Thank you Lara for the wonderful work you do at the Animal Behavior Center. You are a “Deliverer of Awesomeness”.
Before meeting you, I had been successful at clicker and target training with positive reinforcement that worked well in some birds and animals that responded to my few methods.
For all the ones that didn’t respond to my early learned methods, I ignorantly thought them unteachable and dismissed them. Oh, how I was wrong. My gosh, I just didn’t know and I’m still learning.
Lara, you opened the door for me years ago to understand the science and application of ABA and OC. I get it, and I love it. Over the past few years I have been successfully reaching most any animal with whom I come in contact (wild, domestic, exotic, young, old, angry, disabled, afraid, etc.). My confidence and my ability as a trainer have risen to levels I never thought achievable. My personal relationships with people are also benefiting. I am such a behavior geek now and look every opportunity to provide +R where appropriate. I continue my education, passionate and thirsty for new data and understanding. Having experienced ABA and OC, I see it as much an Art as it is a Science and that has allowed me to venture away from textbook training and recipes and to explore my artistic side. Rewarding artistic improvements in my methods, however small, has led to some accidental leaps towards my own self-improvement as a person and a trainer.
I encourage anyone who desires a stronger relationship with their pet/companion or who wants to delve deep into behavior analysis to check out the help, training and resources that Lara and the staff at the Animal Behavior Center provide.