Wow! I can’t believe that 2011 is already over. What a busy year. I finished my first year of graduate school and started my second, spent another great summer living at the horse rescue, and had lots of fun training all my animals. As I’ve done the past two years, I’ve gone through and collected [...]
Training with Urchins and Sea Stars!
What animals can’t be trained?? I had a lot of surprised friends several years ago when I did some clicker training and trick training with my goldfish Blaze. Many species are much more capable of learning than we give them credit for. A woman named Barbara Ray recently posted on one of the discussion groups [...]
Stale Cheerios: Best of 2010
It’s late January, but I still wanted to put together a short Best of 2010 list. This post features the 10 best posts of last year. I picked most of the posts on this list because of the number of hits and comments they received–I know you all really enjoyed reading them. They are also [...]
Walt Disney needs some Clicker Training!
This is a humorous little clip that has been circulating around the internet. Its well worth watching for a few laughs, if you haven’t seen it yet. The clip is a 1941 Disney short called “How to Ride a Horse.” Now, while watching, I couldn’t help thinking how much this horse could benefit from a [...]
Clicker Training Step 1: Teach Food Delivery
I’m (finally) starting to have some success with clicker training the rats. (Check out Georgie’s debut on youtube in this post, Rat Clicker Training Success.) Who would have thought training a rat would be this hard? In this post I’ll explain some of the initial troubles I had and describe how I finally trained the [...]
Does Clicker Training Work with Cats?
Does clicker training work with cats? Of course it does! I often hear people say that clicker training works with dogs (or a different species) but they are still skeptical about it working with certain other species (such as cats or horses). Cats, of course, have a bit of a reputation for being independent and [...]
10 tips to improve your clicker training
Clicker training is GREAT for dogs, cats, and horses. (And even lobsters and goldfish!) With clicker training, animals learn fast and are generally more interested and engaged in the training process. However, like anything else, clicker training is a skill. Being skilled at clicker training takes time and practice. Here are 10 tips that will [...]
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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