What Shamu Taught Me About A Happy Marriage Analysis

Everyone has habits - pattern of behavior that they repeat, sometimes without even being aware that they are repeating them. While most habits are harmless, they can be annoying to either the person preforming them or those closest to them. In this essay, Amy Sutherland attempts to break her husband of his bad habits by employing the same methods used to train animals. While writing a book about exotic animal trainers, Sutherland picked up many techniques to aid in her own training. “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage” is a humorous piece that illustrates the fact that humans are just as susceptible to training as animals are. Sutherland starts off the essay with a narrative about her husband’s lost keys. While she uses to chase her husband around helping him in the search, she now ignores his racket and continues washing the dishes. While she loves her husband, there are little quirks about him that she wishes she could change. She describes him as “well read [and] adventurous…but also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and

An example she gives is teaching a crane to stop landing on the trainer by retraining it to land on mats on the ground. Since it is impossible for a bird to land on both the trainer and the mat, the old annoying habit soon becomes replaced this the new more desirable behavior. Sutherland used this same technique on her husband with great success. One of Scott’s habits that drove the author crazy was that he would hover around her while she was cooking. To counteract this behavior she would get him to chop vegetables at the other end of the counter or set a bowl of chips and salsa across the room. Scott was so busy with these new behaviors that he could no longer crowd her while she