Alright readers, here’s a challenge for you. Check out this youtube clip below of a raven, who is being trained to peck at a yellow bowling pin. He has two choices–peck yellow or peck blue. If he pecks the correct pin, he receives a bit of food as a reward. If he pecks the incorrect [...]
Alexandra Kurland and Loopy Training
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 [...]
Ginger Takes a Bow
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 makes [...]
Clicker Training Doggie Zen (videos)
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, [...]
Practicing Perfect Transitions
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 [...]
What’s the purpose of the click in clicker training?
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. [...]
Stimulus Control and the Do Nots
As I’ve talked about before, cues are powerful only if we can get them under stimulus control. (What is stimulus control?) The animal must be able to distinguish between a variety of different cues, know which behavior goes with which cue and know not to perform the behaviors unless the cue is given. I’ve [...]
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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