Training Matters

10/21/2025

10/16/2025

Handling reactive dogs on leash walks with a goal of changing both their emotional responses and behavior towards stimuli in the environment that provoke the reactive behaviors is challenging. Video in the comments gives a nice rundown of factors at play, including assessing why the dog may engage in the behaviors we seek to change.

10/03/2025

It may not look like it, but there’s a lot going on on my walks with Stella and the puppy from her litter that we are keeping. First, the long line on Stella: that is to prevent encounters with porcupines as well as to help me set her up for success in giving me behaviors to reinforce that don’t include chasing or correcting Puppy. Behaviors like walking beside him, passing him without grabbing at him with her mouth, letting him pass or run around her without grabbing at him with her mouth, walking with and looking at me, responding to my cues to redirect attention from him to me, etc. Stella has continued what is normal sighthound mother behaviors like chasing and grabbing him and I’d like them to become part of the past.

One of my concerns is what might occur when I am walking all three of my dogs together. Would Stella’s behaviors of chasing and grabbing her son stimulate our other dog, Winnie, to do the same? Could those behaviors escalate? So, we’re working on what to do instead of chasing and grabbing the baby.

Other behaviors being worked on: recall of both dogs, puppy staying within about 25 feet, puppy checking in with me. He’s not going far at the moment, but I’d like to keep it that way. We’re laying the groundwork now.

And, of course, pottying outdoors. Note my praise of the puppy p**p! He also got a special treat for p**ping outside.

Porcupines are on the move now and Winnie got quilled this week for the second time. For those who remember the first great quilling, this one wasn’t nearly as bad. Still, we’re walking on long lines for a bit. This porcupine was somewhere we wouldn’t have expected: right in the middle of our field. Ugh.

09/28/2025

Kiki Yablon does a great job facilitating the readings and discussion of BF Skinner’s About Behaviorism in this book club. Most trainers and even behavior analysts haven’t read a lot of Skinner’s work and would benefit from how it challenges us to think about and analyze what animals and humans do and why they do it. It’s all behavior, and there is so much to understand in how behavior works in any and all species. I could repeat this course a number of times and still get a lot out of it.

Next session of the Behavior Works Book Club starts in November!

This is a guided reading group for animal professionals/advocates who want to deepen their grounding in the science of behavior change by exploring its underlying philosophy, radical behaviorism. We’ll be reading “About Behaviorism,” which B. F. Skinner wrote for a lay audience.

Members will read approximately one book chapter per week, and meet once every two weeks for a discussion.

Facilitator Kiki Yablon, MA, will provide study questions to consider while reading and to inform disucssion. There is no eligibility requirement for membership, but graduates of Living and Learning with Animals will receive a $25 discount.

Price: $200 ($175 for LLA grads) for 12 weeks/6 two-hour meetings

This session of Book Club will officially begin November 20, 2025, with the first meeting on December 4.

Meetings are from 10 AM to noon Central Time (Chicago, USA) on the following Thursdays:

December 4, 2025
December 18, 2025
[No meeting on January 1]
January 8, 2026
January 22, 2026
February 5, 2026
February 19, 2026

Registration link in comments--or you can just email me at the address in the graphic.

09/20/2025

Mary Hunter - StaleCheerios presenting on reinforcement systems at our Animal Trainers’ Retreat after a panel discussion around applied behavior analysis as a holistic framework for training and welfare.

Photo by Debbie Jacobs.

09/10/2025

Our friend Ryan Talbot in cooperative care video from Wolf Park.

09/03/2025

I recently read of a horse someone’s been working with for five years. The horse has needed to move on to another trainer. I’ve also read of someone who was surprised when the horse they were working with had fear-based reactions at a training competition. The trainer had not witnessed those behaviors previously. When we know better about how behavior and training work, we can do better. It’s not just about the species you are working with. There are overarching principles we know from behavior science.

