The Power of Motivation..

Did you know that you can teach any animal to do any behavior that they are physically capable of by simply motivating them with something that holds value to them and rewarding them with it?!?

Don't believe me?

Hmmmmmmmmm.....

Puakenikeni, is a Hawaiian brown stingray. She is trained to target to a paddle underwater and sustain target until released. She is not rewarded if she is biting the paddle, being pushy, or falling off the paddle. A dog clicker attached to the paddle communicates (bridges) the correct criteria to her and she is released with a tactile cue, a soft wing touch. An LRS, a 3 second ignore, and removal of the paddle is implemented if she is not meeting criteria when adequate time has been given to meet it. Time outs (step out of the water) are also used if she is not succeeding. She is rewarded with fish and squid pieces through a hole in underside of the paddle.



Still want more?!?!? Ok.

Rico, a yellowfin surgeon fish is trained to directionally (left to right) swim through hoops (up to 3). He was taught this process through shaping and luring. Pretty much the same way you would teach a dog!


:)

Lesson learned..

Ok so the other day I had a bit of a goof up and could have potentially been bit by a dolphin. That's right people, dolphins bite. They are not always your lovable Flipper. Now don't get me wrong they are not evil, but they do have their histories of aggression, well at least the ones I am working with.

Alright, so back to the story. Our dolphins have 4 separate pools they can be in, each is separated by an underwater gate. Ok so, I went into pool 1 to scrub algea off of the bottom. Before I went in, I looked all around for a dolphin. No bubbles, no water moving, no dolphin sighting, ok clear. So, I climb in and start scrubbing. A few minutes later a fellow intern jumps in with me to help. Now mind you I am in the middle of the pool waste deep in water. The other intern is on the stairs only ankle deep.

So we start chatting, as we scrub-a-dub-dub. I say, "How funny would it be if there was a dolphin in here?", well apparently right after I say that my fellow intern tells me to get out of the water. A warning, mind you that I most definitley did not here! All of a sudden a dolphin comes swimming up and pops up right infront of me. The intern shouts, get out of the water. Shit, you don't have to tell me twice!!

Turns out there wasn't a dolphin in there to begin with but, we didn't bother to check and see if the gate was locked or not. Well, it wasn't so the dolphin had access to pool 1 and 2, *forehead slap*, lesson learned!!

Now would the dolphin have attacked me? No, of course not. Worst case scenario he would have taken a little swipe at me. But we are not supposed to be in the water with dolphins unsupervised. We could have inadverdantley reinforced an unwated behavior. Plus, we were not really setting the animal up for success, so all in all it was not a good situation for anyone.

The boys: Niele, Hoku, Kai Nalu, Nai Noa, Liho, and Kolohe.

Dolphin Internship Video

Hello all!!

So far so good, life is amazing in Hawaii and the internship is A-mazing. I am learning so much.

This video is a quick hello, and a snapshot into my internship.


Pictures/Video (in order of appearance):

• Me dancing with Hoku, a 17 year old male Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin, and my personal favorite.
• Myself and my fellow interns/roomies with Hoku again
• Rico a yellowfin surgeon fish that is trained to do a hand target, swim through hoops and is learning perimeter swim
• Makana a 3 1/2 year old green sea turtle I hand feed daily
• Me hand feeding Charlie the unicorn fish
• Lastly, a training/ feeding session with Puakenikeni a brown stingray. Pua has been trained to sustain target on a paddle under the water. When she meets the criteria I click a dog clicker under water and feed her through a hole in the paddle. I then wing rub her to let her know the session is over so she does not get the session ending confused with a timeout.
  

Hope you enjoy!!

Aloha,
Sarah

Great Dog Trainers

Here are some A-mazing dog trainers you could really learn a lot from. Don't just follow one trainer, one style of training, or even one species of animal trainers.

Positive reinforcement trainers CAN learn from punishment trainers, you don't have to like or agree with someone to learn from them, watching mistakes is still a way to learn. Dolphin trainers can learn from dog trainers, horse trainers can learn from elephant trainers and so on and so on.

Karen Pryor, has trained many animals but started with dolphins and went to dogs.

Chris Bach, developed the "third way" a great way to have fast success with your dog. She is also the creator of many training "games" trainers and owners use. For example, the eye contact game!

Ivan Balabanov, has a great DVD called "The Game". It is a superb method for training toy motivated dogs. He is also one of the top protection dog trainers and competitors in the world.

Steve White, a great trainer but a wonderful positive protection trainer.

Sue Ailsby, very intelligent and creative, go to her website for information on teaching most behaviors.

Hope you get some good information!

Sarah :)

Dolphin Training

Soooooooo I have always wanted to be a marine mammal trainer, well my dream is about to come true. I got a four month marine mammal training internship with dolphin quest in Oahu, HI. I will be living there from January 2009 to May 2009.

I will be training sea turtles, sting rays, fish, and of course DOLPHINS!

The reason I am telling you this is of course because I am thrilled but also because there won't be any posts for awhile, but have no fear as soon as I return I will have lots to share and possibly even some dolphin training videos. :)

Stay tuned......

Flyball Tournament

Crash and I just got back from our first flyball tournament with our new Team, Run Amuck.

Crash did great!!! He had one goof up where he crossed over to the other side, but we sorted it out and he ran perfect the rest of the weekend. He didn't drop the ball at all and even had a new personal best of 4.02 seconds!!!

Here is Crash's new team:

Dock Diving Practice

I took Crash and Cricket to a local boat dock to have some fun and to practice their dock diving techniques. The following are the videos of their practice sessions.

Crash uses the place and send technique. I throw the toy in the water a few inches further than he can jump. He then runs and jumps into the water trying his hardest to land directly on the toy. It is important that with this method that the dog lands right on or right in front of the toy so their efforts are rewarded! Crash uses this method because it is similar to his flyball training and because he is not confident enough to do the chase method.



Cricket uses the chase method. The idea with this method is that the dog runs toward the handler and as soon as they get to the end of the dock the handler tosses the toy up and out over the water giving the dog a nice "pop" off the end of the dock. Cricket is still in training and is new to this method (as am I) so she is not given much running distance. I want her just to focus on the toy and follow it properly before I giver her speed. As you can see from the video how well she jumps is in direct relation to how well I throw the toy. So we both have some practicing to do!