Equiosity

This is Part 3 of our conversation with Sarah Memmi. Sarah is a behavioral scientist. She teaches at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, where she’s an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the College of Business. Sarah’s main area of research is how people pursue goals, handle conflict between multiple goals, and manage their personal resources (time, money). So in this episode we take a dee...

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Sarah Memmi. Sarah is a behavioral scientist. She’s an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the College of Business at the University of Louisville. Sarah’s main area of research is how people pursue goals, handle conflict between multiple goals, and manage their personal resources (time, money). She also teaches in the University of Louisville’s unique equin...

Sarah Memmi is a behavioral scientist. She teaches at the University of Louisville in Kentucky where she’s an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the College of Business. Her main area of research is how people pursue goals; how they handle conflicts between multiple goals, and how they manage their personal resources (time, money). She also teaches in the University of Louisville’s unique equine...

In part 4 of our conversation with Susan Friedman we begin by looking at transactional training. “I have what you want. If you do what I want, I’ll give you what I have.” How has this very blunt way of looking at training changed as we bring in more of an emphasis on good antecedent arrangements? This takes us to an important discussion of core values and control.

We are celebrating the milestone of our 150th episode with our good friend Dr. Susan Friedman. Our conversation lasted the better part of an afternoon so our celebration is continuing on over several weeks. Last week Susan shared with us three simple questions that help her clients solve their animal training puzzles. This week we’re going to have a change of topic. We’re going to take a very deep...

We are celebrating the milestone of our 150th episode with our good friend Dr. Susan Friedman. Our conversation lasted the better part of an afternoon so our celebration will be spilling out over several weeks. We ended last week with the question: if you got a new animal, what would you do differently? Susan starts us off by talking about her parrots. She looks back at the way in which she was or...

We made it! Or really I should say we made them. This is our 150th episode. That’s a milestone that is worth celebrating so we invited Dr. Susan Friedman to join us. She suggested that she turn the tables on us meaning she would interview us. Susan began with a look back. What were our initial goals for the podcast? That question launched many others and we talked away the afternoon. Three hours i...

In Part 3 of our conversation about riding we examine the connection between the release of the rein and the “yes answer” of the click. They work together to create incredible clarity for the horse. Clarity leads to confidence for both horse and rider. It also helps to create beautiful balance. We also talk about the effect that desperation clicks, missed clicks, and unintended clicks have on your...

This is Part 2 of a three part conversation about riding with the clicker. We began in Part 1 with a description of single-rein riding. In Part 2 we explore the connection between the “yes answer” information the rein provides and the “yes” of the click. Understand that and he doors to performance excellence are wide open. Putting these two systems together lets you communicate great nuance. The h...

This is the start of a three part conversation about riding with the clicker. In Part 1 we jump straight in with a description of single-rein riding. We’ll take you back to what it was like to be a youngster again going out to get your pony. It was a lot more fun to hop onto your pony bareback and ride to the barn rather than walk all the way back. You had only a halter and lead rope for control,...

We begin this week’s episode by talking about an up-coming Getting Started clinic that is scheduled for July 2021. This takes us down many fun rabbit holes - expectation, conditioned reinforcers, learning from stories, trailering nightmares, the leggo blocks of training, giraffe preferences, and finally to riding.

In Part One of our conversation with Anita Schnee we promised you an Awareness Through Movement session. That’s how we begin this week’s episode. There’s no better way to learn about the Feldenkrais Method® than to experience it directly. So this week instead of listening to the podcast while you are driving, instead find a quiet time when you can lie down on your back. Relax, listen and enjoy an...

Horses know how to reinforce us. When we get ourselves organized and well balanced, they reward us with glorious rides. This is one of the many reasons the Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons are so useful for anyone who handles horses. Our guest this week, Anita Schnee, is a Feldenkrais practitioner who has been attending my clinics since 2016. She's the perfect ambassador to explain t...

