Ken began teaching a name target (yellow star) to 3-year-old mini-donkey Sparkle about a month ago. Since then she’s made great progress – she’s learned her shape and is getting better at discriminating between other shapes. In this session Ken adjusts distance and distractor targets to determine how well she has learned the concept.

Why do we teach name targets? It helps an animal know where to go at the start of a session with multiple animals, it can help guide an animal to a specific location when needed with no specific previous training, or it can be the start for various cognitive projects.

Check out the initial training session here.