Equiosity

Dr Susan Friedman is our guest for this conversation about her recent article: “Why Animals Need Trainers Who Adhere to the Least Intrusive Principle: Improving Animal Welfare and Honing Trainers’ Skills”

This is an update of her 2004 article: “What’s Wrong With This Picture? Effectiveness Is Not Enough”.

When Susan began consulting at zoos and other animal care facilities, effectiveness was often the first and only consideration. Does the procedure get the job done? Does it get the animal moved from one enclosure to another? The answer might be yes, but at what cost? If you use a water hose, what is the fallout? What opportunities for improved welfare have you given up?

Effectiveness is not enough. The hierarchy of strategies for humane intervention puts the individual’s welfare front and center.

We explore the role that ethics plays in our training choices. How do you balance ethical considerations with scientific inquiry?

Susan is revisiting this subject in her new article. We’re asking her what has changed? What are the updates or the elements that she wants to highlight as she revisits the hierarchy of procedural interventions.

Dr. Susan Friedman joins us for a discussion of the hierarchy of least intrusive, most affective (LIMA) intervention strategies. She has just written an update of her 2004 article: “What’s wrong with this picture? Effectiveness is not enough.”

In Part 1 of this conversation we begin where just about every conversation begins these days - with the corona virus. The wearing of masks - whether it should be voluntary or mandated led us into a discussion of control which gave us the perfect segue into a discussion of Susan’s two articles and why she felt it was important to revisit this subject by writing a new article.

Last week we began a two part conversation with Suzanne Kernek. Suzanne is a horse owner and a professional dog trainer. She’s also a regular attendee of my Half Moon Bay CA clinics.

At the clinics I always love our evening conversations where we talk about the connections that Suzanne has found between the work that I teach and the dog training that is her everyday life.

At the end of last week’s episode Suzanne had just commented on the connection between physical and emotional balance. We’ll pick up there as Suzanne explores the question: is this link as clear in dogs as it is in horses?

We’ll be talking about the many ways in which the rope handling that I developed for the horses can be used with dogs. I don’t have a dog, so I rely on my friends who train dogs to test this out for me. When we look at the rope handling from the perspective of using it with dogs, I always find details that make the work even clearer for horses.

We introduce these Equiosity podcasts by saying that they are about all things equine with a special emphasis on the horse human bond. So why this week are we talking to a dog trainer? It’s not just that many horse people have dogs which makes these crossover conversations of interest to many listeners. More than that, with Suzanne Kernek we’re going to be revisiting the rope handling that I teach, but we’re going to be looking at it from a different perspective.

Suzanne is a horse owner and a professional dog trainer. She’s a regular participant at my Half Moon Bay CA clinics. I always enjoy our evening conversations where we talk the connections that Suzanne has found between the work that I teach and the dog training that is her everyday life. I have wanted to have her on the podcast for a very long time to talk about how she has translated the rope handling that was developed for horses to the dogs she works with. This shift in perspective I think helps us to be better teachers no matter the species or the size of the animals we work with.

Suzanne runs a puppy day care and training program. We started this conversation just as Suzanne had settled ten puppies down for their nap. It speaks well of her management techniques that we were able to talk for over an hour and a half without interruption. We covered many topics beginning with the new Stay at Home clinics, and then we shifted to the topic of rope handling.

Many trainers think in terms of formal training sessions. Others think more in terms of a flow that simply shifts location and emphasis. In this episode we explore both approaches.

In Part 3 Michele Pouliot describes how she assembles a freestyle routine using back chaining. In Parts 1 and 2 of our conversation with Michele we learned how she uses platforms to teach the foundation behavior that she uses in her freestyle routines. Now in this episode she describes how she links these behaviors together to create a consistent performance.

We make the connection to dressage tests and other patterns that we ride. So even if you can't see yourself ever teaching a liberty freestyle routine, there's a lot here for horse people.

We have a long wish list of things we wanted to talk to Michele Pouliot about. Michele is a canine trainer. Many of you will know her through the Clicker Expo where she is a member of the faculty. Michele wears several “hats”. She was the driving force behind converting the training program at Guide Dogs for the Blind completely over to clicker training. One of her other “hats” is canine freestyle. In this week’s podcast Michele talks about how platforms can be used to teach the behaviors that have made her dogs standout performers in the freestyle world. The work she describes applies wonderfully to horses.

Canine trainer, Michele Pouliot joins us for a discussion of platform training: what, why and how.

In May Dominique needed to move her three horses to a new barn. Over the years two of her horses had become non-loaders so Dominique was dreading the move. She knew she couldn’t wait until the last minute and hope for the best. Instead she began in March teaching her horses to load willingly, happily, voluntarily onto a trailer. Her takeaway - she loved every minute of it. Her horses all load voluntarily onto the trailer. On moving day it took less that five minutes to load all three horses. In this episode she describes what she did.

We begin by sharing some of our takeaways from Dr. Susan Friedman's fabulous interview. If you've listened to her podcast (episode 104), you can see how yours compare with ours. This discussion led us to more "Easter eggs" and to trailer loading.