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 [...]
Don’t Shoot the Dog! (A book review)
Don’t Shoot the Dog will change the way you think about behavior, teaching and training. If you’ve ever wondered how to change the behavior of a pet, a child, a spouse, a co-worker, or even your own behavior, then Don’t Shoot the Dog is the book for you. You’ll learn how to keep your cat [...]
Georgie Works on Learning to Fetch
One of my goals for 2012 is to do some clicker training everyday (or at least almost everyday) with my critters. Finding time for training was hard last semester because I had three evening classes. Since the rats and mice are semi-nocturnal, the evening is one of the best times to work on training. I’m [...]
Clicker Training Goes to the Zoo
As many of you know, I’m part of ORCA (the Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals) at UNT. Much of what ORCA does is research, training and community service. However, one of our other missions is to educate the public about positive training. We do this at our big annual animal training conference and by [...]
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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