He warmed up to us pretty quickly and enjoyed being brushed and scratched, especially on his belly!! However, was was extremely wary about anybody or anything coming anywhere near his face or ears.

I got where I could rub the front of his face and he figured out he really liked having his cheeks scratched!! My friend Dionne (the one in the photos working with Boomer with the fly mask) worked with him quite a bit while she was here. Once he got to know her, he loved having her scratch his face and cheeks too.

Haltering progress went in fits and starts, but it was often one step forward, three steps back. This was because he was still terrified of having his ears touched and to put the halter on, I had to get close to his ears. Get close to his ears and he’d back up, throwing and tossing his head and generally work himself into a state of panic.

So, we had to forget about the halter for awhile and just work on the ears. We worked in bits and pieces, slowly going from the bottom of the ear all the way up. I’d touch as far as I could, wait for him to relax, and then remove my hand. He gradually realized that I did not, in fact, want to kill him. Then, pretty soon, he realized he actually kind of liked to have his ears rubbed.

Here’s a recently clip of haltering him and rubbing his face. Much better now, which is a relief to both of us! The next step is to see how well this will generalize to other people and then to begin working on fly mask training. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Training Your Horse to Wear a Fly Mask
2. Boomer’s First Session with Halter Training
3. Halter Training Success with Daisy and Gatsby

Rosie is a very green little quarter horse mare who we have at the rescue. (Well, actually, for the non-horsey folks she’s what’s called a red roan; green just means she hasn’t had a whole lot of riding yet.) I rode her 3 times in March and a foster family put a handful of first rides on her this past winter. But, she still doesn’t know a whole lot.

I’ve been working with her quite a bit the past couple of weeks as I have more time now that school is out. We went for three short rides this week, two in the round pen and one out and about through the front yard. She did excellently!! Rosie was calm and relaxed the whole time and acted like she had been doing this her whole life.

A lot of the exercises we’ve been doing on the ground recently have transfered really well to under saddle. Particularly, on the ground we’ve been working on verbal cues for woah and walk on, as well as standing patiently at the halt. Under saddle she was very light both for halting and for moving off of my leg cues.

She is a bit stiff with her steering still. While riding we’ve been doing a lot of figure-eights, circles and changes of direction to work on this. On the ground I’ll probably start doing some more ground driving exercises to help make her lighter and more responsive to rein cues. Right now we’re riding only at the walk–I’d like her walk to trot and trot to walk transitions to be solid on the ground before we attempt them under saddle!

Check out the video clip below. Rosie is calm and quiet throughout the clip. When you do the proper ground work and preparations on the ground, the transition to riding is often smooth and simple. (By the way, Rosie is currently available for adoption if anyone is interested!)

Watch Rosie on youtube.

Related posts:

1. Riding Rosie for the first time
2. Rosie Meets the Bareback Pad
3. Introducing Sebastian to a Saddle Pad (video)

Sheriff the donkey was recently rescued and already has a new home! However, he is staying at the rescue for a short while until he can go to his new home. He is curious and interested in people, but can still be a bit shy and skeptical, especially when being approached.

Once you get close, he is more than happy to have you scratch his ears, face, shoulders and back. However, he’s a bit skeptical about being approached. I petted him some and spent some time with him yesterday when he arrived.

He wouldn’t let me get very close to him today, so I started with some CAT style approach and retreat. I would approach, wait for a sign of curiosity, interest or friendly behavior, and then back off. After about 20 minutes he was following me around the round pen and was definitely enjoying having his ears scratched.
Here’s a clip from towards the end, I’ll post some more clips from working with him today later on. By letting him repeatedly approach me, it helped build his confidence and curiosity. He knew he could leave at any time if he got scared or unsure. Sheriff really seems to enjoy getting his ears scratched and is quickly becoming friendlier and more confident.

I will keep you updated as we continue to work with him. I think he’s going to be a friendly little fellow before too much longer!

