Stale Cheerios » Everything Else

March Clicker Carnival Coming Soon

Mary Hunter — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:27:47 +0000

My, didn’t February fly by!

Dallas saw some crazy snow but has recently returned to lovely, sunshiny 50s. I attended the 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference at UNT, which was phenomenal. Gatsby and Daisy, two of our young horses, learned how to wear halters and started working on leading. And just this past weekend, Autumn Blaze wore a halter for the first time.

Also, quite uneventfully, staleCheerios turned one year old. The blog is growing and has nearly 150 subscribers now. I’ve had so much fun with the blog so far and have met so many others who are passionate about animals and training. I love reading the wonderful and insightful comments many of you leave.

As some of my newer readers might not know, I run a monthly blog carnival for clicker training and positive training. If you blog, I’d love to have you participate in the March edition, which will be published on Friday. Please submit your articles by Thursday evening at the latest. Here are the details and submission information.

Do you blog about positive animal training? Submit your favorite blog post from February to the March edition of the Clicker Carnival, the only blog carnival specifically for positive animal trainers. All submissions related to positive training are welcome, from personal training stories, to how-to articles and videos, to product and book reviews. Read more about the carnival here or submit your articles here. The February Edition was a great success. If you missed it, be sure to check it out.

(What’s a blog carnival? A blog carnival is a monthly collection of blog posts pertaining to a certain topic. Carnivals are a great way for bloggers to showcase their best posts and for readers to discover interesting blog articles.)

Stale Cheerios: The Best of 2009

Mary Hunter — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:11:42 +0000

These are some of my favorite posts from 2009. I’ve picked a few of the ones I enjoyed writing the most, as well as some of your favorites–posts that got the most views and the most comments. Let me know if I’ve left any of your favorites off the list! If you are a newer reader and missed any of these posts, be sure to check some of them out. They are full of fun stories and great information about animal training and clicker training. (It was hard to pick just 10!)

1. Aggressive Training Methods and Aggressive Dogs
2. An Introduction to Reinforcement
3. Building Duration with 300 Peck Pigeons
4. Fish Training Progress
5. ORCA Great Minds Part 1: Steve Martin
6. In a Whisper or In a Shout? Training Under Time Constraints
7. Teaching the Parelli Friendly Game with Clicker Training
8. Waterhole Ritual 1: Sharing Territory
9. What is Stimulus Control?
10. What Makes Something Scary?

Rescued Horses Need Homes

Mary Hunter — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:08:05 +0000

The rescue I volunteer at saved 23 horses at the end of the summer. The horses finally legally belong to the rescue and we are looking for adoptive homes or foster homes. We recently have also had several horses returned from adoptive homes that could no longer care for them.

The rescue now has over 50 head and is hoping to spread the word so some of these guys can find homes. I made a page with information on my website (http://stalecheerios.com/rescue/), I would appreciate it if you could forward this information to any friends who have horses in Texas or nearby states. Most of the Iowa horses are yearlings and two year olds. We also have some older horses for adoption, including several who are broke to ride, that are not part of the Iowa group. As well, most of the horses I discuss on my blog are also available for adoption.

Thank you! ~Mary

Horse Swap!

Stale cheerios gets a little stale…

Mary Hunter — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:35:45 +0000

I’m back in Dallas now and am starting to recover from my whirlwind of a summer. I spent 13 fantastic weeks running the horse program at a camp for children and adults with special needs. However, the campers and horses kept me busy 24/7, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time for much else! Now that school is starting, I’ll have more time to keep the blog updated, play with the rescue horses and work on some more dog training.

The rescue where I volunteer acquired a handful of paint and quarter horses from Iowa this summer, many of them quite young. Here’s a picture of the three smallest ones, who are all still nursing. One’s an orphan, but one of the mares has adopted him. More pictures later, as they are adorable. (Click on the picture if you want to see a larger version of it.)

I’m taking a few classes in the Behavior Analysis department at UNT again this semester, including a class on autism, which should be interesting. Quite a few of our campers this summer had autism. Although I know a bit about autism from camp and from various books that I’ve read, I’m looking forward to really getting to study it in depth.

I’ll be putting some photos up over the next week or so from camp this summer, from our family trip to Toronto last week and some new photos of the rescue horses, so be sure to check back!

