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.
- What is the cost/benefit of teaching the behaviour? Should it even be taught in the first place?
- If so, how should it be taught?
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.