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 “What is Behavior Analysis?”

School is a lot of fun — I get to spend all week talking about behavior and the principles of good training and teaching. What I learn at school applies directly to what I’m doing with the animals I train and gives me lots of new ideas to think about and try.

This semester I’m taking two classes. One class is called the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB). We’ll read and discuss a lot of research papers that have discovered and explored basic principles of behavior. I’m excited about this class and plan to share some of what we’re learning on my blog. I’m also taking a class called Legal, Ethical, and Professional Issues. This should be pretty interesting as well.

This semester, I’m also a teaching assistant for an undergraduate behavior analysis course called Building Skills with Behavioral Technology. My graduate advisor, Jesus Rosales-Ruiz, teaches the course. This is a very neat course that covers a range of topics related to teaching and training, including shaping, chaining, errorless learning, programmed instruction, stimulus control, program development and more.

The students in the course also have to do a training project with an animal for part of their grade. I’m really looking forward to TAing this course, as it’s both an interesting and fun course. I’m planning to blog about some of the topics we talk about and read about in this course because the course covers many principles that relate to good animal training.

I’ll also be continuing many of the training projects through school that I was working on last semester. I’ll be working at a local nature museum with their Patagonian cavies and a raccoon. I’m also working at our local animal shelter with the dogs and cats at the shelter and will be helping to teach group training classes for people who adopt animals from the shelter.

Also, I’m really looking forward to March! In less than two months we’ll be having the 4th annual Art and Science of Animal Training Conference at UNT. This is one of my favorite parts of the year. If you are anywhere near the Dallas area, I urge you to attend. If you are not familiar with the conference, I have my notes from the first two conferences here.

This should be a very busy semester, but also an exciting semester!

So, I’m just wondering, who else has given google+ a try? I’m finding it fun to play with so far. Let me know if you are also on google+, and I’ll add you to one of my circles. (Circles are how you organize your friends on google+.)

Also, if you are interested in giving google+ a try, but are not on it yet, let me know and I can send you an invite. If you don’t want to post your e-mail address publicly in the comments, just shoot me an e-mail at cheeriotrainer AT gmail DOT com.

Do you wear a riding helmet?

I tore a ligament in my shoulder about a week and a half ago. I came off of one of the colts I’ve been starting when he spooked at something and took off bucking. Big bucks! I landed mainly on my shoulder and hip, but my head hit the ground too. And it was HARD ground–we’ve had a drought all summer here in Texas.

Luckily, my head was just fine because of my riding helmet.

Don’t worry, I’m on the mend, but I’m limited in what I can do outside with the horses. No riding for a couple of weeks and no heavy lifting.

Less than a week after I fell, a gal I know at a friend’s barn got dumped off of her horse when the horse spooked and bucked. She landed on her head and ended up with a mild concussion and a big crack on the inside of her helmet.

She’s lucky, she likely would have been killed if she hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

Actually, I take that back. She’s not lucky, she’s smart. She is smart enough to wear a helmet when she rides to protect her brains. Modern medicine can fix most injuries, but when it comes to head injuries, it’s not worth taking the risk and riding without a helmet.

This is a good article I found on about.com the other day about reasons why people don’t wear helmets and why they should reconsider some of those reasons. Even the best bomb-proof, been-there-done-that trail horse can get stung by a bee and spook. Or trip on a rock and fall to his knees, throwing you from the saddle. Accidents do happen. That’s why they are called accidents!

Here’s my favorite quote from the article:

“If you think you don’t need a helmet then you should look your son, daughter, spouse, or friend in the eye and tell them: I don’t need a helmet, but if I am wrong it will be your job to care for me.”

So, what do you think? Do you wear a helmet when you ride?

This is a great Christmas tree we saw this week in downtown Waxahachie. It’s made from old tires. What a neat way to recycle!

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.)

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?

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

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!

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.

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).

Here’s what my fortune cookie said: