various different conditions.

Some of them have been kept as pets and been confiscated. Some of them have been. Trapped in the forest and sneered and need some injuries fixed before being released. Some of the animals in those rescue centers are releasable, some of them are not. Gosh, one of our rescue centers even has wallabies now.

Someone got caught smuggling wallabies and so one of the rescue centers ended up with four wallabies just randomly, which isn't a species you see a lot in Vietnam. So yeah, it's a big a big mixture. And the, the staff there, some of them are really passionate about what they do and some of them are not.

And that's something that's can be quite challenging. I know for us in our nice western countries with all of our resources and opportunities. We think that animal care is like the best thing ever, and it's so great and everyone wants to do it. Whereas in Vietnam we are still teaching about animal welfare basics and animal care isn't a well-respected job at all.

Animals are dirty and therefore our youths not they don't have their own inherent sort of value as individuals. So, yeah, we have a real mixture of people that we get to work with. And one of the things that we need to do is sort of find, find their motivation and find their sweet spot to be able to help them to help the animal.

So. As I said, we've got some people who are just so passionate and just absolutely love these animals and really wanna do the best for them. Some people are just turning up to get paid and that is absolutely fine. And for those people, maybe our approach is different. It's, here's how to do this in a, an easier way, or here's how to do this more efficiently or, we we're targeting sort of different, different areas of their interest, 

[00:22:53] Emily: yeah, I would actually love to talk more about that because I interview people from all over the world and I think one thing that i'm interested in cultivating is an awareness that the United states is not the end all, be all of animal welfare. Like, we have a very geocentric approach to animal welfare. Like we've got it all figured out. We're the best, and we've, we're just here to educate the rest of the world. And that is super not true. But on the other hand, there are countries and cultures. Who have really damaging practices, and that's, and that's just objectively true. And still there's how we approach it here in the states has leaves much room for improvement. I'll put it that way. Right. In terms of like, shaming the cultures, having this kind of white savior approach thinking that we can rescue animals from situations ship them across the country to the united states and assuming that their lives are better just because they're here. When my experience with those animals is that, is, that's objectively false. Like their animal, their lives do not get better here because they have no idea how to exist here. Right? And so i. it's just really complicated and it's really messy and nothing is, I think, as straightforward as a lot of people think it is or want it to be. So I would love to hear your perspective on how you take a culturally sensitive and respectful approach to sharing information and resources, information with people while still, maintaining levels of, of like standards, animal welfare standards, but not. Running rough shot over the culture, Right? So I would love to hear your thoughts about that. 

[00:24:36] Sarah: Yeah, for sure. That's something I actually find really hard sometimes where, especially around our rescue stories, when we put rescue content out there's sometimes a lot of like vitriol directed towards the farmer, and I find that really frustrating because for animals, Asia, our, our tagline is kindness and action, right?

And that is what I love about animals Asia so much, is that they, they're trying to work with people, right? They're trying to be really understanding. And the thing is, is that a lot of these, these people still doing these practices, they don't understand, they don't have that access to that education and opportunities to learn about the sort of stuff that we do.

And they're just trying to keep their families provided for and like, especially recently. So it's not actually illegal to have a bear in Vietnam. It's, it's okay if your bear, you are not allowed a bear. So, sorry. In 2005, the, the government went around and microchipped all of the bears that were kept as private pets or, or whatever we are calling it.

And so you are still allowed to have a bear as long as it was microchip in 2005, or microchip in general. And so that was supposed to stop bearers being bought onto farms because if they didn't have a microchip, they were illegal and could be confiscated. So it's not actually illegal right now to have a, a pet bear.

And some people, especially lately, have, have been voluntarily giving us their pet bears. And these are true pets they haven't been extracted from. And the people who are giving up their bears have learned, they've learned through, through their children or through different materials and, and things available to them.

And so we had two bears recently. So one, her name is qq and that is the name that her owner gave her. And he came out to our sanctuary before deciding to give QQ up. And he came to see, what her life would be. What, where would she be living? Like how, what are the conditions like, what is the routine like?

