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.
Well, not really. If we gave her a gold star, she’d probably eat it. But, we are really proud of Ginger because she passed her pre-agility level 1 class Monday night! The last time I wrote about our training classes, I had just increased our reinforcers from measly dog treats to hot dogs and string […]
I’ve just started reading Temple Grandin’s lastest book, Animals Make Us Human. I’ve read other books by Temple Grandin, and enjoy her writing style and insight. In the first chapter, she talks about what an animal needs for a good life. This is an incredibly complex question, which has enormous implications for how we manage […]
Targeting is a great way to teach a horse or a dog (or a goldfish!) new skills or tricks. The animal learns to follow a hand, a stick, or any other sort of object where ever the object might lead. (For the horses, I usually use an empty plastic water bottle duct taped on the […]
Rosie and I have had some grooming sessions and some hang-out time, but I’ve just recently started doing some ground work with her. This is a video of our second time working on figure-eights. (This is also her third session with the clicker.) She’s doing great, and catching on quickly. In later sessions, I’ll start […]
I’ve been watching Carolyn Resnick’s Waterhole Rituals DVD. I don’t agree with a lot of her horse psychology and dominance theory approach. However, she does make some good points. In the beginning of the DVD she talks briefly about the power of curiosity as a motivator. Instead of chasing our horses around and around a […]
We’ve been talk about shaping in class, which is one of the neatest things about clicker training. (Actually, there are a lot of neat things about clicker training!) Shaping is teaching a new behavior through successive approximations. Basically, you start with a very low criteria and gradually increase your criteria until you reach your target […]
