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.

DVD Trailer: Operant Conditioning with Bob Bailey

Bob Bailey is one of the fathers of modern animal training practices. First a student of biology and zoology, Bob Bailey began training dolphins for the U.S. Navy in the early 1960s. In the mid-1960s, he went to work for Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), an animal training company founded by Keller Breland and Marian Breland, two students of B.F. Skinner. I’ll write a longer post about ABE later this summer, but it was a fantastic company and one of the driving forcing that brought the science of behavior out of the lab and applied this science of behavior to training pets, livestock and even exotic animals. (Much of the research and training ABE did in the 1960s and 1970s is still much more advanced than most of the training people are doing today.)

During the past couple of decades, Bob Bailey has spent much time teaching animal trainers how to be better trainers. One of his favorite ways to teach people to be better animal trainers is by making them train chickens. Why chickens? Chickens are fast moving and offer quite a bit of behavior. They are also actually pretty smart. So, if you can learn how to have the timing and mechanical skills to train a chicken, you should be prepared to train almost anything!

Much of the DVD is footage from Bob Bailey’s chicken training workshops. You’ll see people working on exercises to improve their timing and food delivery, as well as teaching (seemingly) simple behaviors, such as having a chicken peck a round circle. The DVD also has some neat footage and explanations of more difficult behaviors, including Bob’s cone discrimination. (When the two cones are yellow, the bird must make a figure-8 between them. When they are replaced by red cones, the bird must merely circle around the two cones. There is a short video of this task at the end of this previous blog post.) The DVD also shows how the same principles and ideas apply equally well to many other species, including dogs, horses, and a couple of polar bears.

One of my favorite things about the DVD is that it discusses many concepts and tips that are needed to get top level performance. For instance, one training task shown in the video is how to get a chicken to peck only at a red square, never at a yellow or blue square. However, Bob Bailey has his students train this behavior to such a high level that if the bird is presented with only the yellow and blue square, it will completely ignore both of them and not peck either of them (for at least 20 seconds). Now that’s what we call great stimulus control. He does this by breaking down the task into many parts, so that the bird is almost always correct. He gradually has his students make the task more complex, until the birds can do the final behavior with a very high degree of accuracy.

Why the title of this post? Bob Bailey likes to say that animal training is “simple, but not easy.” Meaning, most everything about great training can be summed up in a handful of simple ideas and principles. Many of Bob’s favorite principles are presented during the DVD. However, many of these simple skills, such as timing, food delivery, knowing when to raise criteria, and so on, can take a lifetime to perfect.

So, if you have a chance, I’d definitely recommend watching this DVD, Operant Conditioning with Bob Bailey. If anyone else has had a chance to watch it, I’d love to hear your review!

What is Constructional Aggression Treatment (CAT)?

I’ve written a bit in the past about using CAT with fearful horses. Fearful behaviors and aggressive behaviors are often very similar–the animal behaves in some way to increase the distance between his self and the unwanted animal or object. So, an aggressive dog lunges or bites to increase the distance between it and something else, just as a fearful animal runs away to increase the distance between it and something else.

With Constructional Aggression Treatment, we give the animal what he wants (distance from something) whenever the animal displays any signs of friendly, relaxed, or calm behavior. We start small, accepting any small signs of better behavior and later on build up more and more friendly behavior.

Treating Resource Guarding using CAT

So, for Rocky, the trainer and another dog would approach Rocky while he was chewing on a tennis ball. As soon as Rocky showed any signs of more relaxed or friendly behavior, the trainer and other dog would leave, which is exactly what Rocky wanted. Before beginning the training, Rocky could use aggression (snapping, biting, etc.) to get the other dog to go away. Now, only friendly or relaxed behaviors would make the other dog go away.

Not only did Rocky figure out the new conditions, but he started trying to interact with the other dog and actually started to play with the other dog and share his toys!! This is what CAT calls “switch over,” where the animal switches from wanting something to go away to wanting interaction.

With a bit more training, Rocky’s new behavior quickly generalized to other dogs as well. Last I heard, Rocky is living with a new dog, who just joined the household. He will pick up a toy, take it to the new dog and ask him to play. Now that’s successful training, if you ask me! Check out the video below, which shows clips from the training process.

On Youtube: Constructional Aggression Treatment (CAT) for Resource Guarding

**Side note: Please be extremely careful when working with aggressive or fearful animals! Work at a level where the animal does not feel stressed or frustrated. Also, take precautions to insure that people and animals do not get injured. For instance, with an aggressive dog, keep the dog on a leash. Or, with a very fearful or aggressive horse, start by working with a fence between you and the horse. **

February was busier than I thought is was going to be! Sorry for the lack of posts the past two weeks, I was busy with a conference, traveling to a clinic, and then catching up on school work. The good part, though, is I have lots of interesting things to think about and write about for March!

