Have you ever heard the phrase “You can’t teach an old dog a new trick?” Many people assume that once an animal gets to a certain age or practices an unwanted behavior a certain number of times, that it will be hopeless to try to train the animal a new behavior pattern. However, nothing could [...]
Connor Moves Faster with Smaller Steps
It seems a bit counter-intuitive. If we break a training task down into more steps, it should take longer. However, the opposite is usually true. Smaller steps can get us to our goal quicker and often result in better quality behavior. This came in handy several weeks ago when we picked up Connor from the [...]
Tex Practices Being Brave
The weather was perfect this weekend for playing with the ponies at the rescue. I spent quite a bit of time on Saturday working with Tex, one of our two year old ponies. He’s friendly and halter-broke, but really hasn’t had a whole lot of training. Tex was absolutely TERRIFIED of people when we first [...]
Slow and Steady Progress
What a great day on Saturday with the horses! My friend Kirsten was out at the rescue for the weekend and we worked most of the afternoon with a few of the horses. I am continually being reminded that animal training shouldn’t be a race. Slow and steady progress beats fast and rushed! The horses [...]
The Worming Adventure Continues
I wrote recently about our success worming 40 of the 41 rescue horses in a single day. The final mare, Daisy, refused the flavored wormer that we had mixed in with some tasty senior feed. Smart girl! She knew that something was amiss. So, Dawn and I returned to the other property last Friday with [...]
Shimmer Practices Trailer Loading (video)
This is Shimmer’s second day practicing walking into the trailer. Trailer loading can be very frightening to a horse and many people have lots of trouble and training problems trying to get their horse to load into a trailer. With clicker training, trailer loading is a piece of cake! To read more about teaching Shimmer [...]
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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