We have had some stress in our herd lately, starting with our newest addition, Persephone. She is an 8 year old Welsh B pony who has previously been a broodmare. The introductory process did not go well, she broke through the electric fencing separating her from the other ponies. It turns out that her response to any aggressive approach is to turn her back and kick repeatedly and with great energy. Our ponies don’t appear familiar with this extreme tactic, the result was that Chloe got a hoof to the face injuring her eye. The knock on effect is, although the eye cleared up with the help of our vet, by the end of the week Chloe ended up with peritonitis. After almost a week with the vet, she recovered enough to come home. The whole experience exposed an issue in my previous cooperative care training with her; I had not proofed her enough with taking oral medication and she soon showing quite an aversion to the process. Also, the veterinary staff have no training in cooperative care and are very comfortable using both negative reinforcement and physical restraint, as this is how most horses are trained and handled. After a week of oral medication with no reinforcers or choices she was well over it. Yes, Chloe is a tiny pony and it is easy to physically restrain her, but that is not an approach I wish to follow for several reasons.

Chloe had a twice daily 10 day course of oral antibiotics when she arrived home, as well daily oral medication for stomach ulcers which is ongoing. With her aversion to any syringe coming near her mouth this regime was clearly having a detrimental effect on her feelings towards me, she was not greeting me with the same enthusiasm I usually receive from her and was starting to actively avoid me if I was holding anything that looked like it might contain her meds. I don’t want to be aversive if I can prevent it.

It is also well documented that chronic stress weakens the immune system and can contribute to illnesses and colic, which I definitely don’t want to deal with again! It is not just the medication tasting funny, but it is the entire situation of being restrained and forced to have something she doesn’t want. In fact when Chloe first came to us she disliked oral medications so much that she would not touch a treat she liked if it came from a syringe.

With a little bit of effort on my part I can change her feelings towards taking her medication so it becomes a a pleasant experience rather than a distressing one.

I took a different approach from previous training, I filled one of her giant medicating syringes with apple sauce. Last time I was using hand fed treats as the reinforcer to shape touching the syringe with lips. She was not even willing to sniff the syringe at first so I squirted some apple into a feed bucket and left the syringe in there. Dropping some treats in to the bucket sweetened the deal enough to convince her to investigate. By the time we got to the end of the 60cc syringe of apple she was looking at the syringe with some interest when I held it up and licking the apple off my hand. By the end of the next session she was taking the apple sauce by taking the syringe into the corner of her mouth (where horses have a gap where their incisor end and the molars start).

For the next session, after a little warm up with the apple sauce, we switched to using an empty ulcer medication tube followed by the apple syringe. The ulcer medication smells extremely strongly of star anise, to me it smells quite attractive, but Chloe does not appear to share my view.

Next session I made star anise “tea” and the reinforcer for taking the “medicated” syringe in her mouth was still the apple sauce reinforcer. Criteria was slowly raised with occasional squirts of the tea, which did not provoke a reaction.

One more session with the “tea” and I felt we were able to do the real thing again, with lots of apple sauce. A couple weeks on and she’s looking pleased to see me when I turn up in the morning with her meds and a couple carrot slices!

In every pig group, when someone asks what to do about a “bossy” or “aggressive” pig, someone invariably pipes up with “show him/her who’s boss” and “Move the Pig”. The problem with this strategy is that it doesn’t make you the “boss”. Let me explain why.

Dominance is an ethological term to describe who has priority access to resources. In many animal species, dominance is fluid, based on the individual’s attraction to the particular resource at that moment. This is why you may see a conflict at a small water trough sometimes; more than one pig is thirsty and only one can use the water at a time so they may squabble for priority access, whereas at other times they don’t. When we keep animals so they can only access limited resources, there is more conflict than there would be if they were in a free-ranging situation. This is increased even more when the resources are extra high value, like grains and tasty treats. Another thing domestic pigs have to contend with, that their feral counterparts don’t, is who they live with. Many species of animals kept in captivity who live in human-contrived groups show a marked and unusual amount of aggression. Particularly notable are wolves, as the entire concept of an “alpha wolf” is based on a flawed study of a composite wolf pack. Feral or wild female pigs live in small family groups, the males are mostly solitary, though they will meet in over abundant feed conditions and when breeding.