Amazing animals from the WEIT blog

Mary Hunter — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 04:58:26 +0000

I really like Jerry Coyne’s blog. (Coyne’s a University of Chicago professor, who I actually had for a bio class. He’s recently started a blog to promote his new book Why Evolution Is True.).

Over the past few days, he’s posted some links of some really awesome animals, you should check them out.

Sheepdogs and shepherds who turn sheep into works of art, and video games? I don’t know who deserves more credit here, the dogs, or the shepherds who designed and orchestrated the art. (I do think this should qualify as at least some sort of performance art!) Can anyone scrounge up some more information about these guys?

A bizarre genetic mutant cat, who’s missing most of his hair. He’s so ugly that he’s almost cute. (Almost.)

And yes, pink elephants actually do exist.

Commuter Dogs

Personal News.

Mary Hunter — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:03:46 +0000

I’m on spring break this week. It’s exciting! My brother’s going to be in town, so it should be a fun time. I want to go check out this new climbing gym near our house. It’s been awhile since I’ve done any climbing, but I’ve enjoyed the climbing I’ve done in the past. It would be great if we end up liking it, because it’s right down the street.

I have a job for the summer. I’ll be working at a camp in Argyle for children and adults with special needs (both physical and mental disabilities). The camp has a small horse program, so I’ll be working as a counselor and helping run the horse program. It should be a ton of fun and a great learning experience. I’ve met the two assistant camp directors and they’re great. I’m really excited about it.

Mom and I went and heard Greg Mortenson speak about a week ago. It was incredibly impressive to get to hear him actually speak live and hear from him about Pakistan and Afghanistan and what he has been doing since Three Cups of Tea was published. By the way, if you haven’t read Three Cups of Tea, you need to.

I’ve been working on a new website that is a library (of sorts) of natural horsemanship (well, mostly parelli at this point) videos. There are tons of good videos on youtube of people playing with their horses. However, it’s hard to find things because people don’t properly tag and describe their videos, and you have to sort through all sorts of unrelated videos. The site is based off wordpress because I continue to be impressed by the design and flexiblility of wordpress. I have done a bit of tweaking of the wordpress theme I’m using and of some of the several dozen plugins I’m using. I’m getting better at working with and editing php files, although at some point I need to sit down and actually learn php, as I’d probably be able to write better code (and maybe some of my own plugins).

Good Fortunes

Mary Hunter — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:51:08 +0000

Mom and I tried a new Thai restaurant today. The food was good, and it’s near our house, so it was a good find. It’s actually in a little Asian grocery store that recently expanded to include a restaurant. They gave us fortune cookies, which was interesting, because most of the Thai restaurants I’ve been to don’t serve fortune cookies.

Here’s what my fortune cookie said:

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Who really needs a fork?

Mary Hunter — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:29:59 +0000

My mother has been reading David Freeman Hawke’s Everyday Life in Early America. Here’s a quote she shared with me:

Spoons were the essential utensil at the table. Knives, if they turned up, were pointed and used to spear food from the common serving dish. Forks did not appear until the eighteenth century. There were those who held that forks were “a diabolical luxury,” and that “God would not have given us fingers if He had wished us to use such an instrument.”

It’s funny how resistant people are to change, even to something beneficial and fairly harmless like a fork. Instead, people often resort to defending the status quo as being better (whether or not it actually is) or evoking a deity to defend their position (even if this leads to fairly preposterous ad hoc arguments).

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Hello World!

Mary Hunter — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:00:02 +0000

This is my new blog that you’ve found!

I had another blog I was keeping last semester, but well, that blog centered around being a vet student in Kansas. As I’m no longer living in Kansas and no longer in vet school, I do believe it’s time for a different blog! I withdrew from vet school at the end of my first semester in order to pursue other academic pursuits. I’m currently living in Dallas and taking some classes part-time in the behavior analysis department at the University of North Texas.

This blog will (hopefully) focus some on my studies, a lot on many of the topics I find interesting these days (animals behavior, animal training, behavior analysis and clicker training, to name a few) and a bit on random other things such as interesting books I read.

Anyways, happy reading!

Stale cheerios gets a little stale…