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.
Boomer, one of our young paint horse geldings, got adopted this weekend! Boomer had been at the rescue for a little over a year. When he arrived in 2009, he was very skeptical of people and completely untouchable. Because the rescue had so many horses last winter, he did not get very much handling until […]
Does clicker training work with cats? Of course it does! I often hear people say that clicker training works with dogs (or a different species) but they are still skeptical about it working with certain other species (such as cats or horses). Cats, of course, have a bit of a reputation for being independent and […]
As I wrote about last week, Apollo is doing a great job learning to pick up his feet. This can be a challenging skill for some horses to learn–clicker training really helps! In just a handful of sessions, Apollo has gotten very comfortable about me handling his feet. I started by just running my hand […]
All right, you’ve probably seen the Old Spice commerical that ends with actor Isaiah Mustafa on a horse. (If not, you can watch the Old Spice commercial HERE). Some friends of the rescue I work with wanted to make a spoof of this commercial to help promote a blues dance event that is happening in […]
Alright readers, here’s a challenge for you. Check out this youtube clip below of a raven, who is being trained to peck at a yellow bowling pin. He has two choices–peck yellow or peck blue. If he pecks the correct pin, he receives a bit of food as a reward. If he pecks the incorrect […]
Alright, I need your help! I’ve been trying to spend more time training Ginger this fall. I have a project I’m working on with her for school, but I also want to work on more fun tricks. Two weeks ago we started on leg weaves (which are getting pretty good now!) and last weekend I […]