“Move the Pig” is a technique where the pig is taught to move away from people. It uses negative reinforcement (adding something to the environment that the pig wishes to avoid) to get the pig to move away from you. It is suggested that you use your body to achieve this.

Pigs are very tactile creatures, they love to be touched and to touch each other, they frequently snuggle and hang out touching each other.

If the pig does not move away it might be because they don’t really mind you coming and crowding them, or maybe they have learned that standing their ground has been successful for getting space before when they have felt nervous or uncomfortable. You then need to escalate the situation to make your presence more aversive for the pig.

This is where the story turns into a pick-a-path depending on the pig’s learning history, the pig’s fears, the pig’s personality, the person’s learning history, the person’s fears, the person’s timing, their ability to read the pig, and their own personality! Hence why the author of the “method” says it doesn’t work for everyone.

Say the pig is very defensive and the person does not feel comfortable escalating the pressure on the pig, this teaches the pig to react in an aggressive-defensive way when it feels conflict. This is quite the opposite of what we want, we want our pig to be calm in our presence.

Pigs, as prey animals, will move into pressure when they feel cornered. When pigs have a conflict between conspecifics (members of their species) they generally push at each other and squeal, sometimes biting. This is not at all the kind of behaviour we want them to use towards us!

Instead of getting into conflicts and antagonising our pigs, we can teach them how to perform the behaviours we like by using positive reinforcement. Target training in which the pig is taught, in little steps, to orient their nose to touch an object, can be used to move animals around or to stay in one place. Standing on a mat or another “station” when asked. If the pig has a history of behaving aggressively, training should be done from behind a fence!

Look out for the second part of this blog, which will focus on how to teach these things to your piggies. 🙂

Those who know me know I am a very keen trainer of cute, but apparently useless tricks. I have a sheep who fetches, parrots who do agility and play connect 4, ponies that go over obstacle courses and copy my leg movements so we can march in time, the dog that walks on balance beams, but all these tricks do have some underlying purpose behind them.

Some tricks help lay the groundwork for some really useful tricks. For example, a parrot pushing through a cloth tunnel gets her accustomed to being wrapped in a piece of fabric/towel like the vet may use to restrain them. The pony stepping onto a wooden platform gets used to stepping on a surface similar to a horse float. Even the sheep picking up a toy in his mouth gets him accustomed to an action like taking a syringe in his mouth so you can administer oral medication without having to restrain him.

And the more training you do, the more you and your animals develop a rapport for training and the easier it gets to teach new tricks. This can mean if you urgently need to teach them a new behaviour, it can be taught quicker than if the animal is not used to learning new tricks.

Even when the tricks don’t lead to any other behaviours, using added reinforcement to teach tricks to the animals in your care helps build trust between you. This means that in the event you need to do something the animal does not like, like medical care, the animal is more likely to tolerate it and forgive you.

This rapport also means they are more likely to respond when you need to ask them to do something else, like come when called instead of rolling in the smelly, dead cane toad they have found!

Besides that, teaching cute tricks can be tons of fun!

What’s your favourite cute trick that has a hidden benefit?

As a young person I loved animals, especially horses, and thought it would be my career. As I delved into the industry as a teenager, I was not happy with a lot of aspects. The trainers I was learning from were very much of the dominance type mindset, where the horse must comply by the use of escalating pressure. It was very well justified, this is how to be safe around horses or they will run right over you. It was true too, horses that are being trained well outside their comfort zone can be panicky and unpredictable. Yes, you have to force them to do things that they have no desire and see no benefit in doing.

I ended up taking up a career in a completely unrelated profession. Almost 20 years later I got a pony again and started applying what I learned from training my pet parrots to ponies.