Should I make you wait until you listen to the podcast to find out what the great news is? I think not. I’m delighted to finally be able to announce that the first lesson in my DVD series is now available on line. “Lesson One: Getting Started with the Clicker” is available as an on-line mini course. I’ve been working on this project for several years. I’ve had it mostly done for a while, but there...

I know many of us head to our horses to get away from the news, but sometimes the news intrudes and our horses can help us make sense of what we see in the headlines. Dominique turned both to her horses and to Murray Sidman’s book, “Coercion and It’s Fallout” to bring some clarity to events that were occurring in Montreal. The metaphors work in both directions. Our horses can help us understand th...

We’ve talked a lot about constructional training in these podcasts. This week we’re exploring two related topics. The first asks how do you look at the world? Are you a glass half empty sort of person where you get mired down in the problem? Or is the glass half full where you have a clear vision of what you want and you go about learning how to get there? You could be using a positive reinforceme...

When Dominique and I get together to record a podcast we usually don’t have a subject mapped out in advance. These are truly conversations, not planned lectures. When we connected via zoom, Dominique said she had something she wanted to talk about, but she wasn’t going to tell me in advance what it was. That always makes for the best conversation. Dominique has been wanting to talk about emotions...

This is part 3 of our conversation with Kyle Hetzel. Kyle is a zoo keeper. He used to work with big cats, sea lions, giraffes, wolves and other wild animals. But he is currently working in the children’s zoo section of a large west coast zoo. Kyle wants to bring what he has been learning from the wild animals to the handling of domestic animals. In Part 1 Kyle introduced us to some of the exotic a...

I was tempted to call this episode: “Just Because People Tell You Something Can’t Be Done, Doesn’t Mean It Can’t Be Done”. But I thought that might be a little long so I called it instead: “Cow CAN Stand on Three Feet.” This is part 2 of our conversation with Kyle Hetzel. Kyle is a zoo keeper. In this episode he shares his experiences working with barnyard animals. Kyle started out working with bi...

There are many paths that bring us to horses. Kyle Hetzel has taken one of the more unusual ones. Kyle is a zoo keeper. He has worked with big cats, wolves, marine mammals, giraffes, but these days he is working with domestic animals in the children’s zoo section of a large west coast zoo. Working with wild animals has taught Kyle the importance of team work and cooperative care. He wants to bring...

There were so many titles I could have given this episode. Another good one would have been: “We Haven’t Known What We’ve Known”. That’s a quote from Dr. Jesús Rosales Ruiz. It refers to this huge jig saw puzzle we’ve all been working on that’s called animal training. But in the end I decided to call the episode “Happy Alligator Toes” because how often do you get to use a title like that? You’ll h...

Science Camp was held over the weekend of Feb 19-21. Dominique and I didn’t want it to end so we invited one of the participants, Lisa Clifton Bumpass to come share an afternoon’s conversation with us. Lisa is a dog trainer turned zoo consultant. She’s been a regular attendee at the horse clinics I give in Half Moon Bay CA. What Lisa learns from the horses she takes back to the teams she works wit...

Science Camp was held over the weekend of Feb 19-21. What a wonderful, head spinner of an event that was! Dominique and I didn’t want it to end so we invited one of the participants, Lisa Clifton Bumpass to come share an afternoon’s conversation with us. Lisa is a dog trainer turned zoo consultant. She’s been a regular attendee at the horse clinics I give in Half Moon Bay CA. What Lisa learns from...

Just when you think you’ve said all you need to say about food delivery, you discover you’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The reinforcement patterns play an important role in teaching and maintaining behavior. So when Dominique said she wanted to talk about food deliver, we were off and running into an interesting afternoon’s conversation.

Last year I switched all my clinics over to a virtual format. This year I will be doing the same. Normally, we would never take an entire podcast to talk about these events, but these are not normal times we are living in. The virtual format has opened up so many more opportunities to reach out to people, I wanted to make sure you understand the format and the content of these clinics. In a sense...