I have a post I’m working on for tomorrow about an awesome non-profit that helps shelter dogs. Then, for this week I have several posts about the Alexandra Kurland clinic I audited last weekend. It was a very interesting clinic. We had a diverse group of horses and everyone in attendance was experienced with horses and clicker training. We had some really good discussions about teaching strategies, effective clicker training, and creative solutions to complex problems.

Then, next week, I have about half a dozen posts I’m working on about ORCA’s 2011 animal training conference at UNT. This year’s conference was absolutely fantastic. The speakers were great and many of their presentations seemed to connect and expand on the other lectures. Quite a bit of the discussion centered around finding ways to train that help our animals be successful and minimize frustration and errors. Also, Bob Bailey spoke at the conference! This was a bit of a surprise and everyone was very excited to get to hear him speak.

The pictures are from yesterday. My friend Liz came out to the rescue with me, along with her dog Ransom. We had fun, although it was very windy and cold, so we didn’t do a whole lot with the horses. Liz got to meet Ella, our baby donkey, who is getting sweeter by the day! Ransom had a blast meeting the horses, finding interesting things to roll in, and attempting to swim in the water troughs. He even tried to play some with Ella. I got some cute video of this, which I’ll stick on youtube. He would run up to her, then she would chase him off, then he would run around her and back up to her, and she would chase him off again. They both seemed very playful about it and seemed to enjoy their game of “you can’t catch me.” Ella seemed more playful than serious, although if she wanted to, I think she would make a very good guard donkey!

Since Connor was gone, we deemed it safe to open the gates between the back two pastures. Of course, the additional space, plus mixing the two herds together got everybody excited! They all had a nice time running around kicking up their heels.

This weekend is going to be a BUSY weekend, but it should be a lot of fun. ORCA (our graduate research group for animal training) is putting on our annual training conference. So, I’ll be busy with conference stuff from sunup to sundown all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But, it should be a great time. I always learn a lot and come away with a lot of great ideas. My notes from last year are here, I promise to post notes from this year as well. Our speakers this year are Kay Laurence, Alexandra Kurland, Steve White, Ken Ramirez, Phung Luu, Bob Bailey and Paul Andronis. You can read more about the talks and the conference on ORCA’s website.

I’m also going the following weekend to audit an horse training clinic with Alexandra Kurland in the Houston area. I decided to register toward the last minute and got lucky–I got the last auditor spot. It should be a lot of fun as well. I learned a lot at the clinic I went to with her about a year and a half ago.

But, onto the pictures. The horses all first went running toward the back of the left pasture.

Then they came running back to the front. In this picture, blossom is in front, Daisy and Apollo are together, and Rohan’s in the back.

Sometimes they were all running together, sometimes there was a bit of chase going on. At this point, I think Paden (the black and white paint) was trying to get Takoda (the bay paint) away from the mares.

Chardonnay, our big chestnut paint mare.

Takoda, with almost all four feet off the ground. Paden is in the background. This one is my favorite, I think!

Everyone going through the gate, back into the other pasture.

Daisy, with all four feet off the ground. Apollo is the chestnut paint behind her.

The conference will be all day on Saturday, February 19, 2011 in Denton, Texas. This year, the speakers are Alexandra Kurland, Kay Laurence, Phung Luu, Ken Ramirez, Steve White and Dr. Paul Andronis. The panel discussion at the end will include everyone above, plus Bob Bailey and Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz. You can register or find out more information (including titles of the talks) by going to the ORCA website.

It should be an AWESOME conference and I highly recommend attending, if you can. If you can’t, don’t worry, I’ll post some of my thoughts and notes from the conference on my blog. You can also check out my notes from the past two conferences:
Art and Science of Training conference notes 2009
Art and Science of Training conference notes 2010

I’m excited already, and it’s still months away!

Spring is in full bloom in Texas. Green grass, green trees and lots and lots of blue bonnets and other lovely wild flowers! The horses are enjoying the weather. They’re kicking up their heels and then burying their heads in the wonderful spring grass. I’ve been busy too, playing with the ponies as well as busy with things at school. I’ve been opting for playing with the horses rather than updating the blog!