And his biggest concern was you've got a lot of bears. Are you sure you're going to have enough food for qq? And when we reassured him, he, he very kindly relinquished her to us and he's welcome to come and visit anytime. Of course, any any, any of our ex. I say but he very much loves qq. And then the same for another bear recently who so her name is Crescent and she was brought to us by her onus.

Her owners actually came with her and were very upset and crying and, they loved her. They loved her so much, but they realized that, now is the time and they wanna give her a better life. And yeah, so, that's how we try to, to work with all of our. Community. So we are not going into Vietnam telling you bile farming is bad.

You are all terrible people. We are saying we understand why you use the bile. We understand that it's part of your traditional values. Here's some alternatives. We've worked with the traditional medicine community and now they don't prescribe bear bar. We've helped them to make other herbal alternatives and things so that they're still using traditional medicine, but it's just not animal-based traditional medicine.

We work with schools, we're trying to really educate the next generation of, of Vietnamese people. And so we create herbal gardens in, in the schools that they get to look after. And, we. Do education with them. And then, we focus that a lot around a place called, which is basically the bear bowl farming hotspot in Vietnam, just out of Hanoi.

And so then those kids go home and they say, Hey grandma granddad, like, we learned about this today. Like, why we doing this? Our bear? And, we are not, we are not, they're not bad people. They're not inherently bad people. Of course there is always some, who are just in it for the game of course.

But it, for, the majority of people, they're not they're not sitting out to, to do harm or, or anything like that. And it's the same with like our elephant project and the, the sort of owners down there. One of the things we recognize is that in Duck la province where, where an elephant project is, elephants are extremely culturally important.

And access to elephants is extremely culturally important to them. So that's something we factor into everything we do. Making sure that people can, come and see the elephants. There's no, like, hiding them away in the forest and no one can come and see them and, things like that.

So, every, every country has its cruelty. Every animal has every country has its poor welfare. If I'm looking at America, I'm looking at road sizes and the conditions that a lot of those animals are kept in. Like you can come and yell at my wonderful Vietnamese people about how bad they are with, bear bar, but you guys are dragging and padding tiger cubs and bear cubs and, keeping them in concrete pens and roadside zoos, there's, there's something everywhere. And yelling at people and being mean to them is not going to change hearts and minds. It's just not. 

[00:30:13] Emily: I am happy to continue picking on the United States because I live here so I can say it. We this the, we are ground zero for industrial farming and industrial agriculture. We have this weird belief that animals shouldn't live on streets like we shouldn't have streeties. And so we put them all in a bunch of buildings and expect. The poor people who work in those to be able to meet the needs of the animal at the level that those animals could meet their own needs if they were just allowed to be streeties. So like hot tank animal shelters shouldn't exist. The only reason they exist is because Americans don't like dogs and cats on our streets. And i'm not saying that we should attack the shelters, like we should support the shelters, because if our culture requires sheltering, we should do everything we can to su support the people who are doing that work, but their jobs shouldn't exist. And it's just entirely because of our cultural beliefs about where animals are, are allowed to be and where they're not allowed to be so we definitely have a lot of messes to clean up in our own country. And, the whole thing about glass houses and throwing stones and all of that, we, we don't need to be telling other people how to do things. And. I work with a lot of people around the world who do extraordinary work and do things that just doesn't exist here. So I wanna ask you, is there anything in vietnam that you've seen in terms of like the freedoms that animals are afforded or the, the ways that animals and humans coexist that delighted you?

[00:31:39] Sarah: While there's not any sort of welfare friendly, amazing thing that I've seen, what I have seen and what I'm really enjoying is the changing attitudes of people in Vietnam.

So dogs traditionally being guard dogs or meat. Now moving a lot more towards pets and our friends and, seeing all of their daycares and dog parks and, pet shops and vet clinics and everything like that. Popping up is amazing. And like just the attitudes changing. So where our sanctuary is and where we live is quite rural 

and one of our vet nurses has started basically like puppy preschool.

