I have several blogger friends who do wordless wednesday posts. If you’re not familiar with the concept here’s how it works. On Wednesdays, bloggers post a fun photo. Typically, the post contains no words, no description, just the title and the photo! I’m going to start doing wordless Wednesday posts. If I have any really [...]
Does your horse “have to?”
Many traditional training methods rely on force and pressure. The animal has little choice and if the animal does not perform a command, the trainer asserts her leadership and shows the animal who’s the boss. Clicker training and other positive training methods try to give the horse a voice and a choice. I want my [...]
Fun with Shelter Cats
Yesterday I spent the morning playing with some fun felines at our local animal shelter. Last semester, several of the guys I go to school with started a partnership through ORCA with our local animal shelter. They’ve been going out to the shelter several days a week, helping with training and also with everything else [...]
Going Backward with Cheyenne
Cheyenne is a young paint mare at our rescue who I have recently started riding. She had about three rides last fall and a handful more during my winter break. Just recently we’ve had two short, but great, rides working on backing up with a rider. Up to now, Cheyenne and I have worked on [...]
Back to School (Hooray!)
Last week was my first week back to school for the spring semester. As some of you know, I’m currently working on a master’s in behavior analysis at the University of North Texas. If you don’t know much about behavior analysis, I’d encourage you to check out the post that I wrote last year about [...]
Train One Thing at a Time!
Last week we had a woman come and give several lectures to our department about behavior analysis and autism. She helps run a large treatment center in Georgia for children with autism. The two lectures she gave in the morning were pretty interesting. In the afternoon, we had a handful of presentations so that some [...]
Letting Curiosity Work For You
These are some pictures from last summer that I just ran across. I know they are old, but I’m still posting them because I LOVE them! Most horses are naturally VERY curious. Especially if they are given the time and space to explore something new. Horses get scared when we force them to interact with [...]
What’s the best way to train an animal?
Stale Cheerios will help you learn new knowledge and techniques to take your training skills to the next level. So stick around, your animals will be grateful!
I'm a graduate student studying the science of behavior and training. On this blog I share stories of my animal training adventures, as well as tips, techniques and tricks to help you improve your training. Although most of this blog centers around training rescue horses, the ideas discussed apply equally to all species. The other animals I work with, including dogs and rats, also appear occasionally on the blog.
Mary Hunter
cheeriotrainer@gmail.com
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