Watch this clip on youtube

Related posts:

1. Halter Training with a Head Shy Horse
2. Gracie Gets Her Halter Off
3. Boomer’s First Session with Halter Training

Boomer was pretty hesitant and skeptical about people, so I started with him using the CAT procedure. Prior to yesterday he would sometimes let us touch him on his hindquarters while he was eating, but it was usually a brief touch as he started to walk away. If he was grazing he would not let you get close enough to touch him. (I promise I’ll write about CAT in detail in a future post. Basically, if the animal is afraid and wants you to go away, you can use removing yourself to reinforce calm or friendly behavior.) We did CAT for about half an hour until he was letting me scratch him on his shoulders, barrel and hindquarters.

Later on in the day, once he was more comfortable with me standing near him, we started working on haltering. First, I practiced putting my hand over his neck and having him turn his head towards me. Later on, we also worked on him letting me rub his neck with the halter. The first time I put the halter on he was more surprised than anything else, but after a few repetitions he decided the halter wasn’t anything bad. So, we made a lot of progress for our first day of training!

I took just a bit of video, which you can see below. The video’s about a minute long and in it I put the halter on and off several times. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good, considering the video was taken after he had about 5 minutes working with haltering.

Watch Boomer getting haltered on youtube

Related posts:

1. Halter Training with a Head Shy Horse
2. Halter Training Success with Daisy and Gatsby
3. Introducing Sebastian

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.

Related posts:

1. 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference
2. Ken Ramirez: Animal Trainers Need People Skills Too!
3. Kay Laurence: Assessing Your Animal Training Skills

Ginger and I recently began working on a shoulder target. This means she targets her shoulder onto an object. For now I’m using my hand, later we’ll expand to a target stick or some other objects. It’s been a fun learning experience so far. I’ve kind of been making up what to do as I go along, as I’ve never done this before.

Here’s a video clip of where we were yesterday, Day 3. We have a pretty nice loop going, she moves so her shoulder touches my hand, I click and throw the food, she finds the food and then moves back into position. (This is loopy training for dogs!) Several times in the video I move my hand out a bit farther once she gets into position, asking her to move into my hand a bit more. Sometimes she is almost forceful about pushing into my hand. Today was the first day when she really seemed to “get” that it was about touching my hand, rather than just standing in a particular spot.

Training Log So Far

Day 1

I originally started with a target stick. However, the target stick I chose is a tennis ball on a stick and she only wanted to bite and play with the tennis ball! Bad choice on my part. I decided starting with a hand would be easier than an object, especially since with my hand I can feel how hard she is pressing against me.

After we ditched the tennis ball, I started with her letting me touch her shoulder while she was in a down. This was actually hard at first. Ginger gets very energetic during training and was not keen about me touching or petting her. She also assumed my hand heading towards her was some sort of cue and kept throwing behavior at me, sits, downs, bows, you name it! So, having her in a down helped her settle a bit and figure out that all I wanted to do was to touch her shoulder. Then we repeated this with her standing.

Day 2

Started where we left off, with her standing in front of me, letting me touch her shoulder. I decided I wanted a movement cycle. I though this would help her get the concept faster than if I tried to teach it with her standing still. I originally began by throwing the treats behind her. She started staying farther away from me, as this was closer to where the food was being delivered. So, I switched to throwing the treats to my right side. Wrong side! Since I wanted her moving into my hand, I realized throwing the treats off to my left was the most logical. This did take a bit of coordination to master at first!

By the end, she would collect the treat and then return in front of me. She wasn’t particularly paying attention to my hand. However, she’d shift over a step or two more if I withheld the click.

Day 3

Yesterday she really started putting pressure on my hand when she returned. In addition, if I moved my hand away a bit more, she’d continue moving over until she found my hand. The food delivery part of our loop is still a little messy at times–she’ll sniff around looking for the treat if she doesn’t see it immediately.

