What a great weekend! I spent the weekend at the 5th annual Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. As a member of ORCA at the University of North Texas, I help out with the planning for the conference. So, it’s always fun to see how it turns out. This year’s conference was, once again, completely amazing. I learned lots and have plenty of ideas swirling around in my head.
At the conference, we heard presentations from Bob Bailey, Alexandra Kurland, Kay Laurence, Ken Ramirez, Steve White, Phung Luu, and Susan Schneider. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting notes and thoughts on my blog from each of the talks.
Here are a few “snippets,” though, to give you a taste of the conference. Once again this year we tweeted throughout the conference, so these quotes all come from tweets which were posted by both ORCA and the conference attendees. You can check out the rest of the tweets from the conference here.
Weak behavior at 30 meters will not be strong behavior at 300 meters!
Bob Bailey
Animals like having control over their environment.
Did you know there are machines that let cows pick when they want to be milked?
Dr. Susan Schneider
Don’t start framing your house until you’ve built the foundation!
Steve White
Horses are brilliant at reading humans. This can work for you or against you.
Alexandra Kurland
All dogs have natural motivation and drive.
However, poor training leads to a loss of natural motivation.
Kay Laurence
Every interaction we have with an animal has some type of reinforcing value,
either positive or negative. What are you training?
Ken Ramirez
Please check back, I’ll be posting lots more about the conference in the coming days! As well, as I post my notes, I will put links to them on my Conference and Clinics Notes page.