At the 4th annual Art and Science of Animal training conference, Steve White talked about training choices and how they’re made. During his lecture he discussed the hows and whys of choosing different training tools and techniques.

I love listening to Steve White speak. If you’re not familiar with Steve, he’s a dog trainer from Seattle. He’s also an excellent speaker. Steve has worked with police departments training police dogs, drug dogs, and bomb dogs. This kind of training requires a great amount of precision and skill—the security and safety of many people depend on these dogs doing their jobs quickly and accurately. During his talk at the conference this year, Steve drew some interesting parallels between dog training and law enforcement. This post will be a few snippets from his talk that I found particularly interesting and have been thinking about.

The Law Enforcement Model

Steve talked a bit about how law enforcement officers must work. In any situation, an officer must do three things. He or she must assess the situation, formulate a plan of action, and then act on it. Often, this must all be done very quickly! The officer has to scan the situation and gather as much information as possible in a short amount of time, and then begin working toward an appropriate solution. Animal training is pretty similar. Although we aren’t often trying to catch bad guys or working in life or death situations, a trainer often must operate under similar conditions. When an animal trainer is called in to solve a problem, the trainer often needs to quickly come up with an effective starting point or solution, even though the trainer usually does not have the whole story of what’s been going on.

Steve said that in law enforcement situations, the officer must continuously assess the situation and select the most reasonable option relative to the circumstances as perceived at that point in time. This statement offers a lot of reminders related to good animal training! Let’s look at two parts of this statement:

Continuous assessment: First, an animal trainer must continuously assess the training situation and make changes immediately, if needed. Good trainers has a well mapped out training plan. However, a great trainer is able to reevaluate a situation and make changes to that training plan, as needed.

Most reasonable option: Sometimes, the best, most perfect, ideal training option is not available. The trainer might lack information about the situation, certain resources, or cooperation from certain people. It’s important to remember that we live in the “real world.” For most training situations, there never will be a “perfect” option. However, we can evaluate the best options and make sure we select the most reasonable option that has the highest chance of being successful for the animal.

Susan Friedman’s Three Prong Test

Steve said that trainers often are tools of last resort. People call up the trainer when they can’t solve a problem on their own and have exhausted the options of their friends and their dog training books. When making training decisions, we need to devise solutions by considering effectiveness, intrusiveness, and social acceptability. This three-pronged test for evaluating training plans comes from bird trainer Susan Friedman. However, it’s a good test to keep in mind when training any species!

Effectiveness: Did (or will) your training program work? Will the results last over time? Did you train the appropriate behaviors in all situations that they will be needed in? Will it be easy for you or the client to continue to maintain the newly trained behaviors?

Intrusiveness: How much does the training plan disturb and interfere with the owner and animal’s daily life? Remember, simple training solutions are usually better than more complex or complicated ones. How much control does the learner have over the training process? How much, if any, does your training program rely on restraint, confinement, deprivation or other procedures that alter the animal’s normal routine?

Social acceptability: Are both your training plan and the results of the training socially and culturally acceptable? Did you meet the client’s expectations? If the client feels uncomfortable with your training procedures or the results the client is not going to follow through with your program.

If you are a professional trainer, these three points are great things to consider when designing training programs for your clients and their animals. However, even if you aren’t a professional trainer, these points are important to consider for your training programs for your own animals. Does your plan work well without being too intrusive into the animal’s life? Do the results benefit the animal, as well as you?

Also, in most situations, other people also interact with our animals. This could include spouses, children, friends, veterinarians, and others. If you are designing training plans, think about Susan Friedman’s three prong test and consider whether your training program is going to be effective, non-intrusive, and socially acceptable for the other individuals who interact with your animals. If your answer is no, you might want to consider altering your training plan so that others who interact with the animal will be able to help you maintain the behaviors you train. Or, you might want to consider simple ways to train these people so that they can be helpful.

Do you find this model helpful? What additional considerations do you think are important when designing and implementing training programs for your own animals or for client’s animals?

This was the second year that Phung Luu spoke at the Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. Phung Luu is a very talented bird trainer. Last year, at the 3rd annual conference, Phung spoke about errorless learning. This year, he gave a very interesting talk about Modal Action Patterns. He discussed what are Modal Action Patterns and how trainers can use them.

What is a Modal Action Pattern (MAP)?

