b.) Clinic # 2: Extinction Friend or Foe

Clinic #2: Extinction Friend or Foe?

Welcome! This is the second course in the Virtual Clinic Series.

Puzzles. That's what our horses throw at us. That's what training is about. It's a series of puzzles that we need to solve. Sometimes those puzzles can seem like giant roadblocks. Other times they are simply interesting brain teasers.

I want to help you learn how to solve those puzzles. If you feel as though you're facing major roadblocks, I want to help you create a smooth path around them. My intent is to help you discover the fun, the sneakiness, the effectiveness of good training.

"Sneakiness" That may not be what you were expecting, but good training can be wonderfully sneaky. You'll be discovering what I mean by that in this course. Step by step, layer by layer, course by course, you are learning how to be a successful puzzle solver.

There's a "What" "Why" and "How" to training.

What are you going to teach? Why are you teaching it? And How are you going to teach it.

In the first course we looked at the "what", "why" and "how" of Getting Started with Clicker Training.

As you went through that course, you probably discovered the truth of the statement: it is always a study of one!

This work is not like baking a cake. There isn't a set recipe you can follow that will guarantee you great results each and every time. Horses are much more complicated than that.

Some horses make the training easy. They are great students, and they make everything so straight forward. But other horses may be coming into the training with a lot of baggage. Their past training experiences have created a lot of confusion and fear.

Think back to your days in grade school. You may have some stomach-churning memories that can help you relate to their difficulties now.

So you may be encountering some puzzles, some road blocks in your training. The intent of this course is to help you understand the puzzles our horses throw at us. Understanding comes first. That makes the solutions easier to find.

So we're going to be looking at Extinction. This course asks an important question. Is extinction your friend or is it your foe?

You'll be finding out what that question means, and why I have chosen to make this the central focus of our second clinic together.

Have fun!

You can't "not cue". Cues evolve out of the shaping process. They evolve along with the behaviors you are teaching. Understanding cues - how to teach them, how to use them, how to transfer one cue to another - plays an important role in keeping you out of the extinction trap. You'll be learning more about this in the Extinction: Friend or Foe Course