Are you interested in animal training?

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

Spectacular Photos: Rescue Horses at the Waterhole

By Mary Hunter on November 19, 2010 in Fun Photos

These are a few photos from last weekend, I hope you enjoy them! Kirsten, Dawn and I took a round bale over to the rescue’s other property near dusk. The horses came galloping down to greet us, but then most passed by us and instead headed down to the waterhole. There was no wind, the […]

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The Columban Simulations: How Smart Are Pigeons?

By Mary Hunter on November 18, 2010 in Other Species, Research Studies

I found two wonderful youtube clips recently. I highly recommend taking the time to watch them! They are the first and second halves of a short 1980s film about the Columban Simulations. The Columban Simulations were a series of research studies where pigeons were taught to perform complicated behaviors that we usually think of as […]

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a formerly untouchable horse gets petted

Gracie makes more progress

By Mary Hunter on November 16, 2010 in Horse Training

Kirsten captured some great pictures over the weekend of Gracie and I interacting. I’m petting her in most of these, but the way my body is turned, you can’t really tell. I just love how calm, relaxed, engaged and curious she looks in all of them. She is definitely a different horse from last November! […]

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Tex Practices Being Brave

By Mary Hunter on November 15, 2010 in Horse Training

The weather was perfect this weekend for playing with the ponies at the rescue. I spent quite a bit of time on Saturday working with Tex, one of our two year old ponies. He’s friendly and halter-broke, but really hasn’t had a whole lot of training. Tex was absolutely TERRIFIED of people when we first […]

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Teaching a dog to match using clicker training

By Mary Hunter on November 13, 2010 in Dog Training

This week in ORCA we watched a really neat video of a dog learning to match objects. We often don’t think of matching as a complex skill because we are very familiar with matching and have had a lot of practice with it. However, it’s pretty complicated! Matching can also be a hard skill to […]

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Shaping Ginger to Lower Her Head

By Mary Hunter on November 12, 2010 in Dog Training

Clicker training isolated muscle movements can be great for improving your shaping skills. One behavior that ginger and I have been working on using clicker training is teaching her to lower her head. With shaping, we don’t try and teach the whole behavior at once. Instead, we split the behavior into small approximations toward the […]

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