At the Art and Science of Animal Training conference this year Alexandra Kurland spoke about loopy training, which is a concept she has been developing over the past year. Loopy training was the focus of a clinic I did with Alexandra Kurland last fall. The more I hear about it, the more it makes sense [...]

Using clicker training, Ginger dog has recently learned how to bow! I’ve included a short video clip at the bottom so you can watch her practicing her bow.
With clicker training, many dog trainers advise to get the behavior occurring at a high rate BEFORE trying to add a cue to it. This actually [...]

Ginger and I have been working on Doggie Zen, which is an exercise from Sue Ailsby’s training levels. Doggie Zen is a leave it type exercise. At the early stages, you teach the dog to ignore and leave alone a piece of food in your open hand. Later on, this evolves into more complicated exercises, [...]

Leading is how we get our horse from point A to point B. And most horses lead well enough that you can usually get them from point A to point B. However, games that involve leading can be a great way to work on fine-tuning your communication with your horse. Creative leading exercises can help [...]

This is a follow up post to Do I have to treat every time I click?
The clicker is commonly thought of as one or more of the following:
–a marker signal
–a bridge signal
–a secondary reinforcer
–a cue
The clicker is often thought of as a marker signal, meaning it marks good behavior. However, just marking a behavior doesn’t [...]