As some of you know, I serve as the president for the Art and Science of Animal Training. In addition to organizing the annual ASAT conference, I take care of all of the behind-the-scenes administrative duties, including managing the website, answering emails, and paying the bills. Even though nonprofits don’t pay taxes, they still […]
Several years ago, Ken Ramirez gave a talk at the Art and Science of Animal Training Conference which was called “Training when you’re not training.” You can read my notes from Ken’s talk in this post. One of Ken’s main points was that training is always going on. We have many informal interactions with our […]
On the Thursday before ClickerExpo, Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz and I gave a one-day PORTL workshop to an excellent group of about 40 Karen Pryor Academy trainers. Here’s one interesting idea that came up during our discussions. As we interact with our animal or human learners, the patterns of behavior we reinforce can sometimes unknowingly create […]
Occasionally when I am at the barn, I realize that I have forgotten something that is still in the tack room. Apollo, of course, can’t come in the tack room with me. Until recently, I have had two options for what I can do in this situation. Option 1: I can give him some feed […]
Apollo and I have been working on Alexandra Kurland’s “the grown-ups are talking” exercise. This is a polite manners exercise that teaches the horse to stand calmly next to you for an extended duration of time with his head straight ahead. One important consideration when we first started this exercise was our training environment. When […]
When you are training an animal, you are working with another living creature. What happens during training is an interaction between this particular animal and your training plan. In some cases, the animal does something that you didn’t anticipate. I’ve been thinking this week about what happens when things don’t go as planned. What happens […]
