Equiosity Equiosity

This week we’re continuing our conversation with Anita Schnee and Michaela Hempen. Michaela has been our guest on this podcast many times. She’s talked to us about the research project she did on cribbing, about single subject design, and more recently about how animal welfare is assessed.

When it comes to horses Michaela and I share a love of beautiful movement, so she also joined us when we talked with Anja Beran, the classical rider whose work inspires both of us.

For the past ten years Michaela has been studying with a Feldenkrais™ Practitioner, Nathalie Van Cauwenberghe. In last week’s episode Michaela described the riding challenge Anja’s work poses. Anja has told her that in order to ride well you need to stabilize your torso while remaining loose in the rest of your body.

With Nathalie’s help, Michaela has been figuring out how to turn these words into a meaningful reality.

Nathalie does not speak English well enough to participate in the podcast, so I invited Anita Schnee to join us. Anita is also a Feldenkrais™ Practitioner so we will be drawing on her expertise as we continue with this conversation.

The goal is to ride well. Last week I ended with a description of the changes I see in horse handler teams when the handler learns to lift through their sternum. I left you with that image to enjoy. We’ll pick up again at that point in the conversation.

Michaela Hempen has been a frequent guest on this podcast. She has talked about her cribbing research, single subject design, and more recently about how animal welfare is assessed. When it comes to horses Michaela and I share a love of beautiful movement, so she has also joined us when we talked with Anja Beran, the classical rider whose work inspires both of us.

For the past ten years Michaela has been studying with a Feldenkrais™ practitioner, Nathalie Van Cauwenbergghe. In this episode Michaela is talks about the challenges riding presents and recent breakthroughs she has made.

We are also joined by Anita Schnee, a Feldenkrais™ practitioner. Anita helps us to understand the patterns Michaela has been exploring.

This week we’re continuing our conversation with Dr Susan Friedman and Rick Hester. In this episode we begin with a question to Susan: Is the teaching standard known as Lima the same as the hierarchy of behavior change procedures that Susan has written about? Susan provides an historical perspective for the LIMA acronym, and for many of the other labels people have attached to training.

This week we’re continuing our conversation with Dr Susan Friedman and Rick Hester. Dr Friedman has been a frequent guest on this podcast. She is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University. She is pioneer in the use of Applied Behavior Analysis in the handling of captive and companion animals.

Her interest in developing scientifically sound, ethical standards for animal care and training prompted our this current conversation.

We are also joined by Rick Hester.

Rick is the curator of behavioral Husbandry for the Cheyenne Mountain zoo. Rick overseas the zoo’s training program for husbandry, medical and public show behaviors.

In this episode we consider many important questions, including what does it mean to be a positive reinforcement trainer? How do we operationalize that?

How do we evaluate new ideas? We don’t want to move too quickly but nor do we want to get stuck in old ideas. Why does novelty have such a draw for us?

We also consider why Susan has chosen to keep punishment in the hierarchy of behavior change strategies. This opens the door to a discussion of negative reinforcement as well as punishment. Do we need new words to describe the procedures we use?

This is Part 1 of a three part conversation with Dr. Susan Friedman and Rick Hester. Dr. Friedman has been a frequent guest on this podcast. Most of you I’m sure already know Susan. But just as a reminder, Susan is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University. She is a pioneer in the use of Applied Behavior Analysis in the handling of captive and companion animals.

Her interest in developing scientifically sound, ethical standards for animal care and training prompted our this current conversation.

We are also joined by Rick Hester.

Rick is the curator of behavioral Husbandry for the Cheyenne Mountain zoo. Rick overseas the zoo’s training program for husbandry, medical and public show behaviors. I value the perspective he brings to training. When you work with horses it all too easy to think you have to rely on force-based methods for some medical and husbandry behaviors - and then you see what’s being done in zoos.

We begin by talking about why it matters to have ethical standards guiding the training choices we make. We are talking about training goals and strategies that provide our learners with choice and a lifestyle of control.

This is part 3 of our conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter from the University of West Virginia and one of her graduate students, Abbie Cooper.

Abbie has been comparing behaviors that were trained with either positive or negative reinforcement when they are placed under conditions of extinction. What happens to behavior when training goes sideways and the individual is no longer getting reinforced for actions that had been producing consistent, desired results?

In Part 1 she described her study and the results she has been getting,

In Part 2 we considered the emotional fallout that was observed and we connected it to real world experiences both in animal training and the classroom.

In Part 3 Claire raises the question why do people adopt the teaching procedures that use negative reinforcement and punishment based approaches. Why are these approaches so prevalent, not just in animal training, but in the classroom as well? Why don’t people gravitate towards using alternative reinforcement strategies that are based more in a positive reinforcement framing?

This is the launching point for this week’s conversation in which we explore connections.

We consider how the results of Abbie’s study relate to what people experience both with horses and in the classroom. What can be learned? What role does microshaping play in creating teaching strategies that do not rely on aversive control to get results?