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.
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 […]
I often think of targeting as a simple exercise. It’s one of the first skills I teach the horses when clicker training and it works great for teaching other behaviors. Usually, I think of targeting as a dog or horse touching their nose to something. However, there are many different ways to expand on targeting […]
by Martin Pettitt, on Flickr I volunteer with ORCA at the Heard Museum about once a week. (ORCA is a lab in UNT’s behavior analysis department that focuses on animal training.) One project for this semester is crate training the museum’s two blue and gold macaws. During the fall and spring, Texas can have crazy […]
Daisy and Gatsby, the two new horses we recently brought over to the rescue’s main property, had their first session wearing halters yesterday. (You can read more about Daisy and Gatsby, and our adventures trailer loading two not halter trained horses in this post.) I worked with both of them together for about an hour […]
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 […]
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 […]