A modal action pattern is a genetic-like behavior or chain of behaviors that is triggered by a particular stimulus. Modal action patterns are also called fixed action patterns (FAP). However, Phung explained that some researchers are moving toward using the term modal action pattern instead of fixed action pattern because they want to recognize and emphasize that all behaviors, even highly stereotypic, species-specific patterns of behavior, are still somewhat flexible.

Common examples of MAPs and FAPs include the mating dances of many species, some types of displays of aggression, the pointing and herding instincts of some breeds of dogs, spider web building, and when a baby bird pecks at an adult’s beak so that the adult bird will regurgitate food. One example of a MAP that shows the flexibility of these types of behaviors is a bird’s nest building behavior. Birds “instinctively” know how to build nests. However, most people don’t realize that this behavior is still quite flexible and that a bird’s nest building behavior improves over the years with practice.

Here’s what trainers need to remember about MAPs and FAPs. Most animals have stereotypic or set behavior patterns that are characteristic to that species. Animal trainers need to be aware of these behaviors so that they can manage them, or even use them to their advantage. As well, if trainers aren’t aware of these types of behaviors, they are likely to get in trouble. Although the basic principles of training apply to every species, MAPs are one reason why before you begin working with a new species, it is important to spend time studying that species and becoming familiar with that species’ behaviors.

Using MAPs to Your Advantage When Training Animals

When training animals, you can use MAPs to reduce behavior you don’t want or to encourage behavior that you do want. One example Phung Luu discussed involved a jaw popping behavior that dolphins do. Researchers use to think that the jaw popping sound was caused entirely by the physical movement of the jaw popping. However, they later realized that the dolphins had a special vocalization that accompanied the jaw pop behavior. Phung discussed how Ken Ramirez worked with scientists and other trainers to teach dolphins to do this behavior on cue. This allowed researchers working on dolphin vocalization to closely study a new type of dolphin vocalization that had not been previously studied.

Phung also discussed how he has used MAPs with aggressive Andean condors. Condors are big birds, with up to a 10 foot wing span. Phung showed a few videos of these birds in his lecture. They were gorgeous birds, but I wouldn’t want to get too close to an aggressive one! One behavior that young condors do is a wing pumping behavior. This is a friendly behavior that is often done to older animals. Phung knew that condors never wing pump and aggress at the same time. So, in several aggressive condors, Phung has shaped up the wing pump behavior. He has used this behavior to decrease aggression, while teaching the bird how to interact positively with people. He starts slowly, by first reinforcing any small wing movements and then shaping the bird to lift his wings. The wing pump gives the bird an alternative behavior to do while people are present and teaches the bird a positive way to interact with people, without having to be aggressive.

Phung’s lecture gave me a lot to think about regarding how we can use “natural” behaviors to improve our training. Many times we only think of these types of behaviors as getting in the way of training. Have you used MAPs or natural species behaviors to your advantage when you are training? If not, can you think of some ways that you might be able to incorporate some of these ideas into your training?

We got a treat at the Art and Science of Animal Training Conference this year. Ken Ramirez, who is head trainer at the Shedd aquarium in Chicago, spoke once again. As well, this year he was joined by Steve Aibel and Mike Pool, two trainers from SeaWorld San Antonio. These three trainers have years of experience working with dolphins and other marine mammals. They packed a ton of excellent information into their hour long presentation. Here are notes from two of my favorite sections of their presentation.

Dealing with “Oops” Moments: The Least Reinforcing Scenario

One thing that Ken Ramirez talked about during his lecture was the LRS, or the Least Reinforcing Scenario. One dilemma many trainers have is what to do when the animal makes a “mistake.” In these situations, traditional trainers often are quick to use to punishment. However, positive reinforcement trainers are often hesitant (for good reason) to resort to punishment. It is hard to force a dolphin to do anything or to try to punish a dolphin’s behavior, when the animal can just swim away. As well, punishment can have unwanted side effects. In the early days of positive reinforcement training, marine mammal trainers, out of necessity, had to find ways to work with animals without using punishment. According to Ken, the LRS technique can be particularly useful when working with large animals or when we don’t really want to tell an animal “no.”

So, what is an LRS? An LRS is the Least Reinforcing Scenario. What this means is that when the animal does a behavior the trainer doesn’t want, the trainer gives a brief and immediate pause, where no reinforcers are provided and the animal does not have a chance to do anything to earn reinforcement. Immediately after this, the trainer always provides an easy opportunity for the animal to earn reinforcement, to get the training game going again.

