JaneTrains.com

05/14/2026

For those that asked, here is Antara, who is Stargirl’s daughter. I’ve trained her using a marker,( I cluck with my tongue, keeps my hands free) and reinforce with celery and carrots.
My goal with her was to be able to ride her with safety, hence this form of training. Sadly she was recently diagnosed with bone cysts on both stifles. How did I know? Resistance under saddle and when I mount, which shows here in the video. If I trained with only negative reinforcement I may well have missed the signs!

I’m navigating my way with her to see what she can do without being in pain, so if any horse people have experience with this, please share.
I’m still researching, I’ve received different recommendations, but surgery is usually the common option, but out of my budget for now.
So for we just do small little sessions, mostly just for fun.

05/13/2026

In December I assessed this 3 legged rescue husky. We were concerned with some behaviors that may escalate into reactivity. After making big improvements on diet and implementing a pain management plan she is doing so much better.
Sometimes that is all it takes!

05/13/2026

https://substack.com//note/p-176358911?r=2w9cqs&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Join me on Substack for my latest article!

Play and toys can replace reinforcing your dog's behavior, when food doesn't.

05/12/2026

I don’t have always have time to train every day my own horses. Plus I’m a big believer in taking it really slow compared to the 30 day horse training programs commonly used.
My goal is a safe horse, that’s it. If the horse is hard wired for a flight response and the training can exacerbate that, then accidents will happen. So my training is an attempt to create trust and safety using positive reinforcement and classical conditioning and a dash of counter conditioning.
River Drum is not an easy going quarter horse, he’s extremely curious and mouthy and young, he can panic easily, especially when he was 3. He’s now 5 heading into 6.
This is day 2 of an opportunity to train as dog training has slowed down, I have a little more time.
I’m putting weight on him for the first time plus doing a little counter conditioning with my hat, ever had a horse spook when the wind blew your hat off? Well, let’s prepare for that now.
In the wheelbarrow is hay and I’m tossing his celery in there too.
Let me know if you would like to know more on clicker training horse, it’s not that hard and it’s not hard on your horses either! Life doesn’t have to be a rodeo!

05/12/2026

A good read on what is purely positive training.Which is why , once understood, you can use exactly the same methods for any animal.

QUICK TIP: There has been a war waged against best practice methods in dog training which employ mostly positive reinforcement without aversive methods and tools. This war includes deception and what I believe is purposeful confusion regarding terminology coming from trainers who advocate compulsion-style training methods and tools.

"Balanced" trainers who use the term to denote their use of rewards plus aversive "correction" in dog training (not necessary and not best practice by any reputable professional standard) use the term, "positive only" as part of their attempt to poke holes in training methods they don't understand.

Meanwhile, some positive reinforcement trainers also refer to themselves as "positive only," meaning they don't use any punishment or aversion. That also suggests they do not wholly understand what they are doing.

Suffice it to say that aversion exists along a continuum and dogs are all individuals. Even if we were to limit our methods of dog training to the infamous "4 quadrants" of operant conditioning (1--providing rewards such as food; withdrawing rewards, such as attention, for unwanted behavior to stop a behavior; 2-- withdrawing reinforcement such as attention - to stop unwanted behavior; 3--using "correction" such as leash pops and shock to stop unwanted behavior and force compliance; and also, 4-- the withdrawal of pain, such as that applied by a shock collar, to reinforce compliance), it's not possible to train exclusively with positive reinforcement.

If a dog jumps on me, or a puppy bites me, I commonly use negative punishment (the withdrawal of attention) to decrease this unwanted behavior. That's not "positive."

The word, "punishment," is a behavioral term that refers to a consequence that stops behavior. If the consequence stops behavior, it's referred to as punishment, even if the consequence isn't aversive (like withdrawing attention - is that aversive? I don't know - ask the dog!). If the consequence doesn't stop the behavior, it's not punishment, and if it's aversive, it's just abuse.

While those of us in the best practice camp primarily employ positive reinforcement (food rewards, attention, praise, petting - if a dog *likes* petting, etc.) methods, we also use negative punishment, as described above. More than that, we use a whole lot else to train and modify behavior, that extends beyond the confines of the "4 quadrants."

Further, dogs are all individuals, and what is reinforcing or punishing (meaning something that stops behavior) to one dog may not be the same as what is reinforcing or punishing to another dog.

So, buyer beware. When shopping for a dog trainer and reading about dog training methods, don't be fooled by the term, "positive only" dog training, particularly when used by a so-called "balanced" trainer. It's a way to muddy the waters and sway you toward their use of aversive training methods and tools and quick fixes.

Cindy Ludwig, MA, BS, RN, KPA-CTP, CPDT-KA
Owner, Canine Connection LLC
Willard, MO USA

05/11/2026

Videos never show the subtleties of behavior, but I’m letting River Drum know he can’t mug or hassle me for food.
One of the biggest arguments in the horse training industry is using food as the narrative goes,” feeding food to a horse makes them aggressive.”
That used to be the discussion for dog training too.
However, we need to acknowledge we can definitely aggravate resource guarding in horses by not having a healthy supply of hay freely available or by having them on a strict feeding cycle based on our clock not theirs.
River Drum has hay available during training, yet he engages with me, I only use celery and dandelion leaves as a reinforcer.
All I’m teaching here is impulse control, no different than how I teach the dogs. We practice ‘Stand’ without mugging Jane’s hand.
River Drum, is still young horse and is learning my body language and that patience or duration pays!

