Equiosity

Taylor Culbert is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is writing her dissertation on 17th century animal performances in Europe, looking specifically at how cultural narratives about animals shaped the ways that humans and animals responded to one another. When she isn't writing, Taylor works part-time training horses at...

This is the second half of our conversation with Christa Culbert. Christa is an artist, a horse trainer, and an educator. She is pursing a career in the horse world, and dreams of starting a classical dressage clicker training horse rescue someday. Christa has been participating in my on-line clinics so I’ve been watching her progress with her two older horses. In this episode she introduces us to...

In the recent Dressage Camp one of the standouts for me during the introductions were how many of the participants were working with older horses. It was so good to hear how many people were choosing to rescue older and often unsound horses. They wanted to know how they could help their horses, so clearly this was a great topic for the podcast. I invited one of the Dressage Camp participants, Chri...

This is part two of an afternoon’s conversation in which Dominique used posts from my on-line clinics to select topics for us to discuss. Last week our conversation about the connection that emerges with our horses led to a discussion about colic, and then to lighten things up, we talked about treats vests and pouches. Our next topic is video. A post from a course participation gave Dominique some...

I was worried about putting colic in the title of this episode. I thought that might scare some people off. It can be such a sad subject. So many of us have either lost horses to colic or known friends who have. Colic can come on so fast and it is so very painful. It isn’t like a long illness where there is time to prepare and time to say good-bye. When a horse survives a bout of colic, there is a...

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Dr Sarah Memmi on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Sarah brings a great perspective to this question. She’s an assistant professor of Marketing at the College of Business at the University of Louisville. She’s also a lifelong horse person which makes her a perfect fit for also teaching in the University of Lousiville’s equine business program. Last week S...

We’re reached another podcasting milestone. This is episode number 200! Pretty staggering, especially when I think about the number both of listening hours and editing hours that represents. In many of those episodes we’ve talked about constructional training. This concept draws on the work of Dr. Israel Goldiamond. Goldiamond poses four questions which form a very useful framework for structuring...

We are continuing our conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is a Professor of Psychology at West Virginia University. She is the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at the University - and she is also a horse person. We’re celebrating the publication of an article we wrote together for the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior on...

Last week we began a conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is a Professor of Psychology at West Virginia University. She is the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at the University - and she is also a horse person. We’re celebrating the publication of an article we wrote together for the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior on L...

We are beginning a conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is currently a Professor of Psychology, the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at West Virginia University. We’re celebrating the publication of an article we wrote together for the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior on Loopy Training. In this podcast we talk about what...

This is part 3 of our conversation with Lucy Butler. Lucy is a special ed teacher who at the start of the 2021-2022 school year was given the assignment of working with all the students in her high school who had failed ninth grade the previous year. Last week Lucy talked about empowering her students by giving them more choice. She taught them how to write SMART goals for themselves. It was inevi...

Lucy Butler is a special ed teacher who at the start of the 2021-2022 school year was given the assignment of working with all the students in her high school who had failed ninth grade the previous year. Lucy had been attending my on-line clinics through the summer and over Labor Day weekend she attended our Science Camp, so she was very excited to apply the concepts of constructional training to...

It’s mid-July. School is out which means it is a great time to have a return visit with Lucy Butler. Lucy is a special ed teacher who at the start of the 2021-2022 school year was given the assignment of working with all the students in her high school who had failed ninth grade the previous year. Lucy is also a horse owner. She attended my on-line clinics through the summer of 2021. Over Labor Da...

Last week we began a conversation that was centered around the on-line clinics. Even though the clinics are on-line and you go through them at your own pace, they are designed to be interactive. There are many places in them where people can respond to questions that I use to get a conversation going. And we’ve been having some wonderful exchanges that have created a rich resource for everyone in...

We are beginning a conversation that is centered around the on-line clinics. Even though the clinics are on-line and you go through them at your own pace, they are designed to be interactive. There are many places in them where people can respond to questions that I use to get a conversation going. And we’ve been having some wonderful exchanges that have created a rich resource for everyone in the...

Episode 191 Michaela Hempen Part 2: Animal Welfare: Behavior Analysts Wanted! In part 1 Dr Michaela Hempen introduced us to her day job. Michaela works for the European Food Safety Agency. This is a scientific agency provides risk assessments to give the European Commission or European member states the scientific basis for legislation. The EFSA looks at anything related to food safety, that inclu...

We are joined again by Dr. Michaela Hempen, but this time, Michaela is not talking about Blondie and the cribbing project, but about her day job. Michaela works for the European Food Safety Agency. The EFSA looks at anything related to food safety, including animal health. It provides risk assessments which give the European Commission or European member states the scientific basis for legislation...

We begin Part 3 with a discussion my favorite of Mary Hunter’s recent StaleCheerios posts: “Are you clicking for your own behavior or your animal’s behavior?” To find out what that means listen to the podcast.

This is part 2 of our conversation with Mary Hunter. We are continuing to use Mary’s recent StaleCheerios blog posts as the launching point for a series of interesting discussions. Mary’s April post: “Assess your Reinforcement Delivery” gave us a lot to talk about. I especially liked this topic because it let us talk about how much we can influence our horse’s balance through the thoughtful use of...

We’re beginning a three part conversation with Mary Hunter. Mary has a masters degree in Behavior Analysis from the University of North Texas. She is the president of the Art and Science of Animal Training, the non-profit organization that puts on the Art and Science of Animal Training conference. Together with Dr. Jesus Rosales Ruiz she is the co-author of the PORTL manual. She is the presenter i...

What do you do when your horse or your dog gives you a “no” answer to a request but you really do need a “yes answer” response? That question begins our conversation. We also talk about piggy backing positive reinforcement training onto the skills and techniques a handler may know from other training methods.

Maple syrup buckets prompt the start of our conversation about environmental changes and the effect they can have on training. We talk about the way in which the a bad scare can begin to contract the conditions in which you feel safe working with your horse. We also describe how you can expand the conditions out again.

This is part 3 of a conversation that began with a question about picking your starting criteria. Once your training session is underway, how do you change criteria? What happens to the rhythm of your training during the transition? Is it a smooth flow, or is it more stop and go? Always the conversation prompts us to see new details in the training. Our conversation finishes with a discussion of c...

We begin this week’s conversation with degrees of freedom. What does that mean and how does that help us to choose our starting criteria? In the course of our conversation, Dominique and I discover that we have very different ways of thinking about the start of a training session.

How do you choose your starting criterion? That’s the question that launches this week’s podcast. It takes us to the image of a funnel. Do you start at the broad end of the funnel and narrow down or do you flip the funnel and begin at the narrow end?