This is part 2 of our conversation with Mary Hunter.   We are continuing to use Mary’s recent StaleCheerios blog posts as the launching point for a series of interesting discussions. Mary’s April post: “Assess your Reinforcement Delivery” gave us a lot to talk about.  I especially liked this topic because it let us talk about how much we can influence our horse’s balance through the thoughtful use of food delivery.  

We’ve talked about this a lot for horses.  In this episode we consider how the details that we focus on for horses might also be relevant to dog training.

Episode 188 Mary Hunter Pt 2 Reinforcement Strategies

We are joined again by Dr. Michaela Hempen, but this time, Michaela is not talking about Blondie and the cribbing project, but about her day job.  Michaela works for the European Food Safety Agency.  The EFSA looks at anything related to food safety, including animal health. It provides risk assessments which give the European Commission or European member states the scientific basis for legislation. The European Commission will be revising all farm animal welfare legislation, and part of this will be based on scientific assessments of their welfare.  Michaela has become involved in this project which means she has been on a steep learning curve to familiarize herself with the field of animal welfare.  

In this podcast we talk about preference tests.  Whether it’s a laying hen or a horse how do you measure what animals want?

For a list of the references Michaela refers to in the podcast go to the show notes at equiosity.com.

Episode 190: Dr Michaela Hempen Pt 1: Assessing Animal Welfare

Equiosity is the podcast about all things equine with a special emphasis on the horse-human bond.

Episode 190: Dr Michaela Hempen Pt 1: Assessing Animal Welfare

Equiosity

Related tracks