The Magic of Reinforcement: Dr. Ian Dunbar on Animal Training’s Past, Present and Future
Precision Animal TrainingShow Notes
On this episode of Precision Animal Training, hosts Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey sit down with renowned Veterinary Behaviorist Dr. Ian Dunbar for a wide-ranging conversation on how animal training has evolved. Dr. Dunbar traces his path from watching animals as a child to pioneering puppy classes and putting early socialization at the center of good training. The discussion returns again and again to positive reinforcement, the power of shaping small improvements, and the need for trainers to observe real behavior and use simple, measurable data. Dr. Bailey and Dr. Dunbar talk about the Brelands’ work with chickens as a training model and argue that trainers should rely less on tools and more on clear communication between people and animals. The episode is a reminder to notice small wins and keep training scientific and enjoyable.
3 Key Takeaways 1. Observation and real-world practice come first. Dr. Dunbar and Dr. Bob Bailey both say effective training starts with watching animals in everyday settings. Videos and theory help, but they are no substitute for standing there, watching, and working with the animal in front of you. That direct practice is how trainers learn how animals actually respond and learn.
2. Positive reinforcement and shaping still do the heavy lifting. A core theme is that small, reinforced improvements add up. Dr. Dunbar talks about shaping behavior in tiny steps. Dr. Bailey keeps returning to one idea: make it worthwhile for the animal to play the game. Praise and consistent reinforcement of the behaviors you want often matter more than extra food or corrections.
3. Creativity and ongoing learning keep trainers sharp. Both guests stress staying flexible across species. Working with cats, chickens, or other animals besides dogs stretches your eye and your timing. Kirsten and her guests encourage trainers to keep experimenting and adjusting to the individual animal. That habit produces better results and a better relationship
Quick Training Lessons From The Episode
Here are the wrap-up lessons that Kirsten wanted listeners to remember from this episode:
1. Take the leash off. Watch and train animals in a more natural state so you can see real behavior change. 2. Watch the animal in front of you, not only videos. Hands-on observation is where the learning happens. 3. Learn to shape and reinforce the right behaviors. Every small improvement counts, and praise matters. 4. Reinforce good behavior in daily life. Smiles, words, and consistent feedback do more than isolated sessions. 5. Phase out tools as you go. The goal is an animal that responds even to a quiet, neutral cue. 6. Training is a relationship plus repetition. Praise often, keep sessions positive, and enjoy the work. 7. These skills apply across species. The same game of observation and reinforcement works with dogs, cats, and chickens.
8. Stay present. Turn off distractions and engage with the animal in front of you. Progress starts there.
More from Precision Animal Training
Kirsten has a way of describing how modern dog training grew up, and it comes in three phases. First the scientific one, when the Brelands' and Baileys' work came through the chicken workshops and the field found out there was a science underneath it. Then the professional one, when it turned out that loving animals is not a business plan. And now the ethical one. Don Hanson has lived all three of them, and because he is a prolific writer, he wrote them down while they were happening. Thirty years of this field's history exists in his archive whether the field asked for it or not.
Mike Wood interviewed Shelley for a job in the Florida Keys on a glass bottom boat. They were both married to other people. Years later, both divorced, he hired her again to come to Mexico, and that is where it turned into a marriage. It is also where two trainers with one dolphin enclosure turned into close to thirty facilities in nine countries with more than two thousand employees.
Bob Bailey has been watching this field for sixty or seventy years, and I have been watching it with him, and his verdict is blunt. More dog businesses have failed on the business end than on the dog training end. Veronica Boutelle watched the same thing happen from the other side. She was Director of Behavior and Training at the San Francisco SPCA, where Jean Donaldson's Academy for Dog Trainers ran out of her department, and she would check in with graduates a year later and find them back in the careers they had tried to escape, or picking up part-time work to make rent. Not because they could not train. Because nobody had taught them how to run the thing. So she built it. Veronica and founding partner Gina Phairas launched dogbiz in late 2003 and are coming up on twenty-five years of teaching trainers the part that keeps the lights on. In this conversation Veronica tells Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey how the SF SPCA brought Chicken Camp to San Francisco by selling tickets to local trainers to cover it, how Bob flew out to headline her grand opening with a night of newly declassified government stories and the raven cameras, and how COVID turned a hastily built free six week program called Survive and Thrive into two thousand trainers from around the world and then into Thrive, the group coaching program still running today. She also says the thing most positive reinforcement trainers need to hear about their rates, and it is not comfortable. 3 Key Takeaways 1. You are running three businesses at once, whether you know it or not. Training animals is one skill set. Coaching the humans who live with the animal is a second, and if you do not change the person's behavior nothing you do with the dog sticks. Running the business is a third. Most trainers invest continuing education in the first one only.
After Marian Bailey died, Dr. Bob Bailey was ready to be done. He had promised her on her deathbed that he would keep teaching, and then he got discouraged enough to start looking at other things he could do with his time. Two women talked him out of it. Cheryl Trotter drove up from Houston and Carolyn Clark came down from Canada, and between them they told him they would help and they would not let him quit. Everything that came after, Sweden, Japan, China, and the workshops that built a generation of trainers, happened because those two would not let go of it.
Vicky Darnell did not want the puppy. The plan was to get herself trained up first and then bring another dog into the house, and that is not how it worked out. Tiz came home early. Three weeks later Vicky was sitting in her first Chicken Workshop. What she carried back to Chicagoland was not a chicken trick. It was timing, criteria, rate of reinforcement, and the nerve to stop a session that is going sideways instead of hoping it comes around. Tiz started trialing shortly after she turned six months old, the youngest age a dog can compete in UKC Nosework, and finished her Grand Champion at eleven months. Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey talk with Vicky about what actually transferred from the bird room to the trial floor. Vicky has run dog sporting events for thirteen years and has taken the discrimination class twice, and she still describes the workshop the way everyone does once they have been through it: you cannot comprehend it until you are standing there. Bob puts the principle plainly. You get what you reinforce, not what you want. Kirsten tells on Vicky for walking the hallway between the classroom and the bird room muttering seven seconds to herself, then watched her run that same clock at a nosework trial months later.