What does this look like in practice? Ken showed several videos of him using an LRS while training a sea lion. He was practicing a handful of different cues for behaviors that had been previously trained. If the sea lion made a “mistake,” he would pause for two seconds. Then, immediately after the pause, he would give a cue for an easy behavior that he knew the sea lion would be able to do successfully. The easy behavior was then reinforced.

To use a LRS successfully, it needs to be brief and immediate. Ken said trainers often are tempted to extend the length of time—he cautioned against doing this. This is often emotional responding on the part of the trainer and won’t make the procedure more effective. As well, an LRS doesn’t mean that you ignore the animal or turn away from the animal. During the LRS the trainer just pauses–any movement or change in the environment could accidentally reinforce the behavior. As well, the trainer continues to monitor the animal during the pause.

A Least Reinforcing Scenario is effective for trainers like Ken because they are training at a very high rate of reinforcement. By providing a short pause, the LRS briefly interrupts the rhythm or flow of the training session. If you do not have a high rate of reinforcement during your training session or if the animal is often making “mistakes,” you should not be using an LRS. Instead, you need to reevaluate the training situation or your shaping program to determine what changes you can make to help the animal be more successful.

An LRS also works for trainers like Ken Ramirez because they have a long history of positive reinforcement with the animal and because, when using an LRS, they immediately offer an opportunity for reinforcement after the LRS. The LRS gives a structured way to ignore unwanted behavior with an animal who understands positive reinforcement training. An LRS shouldn’t be used when training a new behavior or when you first start training with a new animal. As well, providing an immediate opportunity for reinforcement immediately following the LRS teaches the animal to continue to focus on you during the LRS.

The Least Reinforcing Scenario can also be used as an evaluation tool for the trainer. If you are using an LRS, you should be taking data during your training sessions on how often you use the LRS and which behaviors you use it for. This is important information that will help you structure the next training session. If you had to use an LRS multiple times in a session or multiple times for a particular behavior, don’t blame the animal! Instead, take this as an indicator that the animal either didn’t understand what you were asking or didn’t feel comfortable performing the behavior. In either case, you probably need to change your training plan during the next session, rather than blaming the animal or continuing to use an LRS.

Using HELPRS to Plan Your Training Program

Steve Aibel and Mike Pool talked at length about what animals need. Animals have three main types of needs, physical needs, social needs, and mental needs. We can meet many of our animal’s mental needs by well designed training programs and well designed environments that keep animals mentally stimulated.

It is really important for trainers to remember and consider all three types of needs, physical, social and mental. Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in what you want the animal to do or in what behavior you need to train for a particular situation or task. However, trainers also need to stop and evaluate if they are just training something that they need, or whether the training program also meets the animal’s needs.

Steve and Mike shared an acronym that they use when designing long term training plans for their dolphins and other marine mammals. The acronym is HELPRS. Here’s what each letter is for:

Husbandry
Exercise
Learn
Play
Relationship
Show

For each animal, they design training plans and goals for each of these six areas. For many of their animals, they want to train performance behaviors for the shows at SeaWorld. However, they also make sure they spend just as much time designing training plans and then scheduling training sessions to work on behaviors related to husbandry, exercise, learning, play, and relationships.

The HELPRS acronym is a great guide to consider when writing training goals and at the beginning of each week, day and training session. Have a set plan of what area (or areas) you are going to target in each training session. This is a useful model because it can help you balance your training program and make sure you are meeting all of your animal’s physical, social and mental needs. Steve and Mike said to remember that “Your animal’s quality of life depends on you!” Trainers have a responsibility to make sure they are providing a high quality of life for their animals.

I talked recently about some of Bob Bailey’s suggestions for taking data in my post about “Advanced Dog Training.” If you need ideas for taking data, I suggest reading some of the great comments that were left on that post by some of my readers. I’d love to hear how you plan what to work on during a training session. Do you have a long term plan or long term goals for your animal? How do you keep track of your progress on your long term goals? Which of the areas of HELPRS do you focus on the most? Are there any of the areas of HELPRS that you think you should be focusing on more?

Training can be a lot of fun. However, it can also be physically and mentally challenging for both the animal and the human. Although breaks are needed, they can really disrupt a training session if they are used haphazardly. Trainers need to think carefully about breaks and learn how to effectively incorporate breaks without interrupting the flow of the training.

