Dogs, horses, and rats. Birds, goldfish, cats. Dolphins, raccoons, and elephants. What animals can’t we train? In this section you’ll find lots of great training stories and tips. You will also get to meet many of the wonderful animals that I get to train. I hope that you’ll enjoy reading about my adventures (and misadventures) and that these articles and tales can provide you with insight that will help you with your own animals.
I regularly hear trainers say that you should end a training session on a good note. This phrase can mean a few different things. However, I find that people often mean that you keep training until your animal does several good repetitions of the behavior you’re practicing. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have […]
Want to improve your training sessions with your horses, dogs, or other animals? Start by practicing without your animal! What is a dress rehearsal? In my Shaping Skills Workshop courses, I encourage my students to do dress rehearsals without their animals before their training sessions. Here’s how to do a dress rehearsal: Step 1: Get […]
I wrote this post at the beginning of January.It has taken me a few weeks to find the time to finish editing it.However, I still wanted to share it with you. My horse, Apollo, lives on a ranch about 10 minutes from our house. My drive to see him takes me down a lightly-trafficked county […]
Do you video your training sessions when you are working with your animals? Whether you are training a horse, dog, cat, or kangaroo, recording your training sessions is a great way to improve your training. You’ll see lots of details in the videos that you didn’t even realize were happening during the training session. It’s […]
This summer, two friends and I are taking Terry Ryan’s virtual chicken training workshop. I’ll share some of my notes from the workshop over the next handful of weeks. You can learn more about Terry’s workshops on her Legacy Canine website. Why train a chicken? Early in my animal training journey, I learned about Terry […]
This spring, as I teach my online shaping skills class, I’ve been thinking a lot about the decisions we make during shaping. I find that many trainers don’t know quite what to do when their animal is almost, but not quite, performing a desired behavior. For example, imagine you’re working with your animal on backing […]
