Patricia White

From the list of elephant persons Family: White

Patricia White
Profession	circus animal trainer
Personal details
Born	? in United States

Spouse(s)	Roy Wells

Country	South Africa

Work locations
Title	animal trainer 1993-
Location	at Brian Boswells Circus in South Africa

Title	animal trainer 1981-1990
Location	at Carson and Barnes Circus in United States

Title	animal trainer 1980-1981
Location	at Gee Gee Engessers elephants in United States

Title	zookeeper 1974-1977
Location	at Jungle Larry's African Safari Land Inc in United States

Biography details

Patricia White , circus animal trainer in South Africa

Born ? in United States .

Patricia “Pat” White grew up in Clare. She is the only circus person in her family. In 1973, Pat graduated from Clare High School. She attended Western Michigan University (WMU) in Kalamazoo. During the school year, Ringling Brothers Circus performed at Reid Fieldhouse at WMU.

Pat worked at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH during the summer of 1974 to learn about working with animals. When the show moved to FL for the winter, Pat did, too, and worked for Jungle Larry [Tetzlaff] at the African Safari. In 3.5 years, Pat learned how to work with and care for chimps, elephants and cats, as well as how to handle other exotic performance animals.

In the summer of 1977 Pat married trainer Roy Wells. She worked later in1977 for John Cuneo’s Hawthorne Circus Corporation. The next year, Pat and husband moved to Marineland and Game Farm in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where her husband worked the cat act.

Pat and her husband then went to work with Gee Gee Engesser on Cirque International in 1980. Here Roy worked the elephants and Pat the pony drill. Pat realized she loved cats and spent all her spare time with them.

From February 1981 until the beginning of 1992 Pat worked the cat act for Carson and Barnes Circus, a circus she still loves.

At one point Pat was attacked through a cage by a young cat. The incident lasted five seconds, but she needed help to escape and suffered back injuries, a tiger tooth in her arm, lacerations, scars on her stomach, her left nostril was ripped and the doctors thought her lung was punctured. Fortunately everything healed.

Pat found lions easier to work with than tigers, but liked the look of a mixed act consisting of both lions and tigers. In her career, Pat also worked with three elephants on Carson and Barnes (C&B) Circus.

In 1990, Pat and her son, Nick, moved to Cody, Wyoming, where she worked in an art foundry and sculpted. In February 1993 she returned to circus work on the Tiger Show and Yano Circus in Japan. After Japan, Pat joined the Boswell show in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, where she lives.

Reference list

References

Koehl, Dan, (2023). animal trainer Patricia White in United States. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 5 December 2023 at https://www.elephant.se/person.php?id=2420. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:

Selected publications

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