At the conference, Alexandra Kurland discussed how to give breaks during training sessions. The full title of her talk was “Give me a break: How to give breaks without giving breaks.” At the beginning of her talk, Alexandra explained that she doesn’t really like breaks. However, breaks are good for learning. So, she explained ways we can give breaks without really taking breaks.

Why take breaks?

After a break, many trainers report an improvement in the behavior they are training or an increase in learning. A break gives both the horse and the human time to process the training session. Also, many trainers forget that breaks are just as useful for humans as for horses.

For instance, when people are new to clicker training, Alexandra recommends that they start training in short sessions, 10-15 treats. A short beak after each short session lets the human evaluate what just happened and plan what to do for the next 10 clicks. This is also great for teaching self-control to horses who are new to clicker training. Some horses get uncertain or unsure when the clicker training session ends. Taking breaks teaches the horse that the person or the treats can sometimes go away, but they will both come back again.

What’s a break? Using favorite behaviors as breaks

What comes to mind when you think about breaks? You might be thinking about resting and doing nothing or you could also associate breaks with stopping and interruptions. However, the main point of Alexandra’s lecture was that breaks don’t have to be “breaks.”

For example, other behaviors can be used as breaks, especially known behaviors that the animal really enjoys doing. You’ve probably seen dog trainers doing this—-a trainer might take a break from practicing agility and let a dog play with a tug toy for several minutes.

Any previously learned behavior that the animal likes and is comfortable doing can be used as a break. For example, if you’ve seen Alexandra’s microshaping DVD, she used a target to give the horse short breaks from equine pilates, which is physically challenging for the horse. After a handful of good repetitions of microshaping the pilates behavior, the trainer switches to targeting and gives the horse several clicks and treats for touching the target.

Breaks don’t have to be long. Sometimes even a very short break can be beneficial for both the horse and trainer. Alexandra showed one video clip of a clicker trainer working with her horse on a circle of cones. The trainer would take very short breaks every now and then and pause a bit to stroke the horse on his face. Alexandra suggested thinking about breaks as punctuation marks in a sentence.

More Benefits of Breaks

Breaks can function as reinforcers. This is especially true when we are creating structured breaks that involve activities that the animal really enjoys. For example, in the pilates mircoshaping work that I discussed above, Alexandra does not give the breaks randomly or at set intervals. Instead, she uses short breaks (during which the horse gets to touch the target to earn reinforcers) to mark improvements in the behavior she is currently teaching. While training, try to think about giving breaks at clickable moments. This is related to Alexandra’s loopy training concept, which she talked a bit about in her presentation.

Breaks can also be used to mark a transition to new criteria. So, if a horse is doing very well with a behavior, the trainer can give a break, and then move on to something slightly different after the break. This helps the trainer be clearer to the horse about when criteria are changing. This is something I’ve been thinking a bit about. If a trainer did this consistently–increasing criteria after a break–would the horse learn this concept and start offering more or different behavior after the break? I’ve never played with this idea consistently, but I can see how it could be beneficial when training new behaviors.

How do you break up long sessions when you are training? Do you take breaks during sessions? If so, what do you do during the breaks? Are you systematic about how you structure your breaks? Have you experimented with different ways to set up sessions or take breaks?

Try “simple” dog training!

Whether training dogs, horses, birds, or other species, many trainers seem to be in a hurry to get to advanced training. This post is some of my notes from Bob Bailey’s lecture at the 4th Annual Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. The full title of Bob’s talk was “Looking for advanced dog training? Try simple dog training for a change – it really works!” A rather long title, but a rather interesting one! Please check back throughout the week, as I will be posting notes from the rest of the conference.

Complicated training versus simple training

Bob Bailey explained that even very complex or complicated tasks can be broken down into very simple stages or components. This is a key piece to good training, but is also something that can take time and practice to learn. If something seems too complicated or hard for you or the animal, rethink your training plan! Can you change the environment, alter your training plan, or teach addition prerequisite skills so that what seemed difficult is now simpler? Usually, the answer is yes. However, it sometimes takes a bit of creativity or problem solving to find a better solution.

Bob Bailey talked a bit during his presentation about his work with the U.S. Navy. When Bob worked for the navy, he trained dolphins for all day missions in the open ocean. A dolphin has to have a very high level of training to be able to follow instructions all day in the ocean and not choose to swim away. However, even this kind of “advanced” training begins simply with teach smaller building blocks and fundamental skills. Putting together and then successfully carrying out a training plan for a task like this will require a lot of careful thinking on the trainer’s part.

