The brown bear can be found in about the half of the Eurasian continent, in Alaska and the western part of the USA and Canada. It has several subspecies – the ones living at the HORKAI Animal Training Center are European brown bears.
In the nature they are fundamentally lonely animals, but more bears may gather in case of a baggy food source. At the Center the five bears live in the same enclosure with some wolves. Although there are some disagreements occasionally, but they get on well together most of the time.
They are omnivorous but our bears have some unique differences in their food. Brumi, the oldest male bear was vegetarian for a long time; he was not willing to eat meat, but considered Coca-Cola as a natural dietary supplement...
Their mating period is in summer, the small pups are born in winter blind and bare. The pups weigh 340-680 grams and are guinea pig-sized, but they start growing quickly in the first 3 months due to the rich milk of their mother. When raising them up we tried to replace their natural food with baby nutriment. There was no trouble until we had something to give in their mouths, but as soon as the milk ran out we were less enthusiastic participants of a huge hissy…..
In the course of work we have to be much more cautious compared to the wolves. The bear is not able to „speak” so understandably, its small ears and tail do not enable the wide scale of body language as compared to e.g. wolves. When working or filming an electrical fence separates the bears from the rest of the staff members in most cases.
 

One could expect that it is much easier to work with dogs compared to wild animals. On one hand it is true: they can be taught easily and can execute even complicated tasks for rewards or good words. On the contrary the selection of the suitable animal is a long process. Although a continuously expanding pool of “characters” are available for us wherein most kinds of dogs are represented, we still have the most difficulties with mutts. For film productions or commercial we are presented with a fixed idea: the producer or the director has clear expectations regarding the appearance of the suitable dog and the tasks it has to accomplish and these for sure are not always easy to meet for several reasons.
One of them is the insufficient knowledge of the different kinds on the client’s part: not all dogs are suitable for all tasks. But, even if the appearance of the dog is fine, its personal characteristics might not make him suitable for the given task. That is why it happens quite regularly – especially when the dog has to perform different character types in the given production – that we use more of the same looking (or same kind) of dogs each of them trained for a set of behaviour types: one of the is trained to be aggressive, while the other one is kind and gentle and licks the main character’s hand, etc.
 

In case of horses we can differentiate between two basic kinds of work. In one case only the horse is requested for different tasks: pull a cart, be ridden, stand still, charge free on the field, etc. The other case is when they have to interact with other animals. On one occasion a hawk was supposed to fly on the hand of a rider sitting on the horse. This scene meant heavy practice for all three characters: the horse had to get used to the fact that a bird with an open wing approaches towards it and it had to endure all this torture without moving its ears and by standing still. The bird had to get used to the huge animal and find the hand of the man sitting on the horse, while the rider had to pay attention to the reactions of the two animals simultaneously and control them.
In other cases the horse may not be the main character but only facilitator for the wolf action. Wolves are many times requested to charge from one point to the other as fast as they could. One way to accomplish this is to ride in front of them on a horse and the rider baits the wolves that are following the galloping animal in a mad pace. Certainly this sequence must be preceded by a long training process: the horse cannot be afraid of the wolves while the wolves must learn that the horse is not the singled out lunch, but the delicious pieces of meat are coming from the rider.

Except for man the wolf is the most widespread predator. It has several subspecies that are different in their appearance as they have to adapt to highly diverse environments. The wolves living at the HORKAI Animal Training Center are European grey wolves with a greyish-russet fur coat.
In the nature they are living in organized family groups called packs. It’s the same at the Center, but the main difference is that here man is a member of the pack. But while Zoltan is regarded as an active member of the hierarchy and tested to be repelled from the leader's position year by year, we, the others are awaited by them with love and affection throughout the year. Of course personal conflicts can happen sometimes…
Among the members of the pack a severe hierarchy prevails in which each single animal knows its own and his companions' position. There is a separate hierarchy between males and females, but this may change in captivity as we observed many times when a female dominated her male companion in a lower position.
The hierarchy debates intensify in January, the dominance fights are stronger and the mating begins. It is necessary to deal with the wolves with increased carefulness at this time,  you need to consider their wild instincts. Working with them requires special attention and awareness in this season.  
The communication of the wolves is exceptionally sophisticated. One of its most important elements is the body language where the long shaggy tail plays the most important role. In the past years our experiences taught us a lot on how we should interpret this complicated language - although we are still learning day by day. If for example a grumbling wolf waits for us with a rigid body at the gate of the enclosure with his tail raised up for the sky and his hair jarring, we better walk away. That means our presence is undesirable and we can only enter for our own risk. If the receiving wolf draws his body with scraped ears while it is waving his tail vividly, it means that we may enter without any problem.
Our special relationship with the wolves is best highlighted by the fact that they allowed us to film the pups' births many times. The pups are born at the end of April/beginning of May with closed eyes and ears that will be open when they are 10-14 days of age. As a necessary basis for our future relationship with the animal this is the ideal time to separate the pups from their mothers and to start raising them from bottle.