Parrots are a small prey animal, although they are kept as pets, most species are not considered domesticated. They can be easily frightened, although they do have a good defence mechanism in the form of a beak, flight is usually the favoured method of avoidance. So, they are jumpy, can fly out of reach and do some not inconsiderable damage to your fingers when cornered. When you keep small, flighted parrots that have not been hand raised in a house with cathedral ceilings and very perchable light fittings it is very wise to consider whether dominance is really relevant, what dominance really is, or perhaps that there is simply no compelling reason for them to come down while you are attempting to domineer.

Many zoos and wildlife parks around the world have thrown away dominance and coercion based training methods in favour of added reinforcement training. This is how everything from free flying bird shows to training exotic animals to stand unrestrained for medical procedures like injections, x-rays and hoof work. Added reinforcement is used as it is the most effective and safest way to train these behaviours.

It turns out that animals tend to be extremely compliant about doing a lot of things when there is something in it for them to gain and it is taught in a manner which avoids eliciting fear. Not only can they be compliant, but can even willingly participate.

How does it work? Also known as positive reinforcement and R+, added reinforcement is adding something that the animal wants to the environment after a behaviour occurs to increase the likelihood of the behaviour reoccurring. Complex behaviours are built through a process called “shaping using successive approximations” which is kind of like a game of “hot and cold”, with only warm and hot being used. The surroundings can be modified to help shape the behaviour. For example; to get my parrot to fly down from the 3m high light fitting, I started by getting her to jump to my hand from a low perch to get to a treat. After a couple tries the treat was no longer held out, just the hand I wanted her to jump to. She still received a treat when she landed, but it was not part of the signal to come, the outstretched hand became that. Next I stood further away and held out the hand. My bird soon learned to fly down to my hand from anywhere, perches, curtain rails, light fittings, where ever she was.

The same principals can be applied to any species, from reptiles to rodents, alligators that station for medical checks to giant rats that find landmines. Certain species differences need to be taken into account. For example, with horses and other large quadrupeds, the first lessons involve learning to get treats for standing nicely and giving people personal space, other individuals it can be just learning to trust people.

What ever your pet, they all have the desire to seek out things they like and the ability to problem solve to get things they want and build an amazing relationship with you in the process!

Our small herd recently welcomed a new member, Sparkles, a rising 3 year old Arabian filly. She is a truly lovely pony, friendly and very considerate of her hairy and wooly herdmates. I don’t know much detail of her homes before us, this is her third and she seems to have had fairly conventional training. She was couple hours drive away from us and I couldn’t attend the pre-purchase vet check. The vet called me after and thought it was worth noting, repeatedly, that she had a hard time trying to get a look at Sparkles mouth.

As Sparkles settled in here it was time for a wormer, as this video below shows, she was quite a bit less than impressed by that idea. She also showed aversion to me trying to handle her mouth without the worming tube and certainly did not appreciate attempts to hold her still with the halter.

It is handy have a horse that complies with what you want to do, but I prefer willing participation and engagement.

So, I took the halter off and we started training properly, working on changing her emotional response to the mouth handling by pairing it with treats, allowing her to choose whether she wants to participate and to set the pace. Soon she was actively touching the worming tube with her lips and putting it in her mouth. I then trained her to rest her chin on my open palm. We then put the 2 together, added liquid filled syringes and ta da! Sparkles pulled a few funny faces at the taste of the wormer but was otherwise fine. And the kicker, when I offered the tube again after the wormer she took it straight away.

As well as having a keen interest in behaviour and what drives it, I am also the mother of a small and mostly angelic, even if I do say so myself, 3-year old boy. He has inherited his parents love of animals, and seldom will walk past a dog on a leash without asking the owner if their dog would like a pat.