And it's not really for puppies be, some of them are puppies, but some of them are adult dogs as well. And, she's teaching our team, she's teaching our colleagues about dog behavior and socialization and different things. And the people, they're getting really engaged. So I think what what really impresses me about Vietnam is the willingness to learn and change their mindset.

I think that's, I think that's really amazing. And I don't think that every country. Or every people has that same mindset of, of, willingness to change and growth and learn. 

[00:33:04] Emily: Yeah. A a culture of growth mindset is really special. I, I love that. Thank you for for, sharing that. I am gonna shift topics a little bit. Can you walk me through a day in the life of the bears in the sanctuary? What what do their enrichment plans look like and and what is their day to day? 

[00:33:20] Sarah: Yeah. So, our bears, our kept inside overnight in their dens, and that is for safety. Our sanctuary is essentially built on like reclaimed forest land.

So it was forested historically, and then it was farmed and then they replanted it. But the, the land is not. Amazing. And so with the replanting, a lot of the species trees are not native or very well suited to that climate. So when we have random storms and things coming through, it's not unheard of for trees to come through fences.

So we keep our bears inside overnight. So what happens in the morning is the team, we always have a morning meeting all together just to make sure everyone's on track, and we've got our plans sorted for the day, and then the team go out and they set up everything in the enclosure for the bears, so all their enrichment and their food.

So our bears get two enrichment sessions per day from an enrichment calendar. So our enrichment calendars are month long and seasonal. So, calendar lasts a month and is repeated three times. And then it's the next season's calendar. So, it's quite a lot of change and variation throughout the year.

And our calendars, our seasonal calendars are really based on, what's important for the bears in that season. So in winter it's a lot of, bedding and sleeping opportunities. Whereas in spring there is a lot of more greens and vegetation and brows focused. And then in summer, obviously lots of ice box and cooling things.

And then autumn, they go through a period of something called hyperphasia, which is where they eat to excess getting ready for dormancy in the winter. And so in autumn we have a lot more food, food focused and puzzle feeder focused enrichment. And so basically in the morning, the team set up their first feed, their first enrichment session, and a browse session and their enclosures, and then they go inside to the dens.

They give them their medications because more than half of our bears are on medications. And then let them outside to forage and they observe them and then they clean their dens and then let them back in. And that's actually something I thought was really special coming from a zoo background is the animals can have access to the indoors and the outdoors during the day, and they don't get shut out.

That's great. And so then, yeah, they get they enjoy their morning post foraging. They might play, they might have a nap, they might just, cruise around and then at 2:00 PM we recall them into the dens again. And we put out a second feed and a second enrichment session and then let them back out.

And then in the evening they're record into the dens for the night where they get a third feed and a second browse session. And then so we do training sessions with the bears as well. So, that's one of the things that I'm really proud of a project that I've done. When I started, mainly the only trainers were the expat staff and maybe one or two Vietnamese people.

There was maybe only about five or six of us. And so I taught the teams how to train so our team leaders and our assistant team leaders. All learned first, and then any bear carer who was interested could learn as well. And so now we've gone to 43 trainers. Yeah. And we have 143 bears who have learned different behaviors.

And those behaviors range from really simple sort of foundational behaviors like weight and follow and focus, all the way up to things like blood draws, blood pressure readings open mouth, nail trim, lots of different medical based behaviors. So those training sessions this is one of the, the hard things about housing so many bears is that you can't just do a training session whenever you want.

You have to do it when everyone else is distracted. So, our training sessions happen as soon as the bearers. Go out to eat the bears who are being trained. They stay inside. They also get their food, and then we do a training session with them. If I was to maybe go in into the house at 11:00 AM to try and train a bear and that house had 20 bears, I would have one bear being trained in a den and 19 bears surrounding them on the other sides.

So, it would be really not fair to the other bears who aren't earning reinforcement and having that opportunity and really, really distracting for my trainer. So, we're a little bit limited in how often we can train and how many bears we can train. But we, we make it work. We've had a lot of really good success.