The wild boar is one of the most popular fair games in Hungary, but very few people are aware of its behaviour.
There are 30 wild boars at the HORKAI Animal Training Center in herds of different size and combination.
In the nature the leader sow stands on the top of the herd who is the eldest and most experienced sow. In captivity where the sows are kept together with the bigger males usually the largest males will be the leaders of the herd. It is the same at the Center: Sany and Lali the two eldest boars are the leaders of two groups. But while our relation is perfect with Lali, working with is as smooth as an operator, you must think twice before going in to Sanyi’s territory. The difference comes from the personality of the two animals: their raising circumstances were identical.
Hand raising a wild boar is not an easy task. The piglets require their milk portions every 3 hours with loud squeaking, not sparing our rest in the middle of the night also. With wild boars it’s not necessary to take them away from their mother as the small ones will be tame with a tame mother.
The members of the herd live in a very close relationship, frequent body contact is typical of them. This characteristic is often applied to us also: Yoda, the mini pig living in the flat can sleep only snuggling up to somebody tightly.
The basis of their orientation is mostly sound and smell, their eyesight is rather weak. You should not let their dumpy and slightly clumsy body mislead you, they are very fast runners.
You may also misunderstand their intention if you do not know them well. If a wild boar living in the Centre sprints squealing towards somebody, and when getting to him pushes him over with spinning-top movement, you should not get frightened: the boar is only playing. But if it approaches with standing bristles, sliding slightly (hipshot), then it’s worth looking for a nearby suitable object that you can jump on…
In the course of shooting training has a much more important role: they are not willing to work until spending days in the strange and new environment. So it is of primary importance to introduce the animal to the scene of his prospective workplace already days before the project.

In case of birds a lot depends on the desired scene. First we have to select the race of the suitable bird, the actual casting can only be the next step. For prey birds it is necessary to know the route and directions of the bird’s flight (straight, drizzly, skew) and the different conditions that determine the task. Many times an accurate race definition cannot be given, we are only informed about the task and casting the most suitable bird for it is our task. After selection we have to start training to reach the desired condition.
Meat as a motivational tool works only for a short time for prey birds. They can get full in a short period of time so we must be careful to work only with very tiny pieces of meat and later as the attention decreases we can try with larger pieces. Just like with most of the animals we usually work with more birds as scenes require several takes most of the time.
In case of parrots the most important thing is to be able to stand in hand, hence being raised by man since the age of nestling and be dealt with continuously is of outmost importance.

Except for the animals presented in our other albums we were making films with several other smaller or larger kinds from ants to huge Hungarian grey cows.
One of the biggest challenges is when we have to work with animals that are impossible to motivate or have no learning abilities so we have to solve the problems with some tricks. Examples of these animals are ants, bees, flies, wasps, etc.  
We learned a lot about foxes and raccoons along the years. Their motivation is not so strong in a strange environment: the discovery of a new place or their attempts to leave the enclosure keeps them busy. With a raccoon it is especially difficult to work with as reaching a certain age these animals can be aggressive towards their owner as well.
Hungarian grey cows are very popular among film makers: these animals are typical of Hungary and they fit well in a medieval or ancient roman environment. Most of the time they appear in ox carts in films. Their transport is extremely complicated and costly and the fact that they weigh around 1 ton it and the span of their horns is around 2 meters it makes work with them rather complicated, One of the most memorable tasks we had with them when we had to drive a herd over on a dead channel of a river – the Hungarian grey cows had to learn to swim this time……

