One thing I’ve been doing more of this semester is rat training. I started some clicker training with my rat Georgie last fall. However, I didn’t get too far past teaching food delivery and conditioning the clicker. So far this fall we’ve worked on a handful of tricks, including targeting, standing on a platform (including […]
Tag Archives | shaping
Connor Moves Faster with Smaller Steps
It seems a bit counter-intuitive. If we break a training task down into more steps, it should take longer. However, the opposite is usually true. Smaller steps can get us to our goal quicker and often result in better quality behavior. This came in handy several weeks ago when we picked up Connor from the […]
Shaping Ginger to Lower Her Head
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 […]
10 tips to improve your clicker training
Clicker training is GREAT for dogs, cats, and horses. (And even lobsters and goldfish!) With clicker training, animals learn fast and are generally more interested and engaged in the training process. However, like anything else, clicker training is a skill. Being skilled at clicker training takes time and practice. Here are 10 tips that will […]
Tootie and the Terrible Twos? (video)
We recently brought Tootie back to the ranch. He’s growing up fast, I think he’s double the size he was at the end of last summer! He’s also getting a lot darker. He should be a lovely dapple gray when he sheds out this spring. Tootie has been handled since birth and he loves people–sometimes […]
Dr. Robert Epstein: Engineering Complex and Novel Behavior in Animals
Robert Epstein was the keynote speaker for the Art and Science of Animal Training conference this year. (Be sure to read the rest of my notes from the conference as well.) Epstein, who was the last student of B.F. Skinner, researches the creativity process and how novel behavior develops. All behavior, in some sense, is […]