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Steve White was recently in New Zealand doing a three day workshop on tracking and nose/scent work! So as per normal I’ve prepared for you a list of the five biggest things I learned/enjoyed/took away (see below).

Haven’t heard of Steve White before? … Out of 100+ ATA podcast episodes – the episode with him, has definitely been one of my favourites! Listen here >>> http://bit.ly/ATA_Steve_White

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1) We learned about Steve White’s HITT (Hydration Intensified Tracking training) system and I even got to help practice with an amazing little Border Terrier! EEEEE! 

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The activity we did had us spray a line of water along the ground and then line it with little pieces of high valued food. Our little terrier would then go along with its nose low to the ground, eating all of these little pieces of food accompanied by the odour of the water. In the activity we did each piece of food was only a couple of centimeters apart but over time you would increase the distance between the food whilst maintaining the sprayed line of water on the ground! – I can’t wait to do more of this in the future!

2) Continual reinforcement learning about the absolute sensational sense that is a dog’s olfactory ability! Steve offered new thoughts, science and insights into their sense of smell – an ability I don’t think we can even begin to fully comprehend.

Having worked in Zoos for most of my career I loved watching Snakes stick their forked tongues out to scent the air. Pulling the particles back into their Jacobson’s organ! I didn’t actually know dogs had one in their mouths as well! ARRRRGH! They are so cool!

3) DATA collection! WOOOO! Earlier this year Steve White joined us at ATA for a live web-class where he reviewed  MacKenzie’s eight scent-work indicators (with video examples for all 8);

1. Pull
2. Nose Height
3. Tail Carriage
4. Breathing
5. Cadence 
6. Circling
7. Crabbing
8. * Head swing (Nose anchor)

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Want to watch this web-class from Steve Whtie on this exact topic you can do so with your ten day $1 trial here >>> https://www.animaltrainingacademy.com/2019-membership-trial/

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At the Workshops we got to practice this in real time. As a group we sat down and watched a video we had literally just filmed of some dogs doing nose work activities. Together we then filled out data sheets so that we could all learn to read the dog’s body language better! My god was this fun!

4) A recurring take away from attending any workshop is a greater appreciation of the awesomeness of the ATA tribe! I had so much fun hanging out with the attending members. (Note I had to photoshop Karen Drummond in as I was silly and forgot to collect her for this photo!)

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5) And finally I gained a greater appreciation for the work that the police dogs and their humans do! We were so lucky to watch videos of both police dogs in training and doing real live searches! The skill of both dog and handler blew my mind.

I hope you have enjoyed this and am excited to let you know that last weekend I attended a dog training business seminar with DogBiz founder Veronica Boutelle! Look forward for more workshop updates coming your way soon 🙂

Best Regards
Ryan Cartlidge
Animal Training Academy

P.s Want EVEN more from Steve – earlier this year he joined us AGAIN at ATA for a 6 person panel discussion with himself, hannah branigan, Eva, Bertilsson, Agnieszka Janarek, Carrie Kish and myself… this was for ATA premium members only however you can see a full replay via your exclusive $1 ten day ATA trial here >>>  https://www.animaltrainingacademy.com/2019-membership-trial/

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My first home consult (circa 2016) was terrible.

I met someone out on a walk with my dog and they expressed some challenges they were having at home. I actually offered to go for free to their house because I wasn’t in the game of doing home consults and I wanted to get some experience.

To cut a long story short it went awfully! 😂I knew I could help the people and their dog, but I didn’t know how to meet them where they were!

They were an elderly couple, no idea about using technology (the reason I add this will become important soon) and zero cares about how behavior worked other than wanting to stop their dog from doing the “annoying” thing without having to do any work! Ha, I’m joking they weren’t that bad …

So anyway, I go in trying to sell them on my model of helping people online and the virtues of positive reinforcement training and how/why it works. The old man literally fell asleep in his chair (in all seriousness though – I think this was due to factors outside of me i.e. health). And his wife was not resonating with what I was saying at all! But ON I went … blah blah blah!

She offered to pay me at the end of this visit, but I didn’t accept any money and really just wanted to help her and her dog! Next time I saw her though was out walking the dogs not doing another consult!

Over the last three years I’ve worked hard at learning to meet our human learners where they’re at, and recently, this was really put to the test.

This time I went to a local dog groomer to observe how things were being done for a current paying client of mine (of whom I am working with them and their dog!)

Unfortunately I feel this particular experience was quite unpleasant for the dog involved. If I had done this a few years ago I don’t think I could have even sat through that two hour session. Back then I lacked compassion for the human. Now, I am convinced they were doing the absolute best they could with the information & experience they had.

So I could meet them where they were at, I worked really hard to identify a number of things that they did that I really liked! And here are two of them!

1. At one point, non contingent high value food was offered to the dog! Boom LOVE it! The dog readily ate it and I commented on the value I thought this brought to this particular grooming session
2. The groomer consistently told me about how they thought the animals learning history played a big role in the behaviors that they saw in their business! I commended them on this insight and agreed on the importance of this.