05/06/2026

Puppies! Lots of food for just staying at the side of their guardians. This builds up a positive emotional association in context of external events. In this clip my dogs act as the ‘distraction’ . For me it doesn’t matter if the puppies get excited and jump around, we just keep feeding-they quickly calm down and long term it builds a solid foundation to avoid leash pulling in the presence of a strange dog too!

05/03/2026

Working with reactive dogs is challenging for everyone involved. Some methods work and some don’t, Floyd, shown in the photo, had a traumatic history even before he was adopted at age 2. Now age 7 he has shown increasing reaction on leash to strange people, and dogs.
We are working with boxes filled with tissues and hidden yummy treats, the idea is to gradually switch over his reactions from lunging, barking, and disengaging from his guardian when he sees dogs in the far distance to one of engagement in the activity of searching or seeking to find the yummy stuff. It does take time as Floyd has been in defense mode for awhile, but bit by bit we are slowly getting there!

04/30/2026

It may look like nothing much happening here, but for Joey, (Kelpie mix) being apart from his owner and guardian for more than even a few minutes used to send him into a state of panic. We have slowly been building his experience at my place so his owner can have some free time. We are now at 1.5 hours, Joey has a homemade food to eat, I use these plastic containers and card box with ‘hidden’ treats stashed inside. This helps with mental stimulation, it creates searching or scavenging, which help takes his mind and emotions off of panic. He is free to move out of the kennel if he wants and explore outside, so far though he ‘hangs’ in the kennel as that is where the yummy stuff is!

04/27/2026

For my followers who study learning theory, here is an excellent post by Trudi Dempsey: Equine Trainer and Behaviour Consultant. I recently took an online course with her, on Equine Cooperative Care.
As we know, learning how to train and study learning theory transfers across species. Although this is written with the horse in mind it could easily be a dog or a child!

A threat is only as powerful as the learner’s belief that it will be followed through. No history of follow-through, no credible threat.

This is the mechanism. Not the threat signal - but what the learner’s history tells them the signal predicts. A child who has learned that the count of three never actually culminates in punishment will ignore the count entirely. They have been taught, reliably and repeatedly, that the warning is just noise.

The same whip waved at two different horses can produce two entirely different responses. One has a history that makes the prediction credible. One doesn’t. The whip hasn’t changed. The learning history has.

But what about the person who walks into a yard and immediately unsettles a horse they have never met? No history. No previous contact. No whip.

Some of it is stimulus generalisation. The horse doesn’t need a personal history with that individual. They have a history with humans. Size, posture, directness of gaze, the way they move, are readable signals. If they overlap with signals that have previously predicted something aversive, the response will transfer. The conditioned template doesn’t require the same person. Just enough similarity.

But there is something else worth considering here. Certain signals like dominant posture, direct and sustained eye contact may not need a strong individual learning history. We appear to be primed to pick these up quickly and generalise them widely. Horses almost certainly are too.

Which means the person who exudes threat without intending to is still doing something. The signals are there. The learner is reading them and intention might be irrelevant to the receiver.

I think this is important, because it means the welfare cost of aversive-based training is not only present at times of contact. But is present in every moment as the horse scans for warning signals. Some horses may not be living in a series of discrete aversive events but living in a state of constant vigilance. That has physiological costs. And in many training contexts, it is almost entirely invisible.

This is where it becomes a bit mucky.

Anticipation is not the enemy but the mechanism. Training is always, in some sense, teaching a learner what to expect.

When a horse moves away from a raised whip they are responding to anticipation. So is the horse who wanders over when you pick up the clicker or food bag. Horses offer behaviour readily when their history tells them that engagement is worth it.

Both horses are responding to an expectation.

The difference is in what they are anticipating. And what it costs them to live with that anticipation day to day.

R+ based training does not remove horses from a world of consequence and expectation. It deliberately builds a particular kind of expectation. Interaction with a human predicts good things and safe engagement. This is not a consequence-free approach. Nor is it magic. We can intentionally choose the consequences our learners spend their time anticipating.

R+ based learning is also full of anticipatory behaviour. The horse learns that their human predicts food. They respond to that prediction, sometimes with such urgency that it becomes hard to work with.

It becomes easy for critics to say, ‘food creates poor behaviour’. And there is something in that. The same mechanism is in play as when a horse flinches from the threat of a whip. A strong prediction has been built, and the learner is responding to it. Different currency same mechanism.

Every interaction is a prediction. Every session adds to or subtracts from the learner’s understanding of what an environment means, what a human means, what the cost of engagement might be.

We are not just reinforcing behaviours. We are creating an anticipatory landscape.

Instead of wondering how to get responses without punishment we could ask what the horse is anticipating, and is that what I intended?

A horse with a rich history of reliable, positive predictions can tolerate some ambiguity. They have enough in the account to cope in the moments that aren’t perfect.

But we should look more closely at the anticipatory experience of our learners - not just the behaviours we can clearly see, but the expectations we have built that lie underneath them.

Positive predictions also carry responsibility. A horse who has learned that their human reliably predicts food is also a horse who notices when that prediction isn’t met. Frustration is not exclusive to aversive-based training. It is the predictable outcome of any strong expectation that goes unfulfilled. We are not exempt from that simply because we have chosen a currency of food.

Building a rich reinforcement history with clarity about when and how reinforcement arrives, and what the learner can reliably expect is the goal, not just positive anticipation - because a learner who feels safe enough to think is a learner who can actually learn.

A very different and more precise goal.

Photo Rex Pickar

04/25/2026

I have group classes every Saturday, and many of these owners have been training with me for a while. We have been practicing more advanced techniques recently with every dog and their human making huge leaps in training and relationship building, one practice we work with rattlesnake avoidance. I will post more on this as we progress through the course.