This weekend was Rosie’s first encounter with a bareback pad. We’ve played with a saddle pad several times and she’s done a great job, so I felt she was ready for the next step. The bareback pad turned out to be a non-event, which was what I had hoped would happen. Even though I know […]
Rosie and I played with a saddle pad for the second time yesterday. In traditional horse training, many horses will learn to put up with saddling without truly ever accepting the process. Or, through rough handling, they later learn to resent the act of being saddled. I want Rosie to like being saddled and to […]
I’m back in Dallas now and am starting to recover from my whirlwind of a summer. I spent 13 fantastic weeks running the horse program at a camp for children and adults with special needs. However, the campers and horses kept me busy 24/7, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time for much […]
Zoos, aquariums, wildlife parks, sea world, nature centers, personal pets, we encounter animals around us all the time. Many of the wild animals we encounter today (especially in zoos and aquariums) are bred in captivity, rather than collected from the wild. Animals have a host of needs that must be met in captivity. If the […]
Shaping is a powerful way to build behavior. Animals who understand shaping truly understand that they can control their environment and that their behavior earns them rewards. This is different from training with coercive methods (punishment, negative reinforcement) where the animal learns to perform or offer behaviors only to avoid the correction or get rid […]
As I’ve talked about before, cues are powerful only if we can get them under stimulus control. (What is stimulus control?) The animal must be able to distinguish between a variety of different cues, know which behavior goes with which cue and know not to perform the behaviors unless the cue is given. I’ve […]
