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Show Bearback Rider Romps Through Heber -I , i - 5 T r. - "' f - V - J - ' ? x , ' - ' ' V' . V - v 'f " - v "y . v - - , . -;? 'K , . ' ' , ' -- : .... . . . ' : tion and reward. During the daily, four hour sessions, Doug will repeatedly command the bear to stand, wave, roll over, play dead and growl. If the trick is performed successfully, the reward is a marshmallow. "Bears have a real sweet tooth," he explains. If the bear doesn't respond, Doug just keeps trying until it does. He does not punish an animal unless it becomes aggres: sive. "Then you have to be firm." "Bears are exceptionally intelligent," intell-igent," he says, noting the Grizzly is the easiest of all his animals to work with on a movie set. "The wolf is the most difficult because it is naturally suspicious and no animal will respond if it is intent on survival." "Bears are different; ' they don't have that psychological structure. They are used to over-powering their environment." environ-ment." And that, says Doug Seus, is why he can walk his bear down a busy street. "Nothing threatens a bear." Doug Seas and Zak Mid-day traffic on Heber City's Main Street came to a halt recently as startled pedestrians and motorists stopped to watch a large, brown bear amble peacefully peace-fully along the sidewalk. Beside the 475-pound Kodiac grizzly walked animal trainer Doug Seus who had brought "Zak" to town as part of a training exercise, the point of which was to teach the bear to ignore noise and confusion. That was important because the next day the bear would be on the set of television show Grizzly Adams, filmed near here. For Doug, the walk was all part of a day's work. He and his wife Lynne are one of the west's major suppliers of tame, trained wildlife for movies and TV. On their ranch three miles east of Heber the cages house a large variety of four-legged movie stars, including wolves, raccoons, foxes, cougars, skunks and bears. Since moving to Heber three years ago, the Seus's company, Wasatch Wildlife, has provided animals for numerous productions. produc-tions. Besides Grizzly Adams recent movies include Baker's Hawk and Guardian of the Wilderness; TV show Wild Kingdom and a commercial for Busch beer. A former University of Notre Dame football player, Doug says he has always had a love of wild animals, but admits he did not always intend to make that interest a career. That began, he says, nine years ago in Los Angeles when film makers started asking to rent his pet wolf. "My hobby just gradually turned into a business, ' ' he notes, adding that the only formal requirement he needed was a special wildlife-raising permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since there are few books written on animal training, Doug says much of his experience has been obtained by raising the animals and observing their habits. The Seus's buy their wildlife from zoos when only a few days or weeks old. That means, in the case of young wolf and bear cubs, the animals must be bottle nursed every four hours, for several weeks. Much of that responsibility falls to wife Lynne, a former TV actress who attended Provo High School and Pasadena College. She says the animals get along well with the Seus's two children. "I enjoy having the animals around the house, until they start to eat the sofa... That's when they go out." When they do go outside, the training begins. With the bears, it is a time-consuming process of repeti- |