As Bob likes to say, training should be simple, but it is not necessarily easy. It is easy for people to start making things more complicated, but it takes practice to be able to break things down and make things simple.

Animal training: craft vs. technology

People have been training animals for millions of years! Bob showed a few pictures of 20,000-year-old cave paintings that showed that people were already caring for and interacting with dogs. However, for most of history, dog training (as well as the training of other species) has been a craft, not a technology.

In the past century, animal training has started to become a technology. Because of behavior analytic research (What is behavior analysis?) we understand processes such as reinforcement and punishment and why certain training methods work. Trainers should study the science of training. Studying the principles of training will improve your training, help you understand why certain methods work, and help you come up with creative solutions when you encounter new problems.

However, Bob Bailey also cautioned us to not become too “intellectualized” about training methods. Some trainers today have studied the science of training, but have not spent enough time actually practicing training. Although they can talk about training, these trainers still lack the mechanical skills and observational skills needed to be great trainers. Bob says–Don’t be guilty of knowing but not doing. There is only so much we can learn from books or watching others train. At some point, you have to get out there and practice your training.

Simple ways to improve your training

During his talk, Bob Bailey suggested a few very simple ways that animal trainers could greatly improve their training. These are simple suggestions. However, many of the trainers I know don’t do these.

First, before training a behavior, clearly and objectively define the behavior. If the behavior has several teaching steps or several final components, define these too. Know exactly what you want the behavior to look like so that someone else could read your behavior goal, watch the animal, and be able to say with certainty whether or not the animal was doing the behavior correctly. Also, clearly define what your final signals or cues will be. Importantly, write all of this down! Don’t just try to remember it in your head.

Next, if you can, video your training. If you can’t do this all the time, do it as much as you can or at the very least try and find a friend who can watch you train. Video will help you improve your observational and mechanical skills. Videos will also help you identify problem areas or things that could be changed or improved. A lot happens even in a short training session and you can miss quite a bit while training that you might be able to catch if you could watch back through a video.

Finally, take data. I find that the idea of taking data scares a lot of trainers. “Taking data” seems pretty complicated or complex. Data sheets, measurement, charts, and graphs–thinking about taking data can be a bit overwhelming. However, Bob thinks that animal trainers can find simple, but meaningful ways to take data.

Bob suggested a very easy way for trainers to take data. Buy a small notebook that you can stick in a back pocket. Before starting a training session, jot down what you are going to do. After the training session, write down how the session went and what you actually did. Also, write down the approximate length of the session and how many reinforcers you used. This is a pretty simple way to take data without a whole lot of extra time or effort. But, it should give you meaningful information about how your training is progressing and ideas about what changes you should make.

Do you take data or notes about your training sessions? If so, what kinds of notes or data do you take? I’d love to hear more ideas about simple ways to record training sessions.

Yesterday, Eva gave us a presentation about dog agility and then we headed outside to practice some agility foundation lessons with the dogs. This was a lot of fun and also gave me a lot to think about. We played around with some really interesting ways to shape behavior. I’m working on a longer blog post about the day but, for now, here are some pictures for you to enjoy.

The brown and white dog is my parent’s dog, Ginger, who appears on my blog from time to time. Ginger had a great time! However, she was completely tuckered out afterward and slept the whole way home.

The last photo is ORCA (Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals) advisor Jesús Rosales-Ruiz working on teaching Ginger how to go over an agility jump.

Some of you know that I am involved with ORCA (the Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals), which is a group at the University of North Texas that does projects and research related to animal training. This is our yearly conference and is definitely an awesome conference–ORCA brings in the top animal trainers from all over the world, including Bob Bailey, Alexandra Kurland, Kay Laurence, Ken Ramirez, Phung Luu, and Steve White. I’m especially excited about this year’s keynote speaker, behavior analyst Joe Layng. His talk is titled “How we talk about and teach what we do.”

We’ve been working hard all year to plan this conference, so it is very exciting that it is finally here. Also, I’m excited because we should have quite a group of horse clicker trainers at this year’s conference. If you’re coming to the conference, please come find me and say “hi.” If you can’t come, I hope you’ll follow us on twitter. I’ll also be posting some of my thoughts and notes after the conference, in the next week or two.

If you’re interested in learning more about these conferences, I have notes from the 1st and 2nd conference in the clicker training clinics and conferences section of my site.

