Concepts and Terms RSS feed for this section

In this section, you’ll find articles about important concepts and terms related to the science of animal training and animal behavior. If you’re new to positive animal training, I recommend starting with the articles in my Top Posts section.

Goldiamond backtracking quote

Let’s go back a few steps

If you’ve spent any time training animals (or humans, for that matter), you know that things don’t always go as planned! Particular steps may end up taking much longer or shorter than your initially anticipated. And at certain steps, the animal may behave in a way that you didn’t expect at all. You should always […]

Continue Reading | 4
ABAI logo

Building confidence with backchaining

I’m in Denver currently at the 43rd annual convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis International. This is the seventh year that I’ve attended the ABAI convention. It’s a huge affair that brings together several thousand individuals who are interested in the science and practice of behavior analysis – with both humans and other animals. […]

Continue Reading | 2
Chalkboard with this quote: Just because you think you

When teaching doesn’t equal learning

I do several different types of teaching and training. In addition to working directly with animals, a huge part of what I do is teaching people how to train their pets. I also teach a class for undergraduate students in the behavior analysis department at our local university. The same basic principles of learning apply […]

Continue Reading | 16