Episode 370: Catching Up With Dominique Pt 3: Pre-Performance Rituals, Distractions and 300 Peck Pigeons
- Apr 16
- 2 min read
In 2025 Dominique needed to take some time off over the summer. I went ahead and did a series of interviews, including one with Dr Claire St Peter and Dr Carol Pilgrim, episodes 349 to 351. We were talking about stimulus control. Those episodes aired in the fall.
The episode you’re about to listen to was supposed to air back in the fall as well, but somehow it fell between the cracks and we moved on with other interviews instead. Now we’re airing that conversation.
In Part 1 we talked about the standard instructions for teaching cues and the way that I prefer to teach them. The standard instructions make use of extinction. I prefer to teach behaviors in pairs. I make use of a very powerful reminder: for every exercise there is an opposite exercise you must teach to keep things in balance. The result is strong stimulus control.
In Part 2 Dominique asked about learning what to click. When you are first starting out and you’ve never taught a behavior before, how do you know what to click? How do you avoid making a total mess of your stimulus control because you are clicking so many different versions of the behavior you’re after. We talked about becoming a selective sifter.
Even when you aren’t sure what you want to click because the behavior you’re teaching is new to you, you can still apply “narrow end of the funnel” thinking as you build the new behavior.
In Part 3 we begin with environmental cues and pre-performance cues. Then we head into a discussion of 300 peck pigeons.
Environmental cues include distractions. Distractions are often seen as something negative, something handlers try to avoid to the point that distractions become a source of anxiety for the handler. Instead distractions can be transformed into stimuli handlers can use to advance their training.
Distractions led us to training for duration and that took us to a discussion of a lesson I developed for Robin when he was a youngster. I called it the 300 Hundred Peck Pigeon Lesson.
Dominique wondered if 28 years on from the time I developed that lesson for Robin would I still use it? That took us to a discussion of boarding barns and the constraints we are often working under when we can’t keep our horses at home. Those constraints often mean we have to become very creative to meet the mental, emotional and physical needs of our horses.
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