Syn Alia Training - X education.

I stumbled into an exciting website the other day. Syn Alia Training (SAT) is positive reinforcement perfected. It encompasses a few other ideas like intermediate bridging and conditioned relaxation leading to perception modification. I got really excited when I started reading Kayce Cover's articles, so I immediately had to order the book and join the BridgeAndTarget yahoo discussion group. Ms. Cover's sense of humor appeals to my own so I find her totally delightful.

One of things she recommends is NOT using a clicker. She says using your voice is better, which is true because you don't need an extra hand to operate it and you always have it. She recommends the sound of X since it isn't an over used sound. I don't know, I would guess anyone that hears me training my animals with that sound is going to assume I am saying "sex", which may be hard to explain. Well, I started using X and they seemed to transition over to it quite well. We were targeting a basketball. The grown animals figured it out quickly, but poor young Paisley was too caught up with herself to even realize that there was a ball being held in front of her nose. She finally started getting the idea right at the very end after she had exhausted all the other tricks she has learned.

I am using the conditioned relaxation on my hyper housepets. I would say half of my housepets are behavior disordered by being frantic for my attention. I probably have "trained" them to be this way by petting them to calm them down, thus rewarding them for being agitated. I hope they get over it.

Yrs,
JRW