There's a great article in the most recent Smithsonian Magazine about Bob Bailey and Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE). Many animal trainers are familiar with Bob Bailey because of the operant conditioning workshops that he teaches with chickens. However, Bob Bailey first became interested in animal behavior and training in the 1950s and spent decades training […]
Author Archive | Mary Hunter
Barrel racing for dogs
Here’s a fun video from dog trainer Donna Hill. In the video, you’ll see some of the steps she used to teach her dog to run a barrel racing pattern. The video shows the individual component behaviors that Donna taught first and then illustrates how she used back chaining to create the final behavior. Watch […]
Chloe’s first rat agility course
Chloe, my agouti and white rat, is still pretty new to clicker training. I started training with her this summer and she has learned several simple tricks, including climbing onto a brick, going through a PVC pipe tunnel, and going over a cardboard jump. This week, I decided to combine the tunnel trick and the […]
Friday fun: Colt 45
The handsome fellow in the photo below is someone I’d like to introduce you to, as he will probably be appearing some more on my blog this fall! This pretty paint is about a year old. His name is Colt 45 and he currently lives at Serenity Spring Sanctuary, a farm animal sanctuary in North […]
Online Equine Clicker Conference
Do you remember last fall, when I posted about the World Equine Clicker Games, an online training competition for horse clicker trainers, which was held in conjunction with the first annual Equine Clicker Conference? Well, last year’s Equine Clicker Conference, hosted by Hannah Dawson Equine, was such a big success that they are doing it […]
Rat agility, coming soon!
I’ve made my rats an A-frame! If you’re not familiar with dog sports, an A-frame is a type of obstacle that is commonly used in dog agility competitions. The dog has to run up one side of the obstacle and then down the other side. The yellow portion is called a “contact.” When going up […]