Animal Behaviorist Nathan Penny MSc.
Animal Behaviorist Nathan Penny holds a Masters of Science in Companion Animal Behaviour from The Ontario Veterinary College and has been featured as a pet expert on such programs as Animal Housecalls, CTV's News at Noon, A-Channel Morning, Citynews at 6, and City TV's Breakfast Television.
Nathan's Story
Nathan began his formal education at York University in 1994, where he earned an Honors degree in Psychology specializing in animal behaviour. While attending York he was supervised by Dr. Suzanne MacDonald, the behaviorist at The Metro Toronto Zoo. During this time he completed several courses in animal behavior, cognition, learning theory, memory, biology, neurology, and ethology. Nathan was also involved in conducting humane behavioral research at the zoo concerning visual acuity in camels, foraging strategies in orangutans, visual and spatial learning in pigeons, and as his Honors thesis, visual and spatial learning in marmoset monkeys.
In 1997 Nathan attempted to contact the internationally renowned companion animal behaviorist Dr. Pamela Reid to see if he could do an apprenticeship with her. Dr. Reid owned a popular Toronto based pet behaviour practice called Pet Behaviour Innovations, and was (and still is) one of the world's foremost experts on companion animal behaviour. After not hearing back for quite some time, and following a fruitless search to find another behaviorist of the caliber of Dr. Reid, Nathan virtually give up on his dream of working with companion animals, and decided instead to pursue a graduate program in experimental psychology studying wolf behaviour. After returning from an interview at Dalhousie University Nathan discovered that he had received a message from Dr. Reid suggesting they should meet to discuss Nathan's ambitions. He was overjoyed and quickly went about making arrangements!
For the next two years Nathan accompanied Dr. Reid on house calls before taking on his own caseload as an associate in 1999. Over this period Dr. Reid accepted a position as special faculty at The Ontario Veterinary College. Determined to further his education Nathan applied to the Ontario Veterinary College and received a full scholarship enabling him to become Dr. Reid's graduate student in the field of Applied Animal Behaviour. Since Dr. Reid was in the department of Population Medicine, which is largely a statistical department, Nathan was also placed in the department of Population Medicine. This meant that not only was Nathan required to study graduate level behavioural sciences, but also graduate level statistics (his worst subject as an undergrad) not only that, Nathan had to achieve an acceptable grade point average in graduate level statistics to maintain his scholarship in behaviour!
In 2001 Dr. Reid was offered a position as director of the behavior center at the Manhattan ASPCA, which she accepted. Following Dr. Reid's departure Nathan ran Animal Behaviour Services (while still a full time student) for two years before finally purchasing the practice in 2003.
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