September 4, 2008

Pet fish can learn tricks like playing basketball with the new R2 Fish School. (Pet Pulse Photo by Brandi Fowler, Design by Tim Mattson)

LOS ANGELES -- There’s a new school for pets in town with surprising, tiny students. Meet Albert Einstein. The soccer ball pushing, hoop swimming star of the R2 Fish School. This goldfish phenom holds the world record for the most completed fish tricks.

“The first time I saw this and I looked at it I was like everyone else. I was kind of skeptical,” Russ Ronat, co-founder of R2 Fish School said. “Didn’t think it even worked but as I started researching, I definitely realized that it definitely works and it’s amazing.”

The idea of the R2 Fish School was developed by Dr. Dean Pomerlau. He discovered a way to teach fish tricks through operant conditioning, which means he taught the fish tricks by luring them with food, rewarding them with food and repeating the cycle.

That's when Dr. Pomerlau teamed up with R2 Solutions and the R2 Fish School was born.

“It’s take two sessions a day, about 15 minutes a session to train a fish,” Ronat said. “The first step is the feeding wand -- getting the fish to associate food with the feeding wand and that takes a couple days to do.”

Once it does that, the trainer will be able to train the fish to first swim through hoops then move on to harder tricks like the soccer ball. With 20 training accessories in the R2 Fish School kit, any kind fish that's between one and six inches long, should be able to do every trick within two months.

Despite common myths of short-term memories goldfish can be successful trained, and with a life span of up to 12 years, Ronat says the training is a worthwhile investment.

Having trained animals for more than 35 years, Richard “Army” Maguire has done it all, even teaching his goldenpoo Cassie how to ride a skateboard like a pro. But now Maguire is branching out to this newest animal training trend.

“First when I got that fish he was really rough, so I named him Rampage. You know who rampage Jackson is? He’s a UFC fighter,” said Maguire a R2 Fish School customer.

But Rampage softened up and in only three days, he was swimming through a hoop.

“What’s amazing is, even to me -- having trained marine mammals -- is I sat there and looked and I said, ‘my God, I didn’t realize they were that adaptive,’ ” Maguire said. “But, it’s proof that that’s why they’re able to survive.”

Proof also to Muguire that training a fish is like training any other animal.

“Training an elephant, training a camel, training a goldfish and training that fish is the same to me. Most people look at the differences. I look at the similarity,” Maguire said. “The similarity is reinforcement is reinforcement. Stimulus, response, reinforcement. That’s the mantra in training.”

Now he's anxious to see the soccer trick in action.

“Obviously they’re not going to encounter a soccer ball in the wild but this is something that will be indelible in somebody’s brain,” Maguire said. “I have trained everything that walks, crawls, whatever. And now I can say that with fish.”

Currently, R2 Fish School is holding a video contest for the best trained fish. For more information, visit R2FishSchool.com.

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