Other then that I just sat silently and watched …

That is UNTIL the groomer asked me a question about their horse’s behaviour! And boy did I do my absolute best to reinforce that curiosity! This lead to me having an opportunity to offer some thoughts and send links to free resources where they could learn more.

Part of my approach here was greatly influenced by what Ken Ramirez taught me in a recent podcast episode we did together where Ken shared five things people can do when working with others to move them toward better use of positive reinforcement tools in order to make their training more effective. You can listen to the podcast episode here >>> http://bit.ly/ATA_Ken_Ramirez

And watch a video link of the specific part of the podcast where Ken talks about this below;

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Want more Ken … ?!? Register for your $1 ten day trial ATA membership today to gain access to more exclusive premium members content form Ken Ramirez & other industry leading experts ACCESS HERE

See the full list of ATA premium members only live training replays here >>> https://www.animaltrainingacademy.com/members-only/

Will the human learner mentioned above check out the resources I sent them? I don’t know! I have not been able to get this experience out of my head though! The biggest question I have is how could I have done more. How can I train myself to focus even more on reinforceable behaviors from others and meet them where they are (rather than where my expectations might be). Who knows, maybe in three years I will be sending you an email about how silly I was in this situation – much like my original experience with the home consult.

What about you? How do you develop compassion for your learners? How can we better meet our learners where they are? I look forward to you hearing your thoughts and can you let me know by leaving them in the comments section below.

Best Regards
Ryan Cartlidge
Animal Training Academy

P.s This is also something I am also really taking away from a current endeavour doing my KPA (Karen Pryor Academy) professional dog training certification. We have to do written assignments tailoring our messages to different audiences and I am learning a lot! It’s been an amazing one month journey so far and I am looking forward to the next five months!

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Animal Training Academy premium members are super heroes! I am constantly inspired by the videos that get shared in the ATA membership Community areas and so this week I thought I would share my top ten from 2019! (Offered in no particular order);

Video # 10

The first video is a favourite from my time doing nose work with my dog Fibi – working on stimulus control.

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Video # 9

As animal training geeks I think it’s fair to say we want to train pretty much any animal/species we can get our hands on lol … ATA member Lisa Tuthill had only had these chickens for 4 days at the point of sharing this video. In her words; “Just wanted to share because my my heart is bursting with joy and excitement of what we can do together!!”

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Video #8

It will be easy to see why I like this next video so much! ATA member Josefine Linderström decided to see if this horse would prompt more scratches. Read her own words below:

Josefin: ‘For me this was such a lovely experience. It continues to blow my mind, that I can meet an individual for the first time and within minutes I can ask questions (would you like more scratches?) and get answers (yes, I would!) in such a simple, straight forward way … The best thing is I don’t need to have mind reading skills, or some super advanced technology, or make guesses. I just need to observe behavior. ♥️’

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Video #7

Anything from Swedish trainer Eva Bertilsson is set to be pure gold for us animal training nerds! This next video takes a snippet out of a previous podcast episode we did together talking about flowcharts! Enjoy …

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Video #6

And then what’s possibly even more fun is when you get to see ATA members put all of this amazing knowledge shared by podcast guests into action! Check out this from ATA premium member Emma Almquist who continually spoils us with her training videos/flowchart combinations!

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Video #5

Within the ATA membership I find myself consistently surrounded by people with different knowledge, experience and training know how then myself (more often then not at a much higher lever then me!) It’s this constant inspiration that pushes me to continue to learn! For this reason I am extremely grateful for trainers like Vidhyalakshmi Karthikeyan who are always pushing the boundaries and demonstrating skilful application of advanced concepts. For example this training on the concept of size, with her dog Beanie:

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Video #4

Chin rests behaviours are super common as the ‘go to behavior’ for doing cooperative care with dogs! So I just get really excited to see this done, with such a high level of skill, with felines! Check out Elvis the cat & ATA premium member Ayoe Hoff – showing us all how it’s done 🙂

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Video #3

And more cats! I love Vidhyalakshmi’s training so much I just had to include a second video from her! Training our animals to voluntarily enter their crates (& giving them as much control as possible) is a fundamental behavior we should ideally train with all animals.

Here’s Vidhyalakshmi handing back control with one cool cat – closing it’s own crate door!

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Video #2

It is with great Joy that I get to call Peggy Hogan a friend & ATA tribe member! In the ATA community areas we get constant updates of her and McKee. There were many Mckee videos to choose from but this was definitely one of my favourites – demonstrating some fun liberty training. We love how much of an ambassador McKee is for positive reinforcement training!

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Video #1

This last video was shared by ATA premium member Aileen Stevenson. It is one of my favourites and I will let you read why in Aileen’s own words below

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Well there you have it – ten of my favourite videos shared from within the ATA premium members community areas in 2019! And this is really only the tip of the ice berg with regards to the world changing work the ATA tribe is doing! If you would like to see more subscribe for your ATA trial membership today >>> https://www.animaltrainingacademy.com/2019-membership-trial/

Best Regards
Ryan Cartlidge
Animal Training Academy

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Ripples = Small things that make big changes in spreading the message of positive reinforcement animal training. ​

Every week Animal Training Academy premium members share remarkable things within the membership community areas. These members are superheroes/Rockstars, I’m so so proud of them and the following posts are two of my favourites from the last month! (beware you might get goosebumps and a bit teary eyed when reading these).

