► Never consider elephant as an investment and hiring charges as
a return on investment. It should be considered as an honorarium
received for offering the magnificent animal for the purpose of
exhibition and its skills in performing the work.

► Exercise, elephant regularly. They need exercise and the best
form of exercise for elephants is walk. There is even a local saying
that “oedema on the fore limb means no exercise”. Elephant’s legs
are anatomically designed for long walks.

►  If an analogy is used, elephant is a temple, mahout is the priest,
owner is the trustee and the vet is the surveyor of protocols. If such a
situation can be achieved the common expression of “ mahouts job,
a dangerous one” will loose its significance. And the   job of mahout
will become an exciting and challenging, and rewarding.

One mahout elephant

It is a common expression among elephant keeping parlance. They
often equate this with one master dog especially in western
countries. This is often not true.  This is mostly to black mail the
owner or manager.  Often when the first mahout finds that his
juniors are gaining dominance over the elephant and elephant can
be managed without the first mahout, he will use all means to
dispense off, the second or third mahout, ascribing various
reasons.  This is mostly to blackmail the owner and demand
unreasonable favours.  

Dr. Michael Schmidt also describes such a situation in his book
“Elephant Ghost”, when the elephant named jumbo had to be taken
out from the zoo to the new owner Mr Barnum, P.T.  The mahout
started giving various excuses for not loading Jumbo into a crate.

Finally, he is given the ultimatum and it worked. Needless to say
that, there are several advantages if more than one mahout can
handle an elephant. So when the mahout starts claiming that the
elephant is a “one man mahout type” be careful and change the
practice at the beginning.

Find out the method of initial training like approaching animals with
tools of restraint or not. Similarly see whether animal is more
comfortable with some one to ride on him, or controlling from the
ground. Do not change the practice suddenly. It will be easy for the
mahout to change his style, than making the elephant to change its
habits.

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