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 that needs to get done at a busy shelter, from cleaning cages, to walking dogs, to talking to potential adopters. I started working some with them at the end of last year, which was a lot of fun and a great learning opportunity. It’s great to see how just a bit of training, attention, and love can make a big difference in a dog’s behavior and dramatically increase the dog’s chance of getting adopted.

Dogs are fun, but shelter cats need some love and attention too! Actually, this shelter already has a great and very devoted group of volunteers. But, as in any shelter, they can always use a few more hands. So, starting this past week, my friend Kat and I are helping out in the shelter’s cat room. We spent several hours this morning at the shelter, cleaning cages, talking to adopters and giving the cats lots and lots of attention!

The big handsome guy at the top of this post is Rocky. He’s a big, muscular guy and had obviously been on the streets for awhile. Rocky was terrified when he first came to the shelter and it was thought that he might have been a feral cat. However, he is becoming quite a love bug! He wanted all the attention today and meowed sorrowfully when I would stop petting him and walk over to another cat.

The petite gray kitty is Echo. And the rather large Calico in the last two pictures is Patches. Both these gals were pretty timid when they first came to the shelter as well. Shelters can be pretty scary places for both dogs and cats–tons of strange sights and smells, and lots of new people and other animals. It’s not surprising that it can take an animal several days to adjust to all of this.

Patches was pretty unsure of her surroundings when she first showed up at the shelter. When we were at the shelter on Thursday, she was starting to come out of her shell and really enjoyed some scratches and petting. Yesterday, however, she wanted to be the life of the party! We let her wander around the cat room a bit and she had a great time exploring. When anyone new came into the room, she wanted to rub up against them and say “hello.”

A rescue group came in the afternoon and was impressed by her sweet personality. So, Patches is in a foster home with them now and hopefully they will be able to find her an awesome forever home.

I think Kat and I are going to have a lot of fun helping out at the shelter this semester. I have lived with several cats, but don’t actually have a whole lot of experience with training cats and have never worked with cats in a shelter environment. So, I’m looking forward to getting to help out the kitties at the shelter while learning a lot. The hardest part, of course, is going to be resisting the urge to bring them all home with me! I’ll make sure the cats appear on the blog every now and then, for all of you cat lovers out there.

We’re super excited because we’ve recently begun advertising for our fourth annual Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. This is an awesome conference that brings top animal trainers from all of the world to give lectures and presentations about cutting edge ideas and innovations in animal training.

The next conference will be held on March 10, 2012 at the University of North Texas (in Denton, Texas). ORCA’s website has a full list of the speakers and descriptions of what each will be talking about–this year looks like it will be a particularly fascinating conference! Speakers for the 2012 conference include Joe Layng, Phung Luu, Kay Laurence, Alexandra Kurland, Bob Bailey, Steve White, Jen White, Ken Ramirez, and Steve Aibel.

For those who aren’t familiar with the conference, I have notes from the 2009 and 2010 conferences in the conference notes section of my website

Also, in their most recent newsletter, ORCA published an interview with ORCA advisor Jesus Rosales-Ruiz discussing the origins and purpose of the conference. You can find the whole newsletter on the ORCA website, but I’ve reprinted the interview below for anyone who is interested in reading it.

Please pass the word around, we think that this conference will be our best one yet! And let me know if you are coming, so that we can have a chance to chat.

What is The Art and Science of Animal Training Conference?

Newsletter writer Katie Rossi caught up with ORCA’s advisor, Jesus Rosales-Ruiz, to ask some probing questions about ORCA’s annual conference…

K: What is the purpose of “The Art and Science of Animal Training Conference?”

JRR: The purpose of the conference is to disseminate concepts, innovations, applications, and research about animal training. The conference begins with a keynote speaker who presents about a general topic related to the theory and technology of animal training. This is followed by presentations by some of the world’s top trainers who share strategies and tactics that extend the principles of behavior to particular species or particular behavior. At past conferences we have learned about a wide range of topics, from the history of animal training to using errorless learning to improve shaping to training dogs to help rescue sea turtles after hurricane Katrina. The conference ends with a panel discussion of questions from the audience. I am happy to tell you that at the upcoming conference, ORCA’s research will be part of the program as well.

K: Who is the conference for?

