We recently brought Tootie back to the ranch. He’s growing up fast, I think he’s double the size he was at the end of last summer! He’s also getting a lot darker. He should be a lovely dapple gray when he sheds out this spring.
Tootie has been handled since birth and he loves people–sometimes [...]

Robert Epstein was the keynote speaker for the Art and Science of Animal Training conference this year. (Be sure to read the rest of my notes from the conference as well.) Epstein, who was the last student of B.F. Skinner, researches the creativity process and how novel behavior develops.
All behavior, in some sense, is [...]

Blaze is my star fish who I’ve been clicker training. (Actually, err, he’s a goldfish, but he is a star pupil!) I trained him a bit at first using the R2 fish training kit (see a video of his first few tricks HERE). He proved to be a smart fish and a fast learner for [...]

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, [...]

This is a video I found yesterday that I really like. It’s a great example of a trainer setting the animal up for success and then patiently clicking successive approximations to the final goal. Horses are curious by nature and are usually interested in exploring new items in their surrounding. If we can reward even [...]