Behavior is in the environment. When you understand that on a deep level and see it everywhere and can talk about it clearly (repeating and extending your own understanding of this repeatedly demonstrated truth about behavior and how it works), being surprised at how behavior changes in new environments or taking five years with a challenging individual to not get very far becomes way less likely. Is there any 100 percent? No. Do we do things differently with different individuals? Yes. Within the framework of our understanding of how behavior works supplied by applied behavior analysis. Are we always learning? Certainly.

Link to related post in the comments.

08/30/2025

It's less than a month until our Animal Trainers' Retreat: Training With Love + Science in Brattleboro, Vermont. Not only do we have amazing talks lined up from distinguished speakers who work with dogs and also people and horses, we have experiential opportunities to practice the human behaviors involved in shaping learner behavior. We also have an option for listening to and receiving recordings of the presentations only. These are the topics that will be delved into:

* Applied behavior analysis as providing an overarching, holistic framework for teaching and training.
* Reinforcement systems and how they work. Reinforcement isn't an event. It is a series of events that, when understood and strengthened, improve communication with learners.
* Loose leash walking: These days we want to allow our dogs more freedom to explore while on leash walks. This means we need to strengthen a variety of behaviors to allow exploration and keep the dog with us when needed. It's not the 'walk next to me at all times' behavior that it used to be.
* A science-based approach to talking about the concept of anxiety. The word 'anxiety' or 'anxious' is often used to describe a learner. But, what, really, does it mean behaviorally? How can getting a better handle on the behaviors involved in 'anxiety' can improve assessments and learning needed skills.
* An exploration of the efficacy and efficiency of owner-implemented protocols. Who needs what additional supports to implement them well? And what would those supports be?
* There's a lot of talk of 'consent' (beginning to be discussed more as 'assent' now) in the training industry. What are the contingencies at play in 'assent'?
* Some behaviors animals engage in are labeled as 'instinct' and thought not trainable using positive reinforcement. We will look at sheepherding as an example of an 'instinctive' behavior and how it responds to social reinforcers and apply this understanding to other, more common situations in which instinct is assumed to be involved.

For more information on presenters and their talks, see the link in the comments.

This program has been put together from talks given at a variety of other, more expensive and less accessible events. This is part of our commitment to making high quality information available to a wide range of trainers, animal care professionals, and dedicated owners.

08/29/2025

Chewy boxes: the savior of dogs and puppy raisers everywhere.

This was a blast. The boxes and their contents occupied the puppies for about an hour with a novel experience: fishing out treats from the paper packaging and boxes. Then they started to tear the boxes and packaging up. Is it a mess now? Yes. Was it worth it? Also, yes.

08/18/2025

In defense of feeder toys.

I know, I know. It’s fashionable now to poo-poo feeder toys. They aren’t really enrichment or all of what enrichment is. Fair enough on the latter point: they aren’t the one thing that is enrichment. The point about enrichment that there isn’t one thing. There are many things that prompt behavioral variety in keeping with a species’ behavioral needs.

Here’s one. As many know by now, I am raising a litter of puppies. This is my first and probably my only endeavor at puppy raising. I had a nice dog. I bred her with a nice dog. We have EIGHT fractious and active 7-week-old puppies right now.

Feeder toys help me to divert them from their fractiousness with each other when it gets too intense. They give me a way to get them all in from outside: yell “puppies, puppies, puppies” and provide feeder toys. They give the pups things to interact with that are sometimes unpredictable, take some figuring out, and offer different textures and smells to explore. They add chew items to their collection of such. Etc.

So, they help me, one part of the two-individual equation that is dog stewardship. And they provide opportunities for lots of natural puppy behaviors: foraging, chewing, licking, learning how objects behave and some of their physical properties, using one’s body in relation to the toys, acquiring reinforcement both for behaviors and just because.

Don’t ditch the feeder toys because it’s a fad to do so. Use them with behavioral purpose. Remember that you, as the dog’s person, count, too. And make sure you are meeting and even exceeding your dogs’ behavioral needs in all their variety.

Picture below of the feeder toys and a paper roll that will be distributed after the heathens wake up from their post-breakfast nap and go out to potty.