Has anyone else worked on body targeting with their dog (or horse or other animal)? Any suggestions or tips? Or, any ideas for interesting or fun tricks to teach? I’d love to hear your feedback or experiences if you’ve tried something like this.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Clicker Training through Targeting
2. Teaching new skills using targeting
3. Dog Training Update

All behavior, in some sense, is novel, you never brush your teeth the exactly the same way twice. However, each person or animal develops a repertoire of known behaviors and these behaviors can be combined or altered to create new behaviors. Interestingly, this combination process if quite orderly and predictable and we can alter it’s flow experimentally to create new behavior.

Check out the video below of a pigeon Robert Epstein and his lab trained to solve the classic box and banana problem. The pigeon knew how to move a box and stand on a box and knew that pecking the banana would get it a reward. You can see it’s frustration at the beginning until it realizes (in about a minute!) how to solve the problem using what it has learned in the past.

Animal behavior is orderly and predicable (even if it is often too complex for us to notice that order!) Much of Robert Epstein’s research involved studying the orderly relationships between behavior and past history. Behavior can be established easily by first teaching any underlying component behaviors. Animal training could benefit from this, as we often lump several behaviors together. For instance, some teach an inexperienced horse to stand still by a mounting block for a rider to mount. Instead, first teach the horse to stand still, then teach stand by the mounting block, then worry about getting on! Our shaping and training often is slowed down because the animal is lacking the prerequisite skills.

Similarly to pigeons, most humans do not develop their full potential to express creativity. Creativity is a learned skill and can be strengthened through practice and specific activities. Robert Epstein has developed four core competencies that form the basic skill set for creativity. If we can learn to use these, we are well on our way to increasing our creativity! His four competencies are:

1. Capturing
Capturing means learning to listen to and record our ideas. If you have a good idea, write it down! Better yet, set aside time every day for daydreaming or brain storming. If you capture ideas as they occur, you have a larger pool to select from and better quality to pick from. Capture now, evaluate later.

2. Challenging
Expose yourself to failure and don’t be afraid to fail. If we put ourselves in tough situations that require thinking or problem solving, old behaviors and ideas often surface and link together, creating new behavior. This is essentially what happened to the problem solving pigeon above.

3. Broadening
Learn things well out of your current area of expertise. The more diverse your experiences, ideas and skills, the more potential for creativity and interesting combination. If you broaden what you know, you’ll see connections or possibilities that you might never have thought of before.

4. Surrounding
This principle relates to how you manage your physical or social environment. Unusual stimuli, combinations of stimuli or different environments will often produce novel ideas or inspirations. New situations and environments challenge us to respond differently.

So, if you’ve always thought of yourself as not creative, don’t fear! There are lots of ways to increase your creativity. Also, by training and working with our animals, we can make them better problem solvers and increase their creative ability. Can you think of ways that the above principles might apply to animals or animal training? You might be interested in checking out Robert Epstein’s website. He has written several books on increasing creativity and has information and articles on his site.

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.

Related posts:

1. Bob Bailey and Animal Training
2. Crate training macaws and an exciting weekend ahead
3. 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference

Can You Find Me?

The first game, Find the Two-Legger, is a canine version of the classic hide and seek. Basically, you tell your dog to wait, then go and hide somewhere in your house. You then give the dog a release command and she has to come find you! If your dog doesn’t know how to stay for long periods of time, start out small, maybe just moving a few feet away and then gradually building up. This is a fun way to work on recalls and wait/stay, as well as a good way to give your dog a bit of exercise if it’s too cold to play ball outside.

Ginger Plays Find the Two-Legger

Ginger and I played this a few times today. (Check out the video clip below!) We’ve played hide and seek in the past, but I tried to mix it up a bit today. I tried making her wait in all sorts of different places, where as in the past I’ve usually only made her wait in the kitchen. This was hard for her! From this, I know our wait could use a bit of work on generalization to new locations.