JRR: The conference is not just for animal trainers. Anybody interested in how behavior works, from pet owners to professional trainers, will find value in attending the conference. The speakers are world experts on training and tailor their presentations so that the presentations will be interesting and useful for all who attend the conference. The beginner, the knowledgeable, and the expert will all find the presentations instructional, thought provoking, and even inspirational. You cannot lose with such a stellar lineup.

K: How did the conference come about?

JRR: The idea for the conference came about from conversations between Kay Laurence, Steve and Jenn White, Ken Ramirez, Alexandra Kurland and me. The six of us would get together in the evenings at ClickerExpo for productive and stimulating conversations. Kay even nicknamed our group “the wicked minds.” However, although we had some great conversations at ClickerExpo, we agreed that we needed more time and a more relaxed format to continue to exchange ideas and talk about general issues in animal training.

We thought it would be great to be able to meet every year and share what we were doing and thinking about animal training. Kay suggested that ORCA organize an event to allow us to meet every year. She pointed out that ORCA, as a university student organization, also had the resources needed to host a conference. ORCA loved this idea since one of ORCA’s missions is to disseminate the science of animal training. ORCA students were also excited about how much they would be able to learn by interacting with leaders of the field. Two years after this idea, ORCA held the first Art and Science of Animal Training Conference, largely thanks to the leadership of April Becker, who was the president of ORCA at that time.

Every year ORCA invites a scientist or a leader in the field of animal training as a keynote speaker. The keynote speaker is chosen because of the speaker’s expertise in behavioral research or animal training. The keynote speaker’s purpose is to discuss a concept, theory, or approach to animal training that is not widely known or understood. Following the keynote speaker are presentations by each of the wicked minds. In addition, every year ORCA also invites a guest trainer who is an expert on a topic or species not covered by the other speakers.

K: What is the wicked minds meeting?

JRR: In addition to the public conference, the speakers and ORCA members meet for two additional days to exchange ideas, debate questions and discuss current projects. During this meeting each speaker is given time to present a particular topic, project, or concept for discussion and feedback. The meeting is invigorating and a great way to expand our knowledge and refine our thinking. In addition, ORCA students share their current research projects with the speakers for feedback and suggestions. This helps us refine our research and often raises new questions for future studies. For ORCA students, this is also an excellent experience in their education, as it lets them see how the principles they are learning in the classroom are being used by top experts in the field.

The speakers leave the weekend with plenty of new ideas that they are eager to take home to play with and incorporate into their training programs. The ideas that come out of our meetings are developed and refined into brand new training strategies and procedures, which often become presentation topics at our public conferences in future years. We have been thrilled so far about the outcomes of the conference and private meetings. Our interactions have been productive and rewarding and we look forward to continuing to get to share the products of these discussions with you.

For more information about ORCA’s upcoming animal training conference at UNT, please visit ORCA’s website.

I’m also planning to start getting back in the swing of blogging. I’ve been SUPER busy this semester with my classwork at school and I have neglected this blog as of late. My friend Karleen, of ClicketySplit, recently started blogging again after a break of a few months and she’s inspired me to get blogging again too.

As you might know, I’m a member of a research lab group at my university that is called ORCA. (You can check out our cool webpage here.) One organization we work closely with is the Heard Museum, a nature museum in McKinney, Texas. There’s more info about what we do at the Heard on this page on the ORCA website. Working with the Heard is a ton of fun because we get experience working with a variety of species of native and exotic animals. (I’m currently working with a raccoon and a pair of Patagonian cavies.) This partnership is also great for the Heard because the animals and the staff benefit from the training. We mostly work on training projects that make it easier and safer for staff and animals to interact, such as crate training, coming when called, stationing, and training for medical procedures.

This year we have different groups of people going out to the museum 5-6 days a week. Today we had a training demonstration day, where everyone headed out to the museum together. Since we don’t all work on the same projects or with the same animals, we don’t always get to see each other training. That was what today was for!

It was an awesome day, overall. Everyone got to show off all of their accomplishments so far this semester. As well, for some of the projects, the group was able to offer feedback on procedures or techniques or help brainstorm solutions to problem areas.

I was reminded today of how helpful it is to train in groups. Another person is often able to see things from a slightly different angle (either literally or figuratively) and is able to offer suggestions or feedback that you might never have thought about.

Also, it can be helpful to share your training progress with someone who is not very familiar with what you are currently working on. A person with a completely new set of eyes will often force you to explain yourself carefully and really think about why you are doing certain things. In addition, a new person will often ask questions that might raise ideas or possibilities that you hadn’t yet considered.