When we talk about giving animals "control" in training, we stumble into vague territory. Control is a hypothetical construct. It's abstract, unmeasurable, and it shifts the conversation away from behavior and back into feelings and intention. Let's ground ourselves in what we can observe and influence:...
If you've ever spotted a small, colorful raptor perched on a wire along a country road, bobbing its head as it scans the grasslands below, you've likely seen an American kestrel. These beautiful falcons, no bigger than a dove, are specialized hunters that help keep...
Every trainer has faced it: a behavior that should work on paper but falls apart in practice. You've done everything right: high rate of reinforcement, clear criteria, incompatible behaviors. And yet the problem persists or even worsens. This is where the constructional approach reveals something...
Is fear an action or an emotion? It's a question worth sitting with. Because how we answer it shapes everything about how we respond when a bird displays fear or aggression in training. Emotions as Contingency Descriptors Here's a reframe that might change how you think about this:...
Palm cockatoos are in trouble. In Australia, fewer than 2,000 remain in the wild. They're listed as Endangered in Queensland and have the lowest breeding success rate of any parrot, females lay one egg every two years, and on average, a breeding pair raises just one...
Choice and control are buzzy words in animal training right now. But what do we really mean when we talk about choice? And are we actually offering it? Are we really performing a functional assessment to see what true choice means? And doesn’t B.F. Skinner’s...
November in Southern California doesn't look like fall in most places. Our trees stay green, our temperatures stay mild, and you won't find snow on the ground (unless you drive up to the mountains). But just because we don't have dramatic seasonal changes doesn't mean...
If you've ever found yourself stuck in a training session thinking "why isn't this working?", the answer might not be your mechanics, your timing, or even your reinforcer. It might be that you never clearly defined what you're actually training for. Let's talk about why clarity...
The American kestrel perched on the nest box scans the grassland below. Somewhere in her tiny body, no bigger than a mourning dove, is a GPS tracker recording her movements—data that will help us understand why California's smallest falcon is disappearing. In a Title I elementary...
The Adoption Paradox A five-year-old umbrella cockatoo lived most of his life in a closet. He scored "limited" on nearly every behavioral capability. Meanwhile, an adolescent macaw from an accomplished ethical breeder—fully fledged, never clipped, raised with every advantage—ended up back in the system after just...