Both of the following posts are ripples involving challenging but important conversations in a way that spreads the message of positive reinforcement animal training.

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And then ATA premium member Anna Bartosik shared the following piece of amazingness.

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You would have seen the book Crucial Conversations (Authors – Kerry Patterson, Joseph Greeny, Ron McMillan & Al Switzler) mentioned in both of these posts! It is something we discuss and utilise a lot within Animal Training Academy and I highly encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already done so! 

You can listen to an ATA podcasts episode on Crucial conversations here >>> http://bit.ly/Crucial_conversations

Have you read the book? Do you have some experiences of how this has helped you out in challenging conversations. If so I would love to hear your story, you can leave a comment below.

Best Regards
Ryan Cartlidge
Animal Training Academy

P.s want to get access to the exclusive ATA premium members community areas? (FaceBook group and ATA website forums). Register for your trial membership today! >>> https://www.animaltrainingacademy.com/2019-membership-trial/

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Have you ever been asked – What is your WHY? 

If so – what did you say? If not – what do you think you might say?

Recently, I was interviewed for an event here in New Zealand organised by a colleague of mine & NZ based Positive Reinforcement Horse trainer – Bex Tasker! In this interview, I was asked what is the WHY of Animal Training Academy?

I didn’t articulate it so well in the interview but here is an offering (prepared when I have much more time to carefully choose my words lol) about the why of ATA.

* The WHY of Animal Training Academy

ATA exists to help improve the lives of animals and their human companions through ethical animal training and behavior management principles (with the main focus being on Applied Behavior Analysis). World leading professionals share their knowledge through our podcasts, blog, web-classes and the ATA membership.And then we build a tribe around that knowledge to help develop trainers competencies, orientation & growth. Our online communities help support and encourage our members as they put this knowledge into practise.

You can see my ACTUAL answer (basically the same thing just not as succinct lol) and the entire rest of the interview in the following video …

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Once again I’m curious what your WHY is? Leave your comments below & let me know.

Best Regards
Ryan Cartlidge
Animal Training Academy

P.s a MASSIVE thank you to Lisa Whiteman who recorded the actual interview and whose voice you can hear asking the questions.

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Last week I got to spend an amazing 4 days hanging out with Dr. Susan Friedman, Peta Clarke and 200+ behavior nerds (& dogs) deep within the beautiful Barrington Tops in New South Wales Australia!

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Not only did we get to see Wild Platypus on a Daily basis but we got to geek out on both scientific and practical aspects of what we do!

So as I sat at Sydney Airport nearing the final leg of my journey home I thought I would start to write this email and share – whilst still fresh in my memory – 5 amazing takeaways for me from that sensational week! Here they are

1. I was reminded of how little I know! OMG was I ever! I got to experience Susan’s Emotions inside out presentation and consequently there is going to be some latent learning as I process all of this over the coming weeks/days/months! I was left with the words “emotions track contingencies” and I’m currently working on fully digesting what this means and how it works

2. The ATA tribe is AMAZING! – This was four days of meeting so many individuals from ATA’s audience in the flesh and getting hugs that in some instances have been years in the making!

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3. Some offerings on definitions of choice & control. I realise how much I use these words interchangeably and I really had to stop and think about the different definitions. At the moment I am left with the these two thoughts – control is all about giving the learner the ability to manage/control outcomes with their behavior, and choice is about settings up contingencies in ways that offer the animal many different outcome options – including the option/control to say no. What do you think?

4. The use of reinforcement placement – it was an absolute joy to watch Peta Clarke in action coaching numerous trainer/dog teams! One topic that came up time and time again was reinforcement placement. This is definitely something I am going to be thinking about more and more in my training over the coming while and how I can improve my skill in this area.

5. High rates of reinforcement. Seeing the contrast in rates of reinforcement when Peta Clarke demonstrated some live training for us in relation to some of the other dog/trainer teams working at the event really allowed me to see how much Peta skilfully moved behavior. This was so beneficial for me to see live and was one of the biggest take aways for me!

To be honest I could go on and on and on… lol and I’m sure as the events of the last week marinate in my mind over the coming whilst latent learning will provide me with so much value from the richness of spending time with individuals at the cutting edge of what we do! #feelingblessed! 

If you want to find out more about these two wonderful human beings check out some previous ATA podcast episodes where we were very privileged to have them as guests!

ATA podcast episode with Susan Friedman here >>> http://bit.ly/Friedmanpodcast

ATA podcast episode with Peta Clarke here >>> bit.ly/ATA_Peta_Clarke

Best Regards
Ryan Cartlidge
Animal Training Academy

P.s Want access to over 6 hours of exclusive interview time with Susan Friedman?

You can access two (3 hour long) web-class replays with Dr. Susan Friedman inside the ATA members only area right now! These are for premium members only but we are giving you the change to view them for just $1 – CLICK HERE for your trial membership and get started now!