My son doesn’t seem phased what answer he gets, if they say no he wanders off looking for the next interesting thing. If the answer is yes, he will pat them for a few seconds, say something nice about them and wander off looking for the next interesting thing. It does my child absolutely no harm to be given a polite “No, sorry.” or such, better still if it comes with an explanation of why; “My dog doesn’t like strangers.”, “My dog gets scared easily.”, “We are training at the moment.”, “We don’t have time.”. Whatever the reason or no reason at all, it is fine to say “No.”. Not only can there be benefits for the dog involved, but it is a great learning experience for my son as well!

Firstly, my son is learning about consent, the answer is not going to be yes throughout his entire life. Saying “no” builds his resilience and sense of personal boundaries.

He can also learn about dog body language and how to spot the signs that a dog is anxious or uncomfortable like licking its nose, blinking, yawning or looking away. Even if the dog is friendly and the owner has said “yes”, if the dog does not show interest in being patted, he can learn about respecting others autonomy and walk away. In the case of dogs that have a tendency to be overly enthusiastic, an owner saying “No, he isn’t great with small people” can help him learn that dogs that are bounding towards him may not be the most suitable to be around, without having to get pushed over and licked.

Advocating for your pets can benefit them too. A dog that is nervous around children will appreciate being left alone, it might even make the dog feel slightly better about children in the future.

If a dog is just not interested or is distracted, having a small human following and reaching for it could lead to startling or feeling uncomfortable around kids. A normally friendly dog may even be feeling off colour which can change it’s behaviour. It is best to avoid giving your dog a potentially bad experience around a kid and save the dogs tolerance for those situations which can’t be prevented.

A dog being restrained by the owner to be patted, especially after the owner has said that it doesn’t like to be patted is not a good learning experience for a child or the dog. The child is being taught to disregard the dog’s body language and the adult is modelling a behaviour that would be extremely risky for the child to imitate. The adult is also giving the child contradictory information. For the dog can be even more unpleasant, as it is unable to remove itself even if it is uncomfortable being there, despite signalling that it does not want to participate. Let’s take a moment to expand on that. I am scared of snakes, if someone is holding a small and very tame python near me my heart beats faster, my palms sweat, stomach feels funny etc. Basically my body reacts without my conscious mind coming into the picture. Now if they ask if I want to touch it, I may pluck up courage and touch it’s tail or something, but if they trap me in a corner and shove it at, me my heart rate goes through the roof! I know a snake sounds scarier than a child to most of us, but everyone has different fears, some people have the same reaction to small birds!

Another problem that can occur from ignoring an animals communication and forcing them to comply is that the animal learns that the subtle communication is not effective. They are more likely to escalate to the signals that are higher up the pathway of self defence, like growling or snapping, especially if these have previously been taken notice of.

Not only do I have a child under 4 years old, but in a moment of complete thoughtlessness we adopted a border collie puppy- a rash decision I made, and a combination which I would not wish upon my worst enemy. You can know all the relaxation protocols in the world but trying to teach them to a high energy puppy while your child is running around the house making ape noises is nearly impossible.

Our new dog is exceedingly enthusiastic about everything and particularly loves jumping on people who greet her, so I am now experiencing the other side of the equation. After a few weeks of almost everyone we walk past wanting to pat her, and going through the process of getting her to calm down, sit or lay down, then having to explain to people they need to step back mid pat if she launches herself in a frenzy and that my dog will soon weigh more than my kid etc, etc I have run out of energy for it. I could also see that my dogs greeting behaviour was not improving with people outside of our family circle. For the last few weeks, I have said no to most people who ask to pat her as we are in training and one of the most important aspects being not to jump on people. The majority of people notice that I am busy trying to keep the dogs attention on me as we pass them and don’t interrupt. I have only experienced a couple of unpleasant reactions and only from adults. I think most children are sensible enough to see that several kilos of frenzied puppy leaping at them isn’t going to be that much fun to pat anyway!

At the end of the day, it is your right and responsibility to take care of your dog, physically and emotionally. It is your right to say no to anything that makes you or your dog uncomfortable. It is your superpower, use it freely and wisely.