Are you interested in animal training?

Mary Hunter and her horse Apollo


On this site I share stories of my animal training adventures, information about the science of animal training and behavior, and tips and advice to help you improve your training.

Join me as we explore the best training strategies for creating fast learning, effective communication, and enthusiastic, willing animals.

If you’re new to Stale Cheerios, I recommend that you start by visiting this page to learn more about Stale Cheerios and that you visit my Top Posts page.

~Mary Hunter



Recent posts from the StaleCheerios blog


Shimmer Learns to Trailer Load

A trailer is a small, dark, metal box on wheels. For a prey animal like a horse, walking into the mouth of this monster sounds like a pretty scary idea! Shimmer, our little buckskin filly has found a foster home. So, it was high time for her to learn to walk into a trailer! She […]

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Clicker Carnival #2

Welcome to the second Clicker Carnival, a blog carnival especially for clicker trainers and positive animal trainers. I hope October was a wonderful month of training for you and your animals. We had 20 days of rain, so the horses got plenty of practice of walking through puddles this month! This month’s edition of the […]

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Horse Swap!

Horse Swap!

We swapped around a bunch of the horses at the rescue almost two weeks ago. We currently have about 30 horses on a friend’s 25 acres (plus use of the pasture next to it, which is 35 acres). These are many of the Iowa horses that we are currently available for adoption, plus some of […]

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