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...
If you've been working with birds of prey for any length of time, you've encountered it: the bird that won't step up, the eagle that lunges, the hawk that retreats to the back of the mew. And if you're like most trainers, you've probably approached...
When training feels stuck, it’s easy to zero in on the behavior itself — reinforcing more, adjusting criteria, or shifting mechanics. But often the real breakthrough doesn’t come from tweaking the behavior at all. It comes from stepping back and looking at the bigger picture:...
We're starting a new segment for our weekly newsletters called "Trainers Corner". We will be highlighting key lessons from my consultations. Learning through others' experiences is a powerful way to grow as a trainer or bird owner because it allows us to see different approaches to...
There is a very well known debate in psychology as to whether nature or nurture informs our behavior. It turns out, this debate is common among animal behavior scientists as well. It turns out, both nature and nurture, or ethology and learning history, inform the...