Originally published in 2018; revised May 2023.
One of my online courses is called Getting Behaviour – The Foundations of Animal Training.
My students are really excited about it.
I’m very proud of it, and I had this idea to share part of the course for free, here on the blog. The course is about 13 hours long and contains 109 short videos, so I wanted to pick one of those videos and share with you. The best one.
That was difficult. Which video to choose?
Many animal trainers, veterinarians and pet owners highlight the importance of controlling animals. Controlling them, as in restricting the animals’ movement, their choices and their opportunities to control their environment through their behaviour.
Sometimes you have to, for safety reasons.
Obviously.
But often you don’t – and more often than you might think. Actually, the trend in modern animal training is to deliberately and strategically shift control from the handler to the animal, while still staying safe.
Revised December 2020 (see bottom of post!)
Training using a clicker is very popular, and is gaining ground amongst animal trainers, but here’s what may come as a surprise to you:
When scientists compare the effectiveness of using a clicker when training to training using only treats as rewards (or reinforcers, to be more precise) outside the laboratory, the results are inconclusive.
One study found the clicker led to faster learning, one that it led to slower learning, and four studies found no difference between the two treatments.
Revised February 2023 – original written in 2016 .
Recently there was a video post in my Facebook feed that caught my attention.
Typically, on Facebook, I’m a bit of a lurker. I’m not very active, and when I do watch videos I often don’t share, like or comment – even when perhaps I should.
This time, I watched, feeling my jaw gradually dropping in disbelief, and then I actually left a comment.
I wrote:
“I’m speechless”.
And that was it.
I know, kinda lame.
But I didn’t have time for an essay, and then I was flooded by the rest of the FB flow, so the film slipped to the back of my mind – where it’s been festering.
A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was speechless. But in the time that’s gone by, I’ve realized that I should do the opposite.
I should speak up.
Revised May 2024.
There are two important question to ask before teaching an animal a new skill.
In another blog post, I discussed the first question, one that is extremely basic but often overlooked: “what is the cost/benefit of the behaviour?” Is it useful, useless, abuse or an ethical dilemma?
Once a behaviour has been found to be useful, it’s time to consider how to best go about teaching it.
And this brings us to the second question.
Which is the best technique to teach the animal how to perform a new skill?
You know the old saying “All roads lead to Rome”..?
With regards to animal training, the same is true. There are many ways to teach animals what you want them to do.
Many ways to “get” behaviour, as it were.
Updated December 2023
When planning to teach an animal to carry out any new response, there are two questions to ask before even getting started.
Let’s look at the first of those two questions, as it will help decide whether a behaviour should be trained at all, and identify potential situations where we simply shouldn’t bother.
Oh, and I address the question of how to chose the best training method in this blog post.
Training new behaviour could in some cases cause suffering to the animal.