Well established cues are under what is called stimulus control. The stimulus (cue) increases the chance that the behavior will occur because the animal has been reinforced for performing the behavior in the presence of the cue. But what does it really mean for a behavior to be under good stimulus control?
Properties of good stimulus [...]

Ginger got away at dog training class tonight. Luckily, the property is fenced, so she didn’t really get away. She just got to tear wildly around the property for awhile until I cornered her and stepped on the leash. 
When other dogs have gotten loose in the past, they want to investigate the other people and [...]

Well, not really. If we gave her a gold star, she’d probably eat it. 
But, we are really proud of Ginger because she passed her pre-agility level 1 class Monday night!
The last time I wrote about our training classes, I had just increased our reinforcers from measly dog treats to hot dogs and string cheese. Since [...]

Here’s a video of Ginger and I playing from about a week ago.
It shows a handful of the things we’ve been working on recently.
We’ve been working quite a bit on targeting type behaviors, including touching my palm and touching the end of a targeting stick. (More information about target training.) She really understand the hand [...]

Here’s how I’m putting theory from the classroom into my training sessions!
Several weeks ago in my intro behavior analysis class we talked about good reinforcers using an acronym called DISC. This is what DISC stands for:
D–deprivation
I–immediacy
S–size
C–contengency
The best reinforcers are something the animal hasn’t had in awhile (principle of deprivation), something that occurs right after the [...]