What a great weekend! I spent the weekend at the 5th annual Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. As a member of ORCA at the University of North Texas, I help out with the planning for the conference. So, it’s always fun to see how it turns out. This year’s conference was, once again, completely amazing. I learned lots and have plenty of ideas swirling around in my head.
At the conference, we heard presentations from Bob Bailey, Alexandra Kurland, Kay Laurence, Ken Ramirez, Steve White, Phung Luu, and Susan Schneider. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting notes and thoughts on my blog from each of the talks.
Here are a few “snippets,” though, to give you a taste of the conference. Once again this year we tweeted throughout the conference, so these quotes all come from tweets which were posted by both ORCA and the conference attendees. You can check out the rest of the tweets from the conference here.
Weak behavior at 30 meters will not be strong behavior at 300 meters!
Bob Bailey
Animals like having control over their environment.
Did you know there are machines that let cows pick when they want to be milked?
Dr. Susan Schneider
Don’t start framing your house until you’ve built the foundation!
Steve White
Horses are brilliant at reading humans. This can work for you or against you.
Alexandra Kurland
All dogs have natural motivation and drive.
However, poor training leads to a loss of natural motivation.
Kay Laurence
Every interaction we have with an animal has some type of reinforcing value,
either positive or negative. What are you training?
Ken Ramirez
Please check back, I’ll be posting lots more about the conference in the coming days! As well, as I post my notes, I will put links to them on my Conference and Clinics Notes page.
All of these apply as I’m working with a client’s dog twice a week on loose leash walking which has turned into focus work as well. She is a great dog but in a new environment where other dogs have been, I am not reinforcing enough for her. I upped the treat value yesterday but still not enough. Tried getting her to sit & then allowing her to sniff. She’s still sniffing the air & ignoring my cue for her to sit. Ugh! This week we are going to stick around home to see how she does so I can get the behaviors I want. I really think she needs to get out of her regular environment but we don’t get far on walks & I think the owner’s would get frustrated if they took her but maybe if they took her more,she would get used to it.
Hi Tracy,
I’m glad you liked the quotes and that you can see how they apply to your current training. Sounds like you have a plan, I hope your training with her this week goes well!
~Mary
Sent from my iPad