We’ve been working on getting all of the rescue horses that are available for adoption up on petfinder. This is a huge task, as it involves taking photos, editing photos, writing descriptions, and so on. Here’s our petfinder page, which has a link to the listings of the 2 dozen or so horses we currently have listed. There are a few more to add, but we’ve made good progress and now have the majority of the horses listed. We have also had quite a few people interested in adopting horses in the past couple of weeks, which is very promising.

Karen Pryor came and spoke at UNT a little over a week ago. She spent the day with ORCA (an animal training lab in UNT’s behavior analysis department) and we all had a blast. During the morning and early afternoon many of the ORCA members had a chance to present some of the projects they are working on and get feedback from Karen Pryor and the rest of ORCA.

There are some really interesting research projects going on right now. Many of the current projects are examining some of the procedures that are commonly used in the clicker training community that have never been examined formally. Everything from microshaping to performance cues and from increasing creativity to putting unwanted behavior under stimulus control.

Karen Pryor also gave a free public lecture in the afternoon. Man, the room was PACKED!! It was neat to see a wide variety of people in attendance, graduate students and faculty members from the behavior analysis department, quite a few undergraduate students and many dog trainers and others from the community. We had people sitting in the aisles and on the floor up front, spilling out the doors!

Dolores Arste and Kellie Snyder both came to dinner with ORCA and we had some lovely conversations about negative reinforcement, extinction, resurgence, desensitization, and CAT (constructional aggression treatment). I’m currently in the process of writing a longer post on some of these issues, some of it is quite eye opening!

Here are some pictures from the past weekend of, as the title says, happy, happy horses. Enjoy them and I hope you are enjoying spring with your animals.

Bob Bailey is more than just a chicken trainer, though. He was Director of Training of the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program in the early 1960s and later partnered with Marian Breland to run Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), after the death of Keller Breland. ABE was an anomaly in the 1950s and 1960s, using operant conditioning and positive methods to train a wide range of species for animal shows, TV commercials, the government, and even travelling salesmen.

Much of the first part of Bob Bailey’s talk was about the history of animal training and clicker training. I find this subject fascinating–in part because there are so many misconceptions about the history of training. My favorite (and one that I hear most often) is that clicker training was developed by dolphin trainers. Not true.

The principles of operant conditioning originated out of lab work done by B.F. Skinner in the 1930s with rats and pigeons. He was aided by graduate students, including Marian Breland and Keller Breland. The Brelands realized the potential of applying what they had learned in the lab to commercial animal training.

Most training in the 50s and 60s was pretty aversive. Punishment, negative reinforcement, the do it or else! style of training. Even dolphin training in the 60s was largely based on punishment and aversives. (Hmm. There goes the myth that clicker training was developed for dolphins because dolphins can’t be trained with punishment!)

The Brelands produced and marketed a dog training kit in the mid-50s, the Master Mind Dog Training Kit. The kit was based on positive reinforcement and included instructions and a clicker. It failed miserably. The dog training community just wasn’t ready for positive training.

Many people think of clicker training with dogs and horses as a “new” phenomenon. And on the larger scale, it is. Clicker training didn’t really catch on with the broader community until after the publication of Karen Pryor’s Don’t Shoot the Dog in the 1980s.

However, what continually gets me is that much of the work Bob Bailey and the Brelands were doing in the 1960s far surpasses much of the training I see around me today. Bird shows and dolphin shows, trained chickens, pigs and cows for travelling feed salesmen, birds and dogs for government work, the odd rabbit, raccoon, ferret or pony for a TV commercial or animal show, they trained them all.

They understood how to get behavior and the science behind what they were doing. They also did a lot of training, with a lot of different species, in a lot of different conditions. That’s a lot of a lots! But, there’s something to be learned from this. Lots and lots of practice, as well as a willingness to experiment and try new things is what will make each of us a better trainer. Animal training is much more a learned skill than a natural talent. This also ties back to the concept of broadening, which Dr. Robert Epstein talked about. By trying and learning new things, we can expand our potential and creativity as trainers.

Bob Bailey’s talk also included a great discussion on reinforcers, but I’ll save my thoughts on that for a later post. I’ll leave you with a lovely video from one of Bob Bailey’s students at a chicken camp. The chicken is trained to go in circles around red cones and figure eights around yellow cones. It’s an interesting discrimination problem where the objects themselves serve as cues for the two different behaviors.

Watch this clip on youtube.

If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy the rest of my notes from the 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference or my notes from the 2009 conference. Better yet, bookmark the ORCA website and come to the 2011 conference next spring! Sign up for e-mail updates to make sure you don’t miss any of the great posts from stalecheerios.com.