I also tried hiding in a few weird spots, such as on beds or chairs. A few times it took her a little while to find me. It’s great mental exercise for her, trying to see how fast she can find me so she can earn a treat.

Did you like this post?

You can follow along with the discussion of the rest of the seven seeking games this week on the Rewarding Behaviors Forum by clicking here.

Related posts:

1. Clicker Training Doggie Zen (videos)
2. A Ginger Adventure
3. Ginger gets a gold star!

Many times we say an animal (or person) should do something because he ought to or because we think he should. The horse who disobeys and the dog who doesn’t listen are both being disrespectful and bad. Same goes for the child who won’t sit still in school.

But think about it this way, what’s in it for them to do as you say? If the answer is not a whole lot, you can bet the animal isn’t going to be so keen on listening or following directions.

Check out this video below. Many doctors and health experts are forever hounding on their patients to get more exercise. A simple way to get a bit more exercise is to take the stairs instead of walking. However, humans, like horses, are often masters of conservation of energy and prefer elevators and escalators. If we can make stairs fun, people are more likely to use them.

So, here’s what I want to know

What are some simple ways you make your training fun? Do you have any special games or activities that your horse, dog or other pet just loves? What do you do when you have trouble motivating the animal?

Where are the magical musical stairs in your training?

I look forward to hearing your comments!

And a big thanks to Cheryl, of Painting Horse, who originally posted this video .

Related posts:

1. Ginger Plays Doggie Hide and Seek (video)
2. Shimmer Practices Trailer Loading (video)
3. Doolittle works on leading using clicker training (video)

I recently finished reading Irene Pepperburg’s most recent book, Alex and Me. When Irene Pepperburg first started working with Alex, many people scoffed and laughed at her. Parrots were thought of as “bird brains.” While it might be possible to teach them to repeat back answers to simple questions, the bird wasn’t actually “thinking” or “reasoning.” However, in Alex and Me, Irene Pepperburg repeatedly proves her critics wrong.

If you’re not familiar with Alex, he was quite the parrot. Irene Pepperburg studied animal intelligence and learning with Alex, an African grey parrot, for 31 years until his death in 2007. The book is an entertaining portrayal of Alex’s life, including how his training helped us discover more about the remarkable intelligence of birds.

Irene Pepperburg’s method for training Alex began with model-rival techniques. Alex would watch Irene Pepperburg teach something to another human. Then, he’d get a chance to participate as well. He would watch a human answer questions about colors and shapes, while Irene Pepperburg rewarded correct responses and corrected wrong answers. After observing for awhile, he’d be given a chance to answer questions as well.

Alex had quite a complex understanding of how to describe the world around him. For example, if presented with two yellow wooden squares, he would be able to answer correctly the follow questions: What color? How many? What material? What shape? The objects were not just associated with a single response. Rather, he could examine an object and then answer a variety of questions about it.

There is still debate among scientists about if Alex and other African grey parrots are truly “thinking.” However, whatever you call it, whether thinking or high-level complex discrimination, Alex’s accomplishments demonstrate a very high level of learning. One of the most interesting aspects of this book is that it shows just how little we understand about how animals learn and how much an animal is capable of learning. What more would Alex have accomplished if he had lived another 30 years?

Animals are capable of learning a great deal, more than most people realize. Many people perceive animals as dumb or less intelligent. However, in many cases, this is not because the animal is dumb, but because we know so little about their actual ability to learn. For instance, a simple goldfish is perfectly capable of learning a few tricks! Most animals are a lot more capable than we give them credit for.

I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in birds, parrots, animal training, or animal intelligence. It’s interesting and informative and packed with fascinating stories. I felt like I got to know Alex and was continually amazed as I followed along through his life. Below I’ve included a short two minute youtube clip of Alex answering some basic questions and showing off his intelligence.

Related posts:

1. Ken Ramirez: Animal Trainers Need People Skills Too!