Other things that happen for the bears would be if they're having a health check, so our. Process for that at the moment is to ask them to walk into a transport cage. And then we close them in and then they are taken up to the hospital. So very much like a dog or a cat going to the vet, potentially if you pop 'em in a crate, same thing with a big bear.

We have weighing quarterly, so, we can track the seasonal trends of the bearers. And so again, it's the same thing where they walk into a away cage, we weigh them, they walk back out again. Sometimes we have what we call integrations, which is basically when we introduce new bears to each other.

So they, they meet each other in the dens because it's a nice controlled environment. But there's a whole big, long process that I won't go into right now. A lot of steps and a lot of careful consideration and planning because obviously bears are very large and have a lot of sharp pointy bits. But generally it is a very fun, very enjoyable process to do.

And then also the other thing that tends to happen not as often at the moment, 'cause our rescues are a little bit slower is first time enclosure access. So bears, they go from our quarantine area into a den, and then once they're settled in the den, they either have an integration or enclosure access.

And people seem to think that enclosure access is gonna be the most exciting, best thing ever. Unless you work at our sanctuary and you know that it is generally not very fun and a little bit stressful. And that's because the bears, they've been confined in a such a small space for so long.

The sky is new, the leaves are new, the grass is new. The, there's so much space. Why is everything so big? Yeah, it's, it's actually quite stressful for the bears. The majority of them take a little while. Some of them are very confident and, and very keen and just go straight out and it's amazing. But a lot of them will take a while.

And we even had one little sun bear called Cubby Leo, and she took a year, a year to get able to go outside. And she's amazing now, but it was a very, very stressful process for her, and she did not enjoy it.

[00:40:32] Emily: That's amazing, and I love that y'all have the patience and the dedication to really meet their needs and kind of meet each bear where they're at and just go with them on the journey at whatever pace they need to take. I, I love to hear that. Can you define for our listeners what brows is and what it does for bears? 

[00:40:51] Sarah: Oh, sorry. Yes, jargon. So brows is basically branches and leaves. So, we have a very lovely man who supplies us with our brows. It's usually things like mango, jackfruit, we use banana leaves, corn stalks. So basically it it's got two main functions. So one is, it's another food source. Some of them are more desired to eat than others.

And it's enrichment, so they can use it as bedding. Some of them just like to really play with it and wave it around and swing it like a nunchuck or something. Yeah, so it is just another way of, of bringing, bringing the forest to them.

[00:41:33] Emily: So I know for parrots, brows also helps to keep their beaks, nice and, and worn down. And for rabbits browse is really important for keeping their teeth worn down and also like other, like rodents as well. So is there something like that for, for bears? Is there Some element of like body maintenance or is it, or is it just like you were talking about entertainment, food, bedding, stuff like that? 

[00:41:59] Sarah: Not so much with browse. But nail wear is something that's really important and that's, we factor that into our enrichment. So making sure that we have options for, ripping apart logs or digging or things like that in the enclosure.

Unfortunately because of sort of skeletal issues with some of the bears, they aren't able to wear down their nails appropriately. And so for those bears we, we do use our cooperative care training to, to do nail trims. But generally if we notice that it a bear. A, a normal bear, shall we say, nails are getting too long.

Then for us, that's an issue with our husbandry that we need to address. Not so much a reason to train them. So we try and, get that done as naturally as possible. But yeah, browse tends to be smaller, smaller bits, so not like a huge branch. Just so that we can fit it through the bars of the den in the evening, things like that.

So in the, in the enclosure we have big logs and log piles and things like that, but the brows that goes into the den and, and things is a lot slimmer limmer.

[00:43:12] Emily: So talk to me more about, 'because you said that you add enrichment, like enrichment their food and browse. And then you said that sometimes the enrichment includes things like logs that they can tear apart. What are some of the other things that are included in. Like a bundled enrichment that you provide for them? 

[00:43:30] Sarah: So we try to be behavior focused in our enrichment. So we are not just giving them things for the sake of giving them things. So for bears scent is really important. So we use a lot of scent based enrichment. So dilute sprays of like essential oils or coffee to investigate. One of their favorite, favorite things is shrimp paste.