Filming with animals is a complicated task: one would think that taking a nice pet that sits and stops at home on command to a film shooting is all what it takes.
Reality is all too much different however: the animal that works perfectly at home for the owner is not used to the chaotic and crowded filming location with all its machines, noises and smells. And this animal in a sudden moment vanishes from the spot if it can – animals larger in size like horses or cows have a more difficult task without ruining the environment, while predators on the run can jeopardize the physical health of the crew. 
Animals in the film industry must also be capable of repeating the tasks several times let this task be the simplest running or the most complicated stunt scene. Consequently it is of primary importance for film makers to work with highly trained animals and prepared trainers as they can save a lot of valuable time and tons of production dollars.
Everyone involved in show business knows it: it is the hardest to work with children and animals… Professionally trained animals however can do miracles: in one of our filming projects our wolves completed the same task in 2 hours that took 1 complete day for the actors to do (they had to jump through an obstacle and arrive to a certain points that were marked by the actors’ jumps previously)…
 

The fact that our wolves were brought up by man does not mean that they accept strangers automatically. A scene with a complete stranger to the animal is always preceded by several days of conditioning, trying to make contact with the wolf and the actor. In some cases however wolves can only work with our trainers. One such case when shooting Blood and Chocolate in Romania Zorba, the „evil” wolf had to kill a young girl. As this was a potentially dangerous action it was Dori who stood in for the “victim”: only Dori’s shoulder and foot can be seen in the picture, while opposite her on the top of a table there was the snarling animal ready to attack.

During one of the most exciting shootings the main characters were played by the wolves who received the roles according to their personality and their abilities. More wolves had to play one role because one scene may have lasted for hours and as the animals got tired we must have left rest period for the animals. We received the script before the actual production began and discussed scenes with the directors and key personnel: this way we made sure that everybody involved knows the rules and understand what can and cannot be done. We also learned the tasks that the animals had to execute and prepared a training plan.

One of the most exciting scenes was when 15 wolves had to work in one set at the same time. The animals had to charge through in a 70 m long studio that was set up as a forest from one side to the other. It was a challenge from many aspects: on one hand we had to eliminate that the animals come to blows. At the Center they live in packs with 5-7 members and when they meet it could easily turn into a fight. Another problem was posed by the cameras: one of them was running on special speed track next to the animals making an earsplitting sound, while the other one was fixed onto a crane that moved up and down. We had to make the animals get used to the strange motions and sounds. When the animals reached the other side of the studio we had to gather them in seconds before they mixed with staff members and each other. We started training with the wolves two months before the shooting in order for us and for the production not to loose any valuable production time at the actual shooting: the wolves were made to get used to their cages in fives and fours where they had to arrive at the end of the their run. This way we could avoid fights and with the exception of one or two “straywolves”, the wolves got into their cages in seconds.  

The majority of the animals living in the Centre are playing in films, and as they are wild animals we must start to build up the relationship with them from a very young age – this is the basis for all future activities. It does not mean a classic training schedule: we try to make the animals get used to human environment first. The training and preparation for filming begins only at a later stage. We take away the pups from their mother before their eyes open at 10-14 days of age and then let them spend most of their times with us as pups.

We socialized all wolves living at the HORKAI Animal Training Center one by one: each wolf pup got a “stepmother” who took the helpless kid with herself everywhere. They went to school and cinema together and traveled by tram, subway, trains, etc.. With the help of a baby-kangaroo worn in the neck we were able to stay in physical contact with our little clients. Another method was raising the pups in pack: we made 7 or 11 pups get used to human environment at the same time. Of course it means fewer stimuli to an animal compared to individual upbringing. With one animal you can be mobile but carrying 5 or more animals is rather circumstantial.

We have not observed the negative effects of raising the pups this way: we think that the personality of the animal counts a lot more beyond the educational circumstances. We have one wolf that was brought up alone and even this way he became rather shy and mistrustful, while its companion has grown up in pack and still become much more friendly and trustful with people. Circumstances may change but one thing is always the same: we never punish young wolves. Consequently, if they chewed our favourite book or peed in our shoes we never scolded them as this could endanger our future contact. The animal raised this way will be scared, or - what is even worse - may become aggressive. So we had only one chance: we took a deep breath and tried to pay attention to the sunny sides of raising up wolves...