Equiosity

Sarah Owings joins us for a conversation about cues, but first we begin with a discussion about progressive education and puzzle solving. Before she became a professional dog trainer Sarah taught kindergarten in a progressive school that valued "brave learners". We talk about what that means for both children and our animal learners.

After four weeks listening to our panel discussion on duration, you may think it’s time to move on to another topic. But you would be wrong! The panel discussion prompted a revisiting of one of the strategies we talked about - the 300 Peck Pigeon lesson. We could easily have called this episode “Teaching Better”. Twenty years on from the original development of this lesson, what have we learned? W...

Equiosity Podcast - Episode 55: A Celebration! Panel on Duration: Part 4 This is Part Four of our panel discussion on duration. We invited our guests from our first year of podcasts to join us. So we have Hannah Brannigan, Nancy Kelly, Michaela Hempen, Cindy Martin, Mary Concannon, and Jane Jackson. With such a great group of panelists we had a lot to talk about!

Our celebration of a year of podcasting continues on with our panel discussion on duration. We invited Hannah Brannigan, Nancy Kelly, Michaela Hempen, Cindy Martin, Mary Concannon and Jane Jackson to join us. This week Nancy talks about the CIA cats, and by CIA she is not referring to the Culinary Institute of America. As we talk about strategies for building duration, we focus on the importance o...

This is episode 53 which means we’re starting our second year of podcasting! We’re continuing to celebrate this milestone with a panel discussion. As you’ll recall from last week, we invited all the guests from our 2018 podcasts to gather with us around a virtual kitchen table, or if you prefer the image of us all sitting together near a blazing fire, that works too. We invited Hannah Brannigan, N...

We’re celebrating! Episode 52 marks the end of one very full year of podcasting. We’re celebrating this milestone with a special event. We’ve invited all of the guests who joined us in this first year of podcasting to come back and join us for a special panel discussion on duration. So we’re joined in this podcast by Hannah Brannigan, Nancy Kelly, Michaela Hempen, Cindy Martin, Mary Concannon, and...

Last week, as you’ll recall, we had a special guest - a surprise visit from Dr. Jesus Rosales Ruiz. Dominique and I were discussing some reading she’s been doing in Paul Chance’s book, Learning and Behavior. We were stumbling over the differences between schedules of reinforcement, rates of reinforcement, and variable reinforcement. Each one is describing different aspect of reinforcement, but it’...

Schedules of reinforcement, rates of reinforcement, variable reinforcement - these terms can become very confusing. They remind me of all the power cords that wrap around the top of my desk. As much as I try to keep them tidy and separate, they seem to twist themselves together into a confusing knot. We were certainly getting twisted into a confusing knot as we began a discussion of these terms. S...

What have you been reading recently? Dominique has just started Paul Chance’s “Learning and Behavior”. She jumped straight to a chapter on reinforcement schedules. It sparked an interesting conversation centered around the question of how to build duration into the behaviors you’re teaching without creating frustration. In this week’s episode I describe a teaching strategy years that I developed y...

Episode 48 Jane Jackson: Part 4: Something New! This week concludes our conversation with Jane Jackson - and what an ending it is! Jane shares with us another great procedure she used with her horses in which she introduced something new into their environment every day.

In this week’s episode Jane Jackson describes a procedure she used to help her very sensitive, very vigilant horse become comfortable walking with her out away from the barn. Jane followed a five day pattern. Day One was exploration day. Day two was foundation lessons day. On day three she built short chains using the foundation behaviors. On day four she introduced a relatively new behavior. And...

Our conversation with Jane Jackson continues as she introduces us to her horse, Percy. Percy is a sensitive, athletic, smart thoroughbred cross who sits on the fringes of any bell shaped curve you might want to fit him into. He's presented Jane with many training puzzles. In this week's podcast she shares how she started him under saddle - and the monkey wrench he threw into that process, along wi...

This week’s podcasting launches a long conversation with Jane Jackson, one of my Click That Teaches coaches. In Part 1 we talk about ponies, eventing and what drew Jane to clicker training. We’re heading towards a tremendous teaching strategy Jane has developed for helping a super vigilant, very reactive horse to be able to cope with new environments and distracting conditions. We’re beginning by...

What goes into a great relationship? We explore one of the key ingredients. The conversation is led by Patience, one of my young goats who is learning how to “get dressed”, how to put on her collar and harness.

The click ends a unit of behavior. When you click, your horse breaks off what he was just doing to get his treat. From the outside looking in this can seem like a huge nuisance. How are you ever going to get anything done with all this stopping? But when you start clicker training, all that stopping begins to make sense. You discover that it’s the keys to the kingdom for creating outstanding perfo...

Outstanders is the first a of two part conversation that we recorded on Dec. 31, 2018. A look back over our year of podcast began as we began the very first Equiosity podcast with a goat story. Three of last spring’s babies, Patience, Felicity and Verity, are growing up at The Clicker Center. Patience is excelling noticeably beyond the performance of the other two. Why? What would your guess be? T...

We’ve finished out this conversation with Mary Concannon with a longer than usual podcast. We cover two main topics. We start out with a request to Mary Concannon to wear her “other hat”. Mary is a microbiologist. I ask her how she helps her students learn how to read and evaluate scientific literature. For many years Mary had the care of her own horses plus her daughter’s competition horses. I as...

What do you do with a grumpy horse? You scritch him! Find out what that means in this week's Equiosity podcast in which we continue our conversation with Mary Concannon.

The question we ended with in last week’s podcast was “how did you shape that?” This week we find out. The answer takes us to a sharing of stories about our creative horses. Clicker training means you can take a supporting role. You don’t have to direct and control everything. You can let your horse “lead the dance”. When you do, you often find that the behaviors that pop out from their good ideas...

This episode begins a conversation with Click That Teaches coach, Mary Concannon. Mary is from Ireland, but she is currently based in the UK. In Part 1 of our conversation Mary introduces her thoroughbred, Newby. She tells the story of how Newby came into her life and the hour long bucking fit he surprised her with the first time he was saddled. Newby is a hard luck horse. He's one of those horses...

Part 3 of our conversation with Cindy Martin shifts to a focus on emotional behavior. Our conversation centers around a thoroughbred mare participating in the fall 2018 clinic at Cindy’s place. Targeting quickly shifted her out of a state of extreme anxiety. This raises the question: what are we reinforcing when we click? Why don’t we get more anxiety instead of less?

One of the many reasons I so appreciate the contributions Cindy Martin makes to our understanding of clicker training is the very clear way in which she explains things. She transforms what are often very complex and seemingly incomprehensible concepts into very understandable terms. In this second part of our conversation with her, she tackles a concept that has gained a lot of traction in the tr...

This week we begin a three part conversation with Cindy Martin, one of my “Click That Teaches” coaches. Cindy talks about her background with both horses and dogs. She introduces us to her thoroughbred, Porter. Porter was “that” horse who helped her go beyond the basics of clicker training. Often it is one particularly challenging horse that brings people to clicker training. In Cindy’s case, her...

Rules are useful things. They keep us out of trouble - especially when it comes to training. But always it is a study of one - so when do you follow "the rules" and when do you deviate from them? That's what we explore in this week's podcast?

Why do relationships run hot and cold? The question isn’t about the quality of the relationships. It’s about the language we use to describe them. What has temperature got to do with it? And even more what has this got to do with horse training? It turns out quite a lot. The primary metaphors that are formed early on in life become part of our core belief systems. That takes us directly to horse t...