Ugh, it's so stinky. But if we smear it around, they'll lick it, they'll rub in it. They just love it. So shrimp paste, dried shrimp and fermented tofu are huge hits. And I'm pretty sure they would be hits for dogs too if you could bear the smell and felt like bathing your dog afterwards. 

[00:44:14] Emily: So, oh, sorry. Go ahead. The the, now that makes me wonder, do they actually eat seafood like shrimp? Do they like, you know how like, north American bears will like catch salmon and eat salmon? Do sun bears and moon bears catch anything in like lakes or rivers or streams of Vietnam? 

[00:44:32] Sarah: I think opportunistically they would, but it's not their main food source. Especially sun bears would be a lot more invertebrate focused. It's more they don't, I don't think they would actively go out and hunt like the North American bearers do. I think for them it's more take an opportunity as it comes. Same with like hunting. 'cause they, they will hunt or they will take down small mammals, they're not going out to do that every day. They're more sort of foraging. 

[00:45:00] Emily: so, so their love of shrimp paste is 'just 'cause it's stinky, not because it's a food that they would be feeding themselves in the wild. That's fascinating. Okay, sorry I interrupted you. Carry on with your list of enrichment stuff that you provide for them. 

[00:45:13] Sarah: Yeah. So, other things that we, behaviors that we try to encourage with our enrichment is nest building, which is obviously a big part of a bear's day. Once they're finished eating, they wanna build a nice comfy nest to sleep in. So a lot of different things we offer. So we have substrate pits and then we also offer different substrates around, so we have straw leaf litter rice husks, which is something very Vietnamese and very easy to get bark grass clippings.

So, we tend to clip some of the grass in the enclosure, not all of it just. For a few reasons. One is snakes and the other is our mobility bears. And if the grass gets too long, and some of them are quite short because of stunted growth, they get, like itchy eyes and things. So we do have to cut a bit. So we might put grass clippings somewhere and we use we call them heian sack. I'm not sure if that's the same, like ju ju sex or like old coffee bags.

[00:46:12] Emily: Yeah, I've never heard the term his before. Yeah. I think we probably call them jut here. 

[00:46:16] Sarah: Yeah, I think jute like we have some very unique Vietnamese type things like palm brooms and straw brooms that we can give them to play with and destroy and tear up. And then obviously a lot of cognitive based enrichment puzzle feeders and, made out of bamboo or wood or brows, tires. Yeah, gosh, I could sit here for ages listing them all. We used to use Kongs but they're actually really hard to get in Vietnam and obviously very expensive, so it's not very cost effective.

And then, just lots of like different food presentations and food scatters and like novel food items. In our, in our summer calendar we have once per month what we call the special treat. And so it's something very, very special that they don't get very often. So one month it's fresh strawberries which is very hard to get in, A little bit expensive in Vietnam.

So fresh strawberries. One month it's coconuts. Which is very, very high value. And I have to tell you, we get a lot of failed recalls after coconut day. And the other one is dried mulberries, which is something mulberries are something that the bears would naturally eat in the wild. They are again, pricey.

But we try to like introduce novelty in that sort of way as well. Sun bears occasionally. It's occasionally now 'cause they got a little bit fat was. That's extra for the sun bears. But we manage the moon bears in a different, more cost effective way.

[00:47:50] Emily: I love that. Thank you for, for explaining all of that. So at the end of every episode, I like to ask people the same set of questions 'cause I like to hear your answers. The first question is, what are our observable goals and actionable items that people can take away from this discussion? I. 

[00:48:09] Sarah: Hmm. Oh, I like this question. I think that when you are approaching animal welfare to treat the people responsible for their animal's, welfare with kindness and empathy and understanding and also that many of the things you can do with your cats and dogs, you can do with bears too.

[00:48:29] Emily: Like kongs, for example, which could be shipped to Vietnam. The really The biggest ones. Yeah, Yeah, the jumbo ones. What is one thing you wish people knew about this topic? Your profession or enrichment? Your choice. 

