Terry Ryan is known for her pithy wisdom, patience, and signature classes that are creative, fun, and effective. Her training games help improve the performance of both canine

Snake-avoidance training can be a lifesaver for dogs that live among venomous snakes. A common way to train snake avoidance is to pair a strong aversive, like an electric

I am asked regularly, “What are the first behaviors that we should train our animals? Does the order matter? How do we determine what should be trained first?”

Challenge: a hearing-impaired dog Do you care for a deaf dog? Have you ever had the opportunity to work with a deaf dog? I had not—until Blanca. In

Oh, my aching arm Get your dog to walk without pulling! But how? We are masters at allowing our dogs to drag us down the street. The most

A search-and-rescue start Sometimes trainers venture into uncharted training territory without realizing how novel or new it might be. I have been teaching a graduate course on animal

The controversial clicker Should we stop using a clicker? Is it really needed? A study by Chiandetti et al. published in November of 2016 in Applied Animal Behavior Science has raised many questions

Luring is legal Let me start by saying that if you decide to use a food lure, you are NOT committing a “training felony,” and the “’lure police” will

Training troubles We all have “off” days when a training session isn’t going as well as we had hoped. Perhaps the dog is distracted, unfocused, or simply wanders off. Maybe

Picture the possibilities Imagine teaching your dog to put his hind feet—just his hind feet—on a mat. Or, imagine teaching your cat to give a high-five. What if

The quest for greatness One characteristic of a good shaper is flexibility—a willingness to change course based on new information coming in. Good science shares that characteristic. As

I’ve always been fascinated by the cognitive abilities of animals. I used to teach a graduate course on animal intelligence. The popularity of the course was indicative of