Seguin, Texas—Meet Dr. Scott Bailey. A Professor, Integrated Science Director, and the Honors Director at Texas Lutheran University. Dr. Bailey was a contributor who didn’t get the spot light during the 2019 Krost Symposium, but had one of the biggest roles for making the symposium possible. 

This isn’t the first time Dr. Bailey has worked with Krost but it is the first event he has worked with that included dogs. “I have been interested (in dog events) since I’ve been here since 1994 trying to figure out whether we might be able to do something at TLU that involves dogs, early pre training for dogs and might go into service work or something like that. But this is the first formal event that I’ve done here. I’ve had my dog lots of times before we had a policy that says we can’t have dogs here.”(Bailey)

Dr. Bailey explains where he grew his love for dogs and interest in going further than just owning a dog. “ I think that probably came in focus for me to the extent that when I was trying to select colleges, even though I started off as an art major, not a psychology person, or behavioral neuroscience. I was reading the whole catalog when we drove back home from my college visit, I went to Southwestern up in Georgetown but I’m from Kansas. So Dad was driving and I was reading the catalog, I had this crazy coding system for all the different classes that might take there and one of the courses that was high on my list of things to take was the animal learning class. Even though my major was not aligned with that, I’m figured out what the course prerequisites were. So I could take that stuff before it was too late in the game for me to be able to take in the learning. So it came into focus for me slowly over time. My first friend was a dog. I have a younger brother, but when he wasn’t born yet, I had a dog named Roxanne who is our basset hound. And so I have fond memories of hanging out with that dog from the first memories that I have.” (Bailey)

The Krost Symposium was a popular success this year for the TLU community. When the time came for the symposium to take place, it looked and went perfect. But behind the scenes, the preparation for the topic and setting up the symposium had to start years ago. 

“The way the topic is selected is as a function of an application that is submitted to the Krost committee and that’s done a few years ahead of time. So when somebody applies this year, it will be for a couple of years from now. I’ve been interested in doing something on dogs, and dog research has really taken off in the last 15 or 20 years. I’ve been aware of some of it, I’ve been reading some of that stuff on my own, I also read some of the popular literature stuff, and they’re going to training conferences. And so I’ve had a lot of interest in that anyway. I mean people like dogs. So yeah, this might be a good topic for the Krost symposium.” (Bailey)

Dr. Bailey dives into how far ahead of schedule he had to work in order to have all 10 speakers come to the event. “These are all people who are very busy, and have very busy speaking schedules. I’d seen Ken (Ramirez) talk a couple of times. I knew him to be a great speaker. I also knew him to be very high in demand. So the secret is to ask people so far ahead of time, they can’t have anything in opposition to it. And that’s what I was able to do with all these folks. But of them, Ken was the one who really did have something that was roughly on his agenda at the same time. I initially checked with him almost two years ahead of time.” (Bailey)

A large part of the symposium was the question of why training dogs was is important? Each expert had their individual take on their training methods and reasons. Dr. Bailey focused in on why house dogs should be trained.

“Good training helps that dog have better manners and become a better companion for you in the presence of other people. If somebody comes to your house or if you take your pet to some other place, to the park or wherever. So I think it helps build a healthy trustful relationship. And because training involves definition, modifying the behavior of the repertoire things the dog does. You’re teaching them, they will do things that you’ve chosen to teach it to do. So those are hopefully things that you enjoy.” (Bailey)

The long process finally came to an end during the week of February 21st-23rd. Dr. Bailey’s hard work and dedication finally paid off. As the 2019 Krost Symposium becomes history, the whole TLU community can thank Dr. Scott Bailey for his great work in the successful symposium.