[00:48:43] Sarah: One thing I wish I saw more and not just with cat and dog owners, but also with Zoo World, is people having goal-based enrichment. So it's not just, Hey, what enrichment items can I give my cat dog monkey? They're asking, I want to encourage my cat, dog, or monkey to dig a hole to show scent marking behavior. What enrichment can I use to meet that goal?

[00:49:10] Emily: I just need to tell you that have devoted my entire career to that mission, of getting people to be more goal-based in their enrichment plans. So I cannot agree with you enough. 

[00:49:22] Sarah: It's, I'm in a, I'm in a zookeeper Facebook group and it is one of my pet peeves when I see people asking, what enrichment can I give? And I'm like, I always ask, I don't know, what's your goal? What do you wanna get out? Yeah. 

[00:49:34] Emily: What are you hoping to improve about that? Animal's welfare and wellbeing. And then you'll be able to reverse engineer your answer from there. Love that. Thank you. What is one thing you'd love to see improved in your field? 

[00:49:45] Sarah: Hmm. I think true collaboration and a, a decrease in ego. Not that I'm saying it's a big problem, but I do get this feeling some, like, I really like to ask for opinions and help, and sometimes I really feel like the responses that I get are not, not necessarily coming from a place of, of help or compassion. They're coming from a, well, I know all of these things and you should definitely do this. And that's just not what I'm aiming for. Like, I'm, I, I'm not silly. I'm very experienced. I. I work really hard. I try really hard to learn, but I also acknowledge that I'm, I don't know everything. And so I want to engage with people in our, in our industry who are humble about their knowledge and are really coming at it from a sharing point of view.

And then they want to really listen to what I have to say in terms of my problems and my approaches, and then add to it rather than tell me I'm wrong. I don't mind being wrong for sure. I do not mind Right. Being wrong, but I want, I want a bit more like empathetic collaboration. 

[00:50:59] Emily: Yeah. I think for me, the more dogmatic somebody is in their advice, the less I trust their advice. Because to me, when somebody has a real depth of knowledge and a growth mindset. Which somebody can have one without the other. They, there is that intellectual humility of, right, this is what I know from my experience and through my lens from the academic discipline that I came from. And also, it's not the only way to see things and I may not know everything and all that stuff. Right. So, yeah, I'm i'm right with you on that. What do you love about what you do? 

[00:51:34] Sarah: Everything okay. No, I don't love paperwork. Two main things. One is especially with the bearers, ' cause they, at the moment that's who I have the most experience with. But even in the zoo, I did a lot of rehabilitation of Kia, which are a parrot species in New Zealand.

I like seeing the animals succeed. Or change or especially make a new friend. And so our Vietnamese bear team managers know that if they have a new, a new friend pair of bears, they always will tell me because I, they know how excited I get to hear like these little connections being made. And then it's really the same for the people I work with.

I like seeing them succeed. I like seeing them excited, engaged and I really believe that my success comes from theirs. So I like seeing them grow and learn and, and just be amazing.

[00:52:29] Emily: That's beautiful. And I agree. I like to say I live for the light bulb moments. Yeah. Because that's what it is. I love seeing that moment of discovery and joy. that happens across species, human, non-human. Everybody. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. What are you currently working on? If people want to work more with you or learn from you, or perhaps donate to animals Asia, where can they find you? 

[00:52:54] Sarah: So the best, the best port of call is our website, which is animals asia.org. There is a lot of information on there about what we do, but there's also a lot of different options for donating.

And there is information on open day. So if you're ever in Vietnam we are a sanctuary and we're a, our Tamar Sanctuary is the only G-F-A-S-A Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries accredited Sanctuary in Vietnam. And so to be a true sanctuary, that means that you have tours and you're not just open access like a zoo.

So if you wanna come and visit go on the website. The visiting days are there as well.

[00:53:33] Emily: Yeah, I love it. Thank so much for joining me today. It it was a to hear and moon bears and you, appreciate Sarah.

[00:53:48] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me. This has been really fun and I love podcast and what you do.

[00:53:53] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.