Exotic Animals

One of the pleasures of Karen’s new book, Reaching the Animal Mind: What Clicker Training Teaches Us About Animals, is the way science is made accessible through compelling stories of real training events.

Here's a Halloween story, one I did not put in my upcoming new book, about my personal experience with witchcraft.

ClickerExpo announces the 2009 season of its highly popular conference series for animal trainers at every level, from new dog owners to professional zookeepers. If you've ever wanted to know how trainers bond with orca whales, teach sea lions to play soccer, or train a dog to lie down quietly outside the local coffee shop while they sip a cup of java inside, then ClickerExpo is for you.

I've always been interested in play. Science doesn't explain it very well, or it's explained as something young animals do to practice future skills. But that definition doesn't cover every kind of play, and it doesn't explain why it's so much fun, so reinforcing in itself.

One thing clicker training gives us is a new level of trust and communication. You may have noticed this with your pets. It's particularly startling and, to me, touching, with captive animals that could never be pets; it makes their entire care much more humane.