Quote Originally Posted by goshawkr View Post
Ok, here is a simple "how it happened" that I had previously posted on another forum.

I had a goshawk that didn't take to going into the giant hood very well. Each time I went hunting, the argument about going into the giant hood got more pronounced until I was having to cast him, toss him and slam the door shut before he could get out. Yes, with a goshawk. What always surprised me is that he was always calm and ready to go when we got to the field - I expected a basket case and to have to turn around and go home afterwards. Having a goshawk argue about going into the giant hood wasn't a surprise to me, but getting progressively and consistently worse was. I decided to turn things around on the day I had to cast him to get him in, and came up with an OC recipe to do it.

Its been a while since this happened, so I forget exactly what occurred during which training session. Fundamentally that dosnt matter. I do know this guy was amazing in how fast and how well he would play along with OC games. A lot of goshawks like to be stubborn and manipulate back, but not him. In two 15 minute sessions he was willing going inside the giant hood. On the third session, he would just sit calmly inside waiting for a tidbit.


To begin with, he was perched in a room on a tail saver perch with lots of leash. I placed the Giant hood on the floor with the door open close enough that he could get inside, and I sat down with some tidbits handy. Here are the progression of goals we did. Each time he met a goal, I would give the Conditioned Reinforcer to mark that instant in time and toss a tidbit on the ground for him. As he got good and solid with a goal, we moved to the next goal on the list.
  1. Look in the general direction of the giant hood while sitting on the perch.
  2. Look directly at the giant hood while sitting on the perch.
  3. Move in the general direction of the giant hood.
  4. Move directly towards the giant hood.
  5. Move closer to the giant hood than you have been doing before.
  6. Put your head inside the giant hood.
  7. Put your body in the giant hood.
  8. Perch inside the giant hood.
  9. Hang out inside the giant hood longer than you have been doing before.

One key thing to keep in mind is to not get bogged down on the "step" you are on, and understand you are working towards the ultimate goal. If progress is made towards a goal further up the list than where you are, REWARD IT! Reward it more than normal. If the critter you are training is ready to skip ahead that is a good thing. On the other hand, if progress is going very slowly or not at all, then maybe you need to step back to a previous goal, at least for a few minutes if not for a whole session. The rewards should come at least once every 2-3 minutes.

There are of course times when the steps are rigid, but that would be defined by the ultimate goal you are training for.

Its also important to reinforce the ultimate big goal with a lot of time/repetition. In my example above, we got to step 9 on the second day, but I still set up 4-5 training sessions that just consisted of my goshawk perching in the giant hood with the door open (while tied to the tail saver perch) and me wandering through the room every once in a while to toss him a tidbit if he was sitting in the giant hood calmly. He could sit anywhere he wanted on those sessions, but the only thing he could do to con me out of a tidbit was to sit inside the giant hood.

One funny thing that happened during this, and it was clear insight that he knew the game, is that while he was on step 4, after his second tidbit at that goal level he marched directly towards the giant hood, looked over his shoulder DIRECTLY at me, and put his foot in it.

There are plenty of ways to condition a hawk to using the giant hood - and they all work.

The beauty of OC however, is that it can be used to teach anything. Its like some magical "do anything" tool. The only limits are the imagination of the trainer to come up with the goal list, and the physical and mental capacity of the animal your teaching. If the animal is capable of performing the act, you can teach it using OC. In the case above, I was trying to teach the goshawk to accept the giant hood by general conditioning, but when that was ineffective, I resorted to OC to turn things around quickly and effectively.

Actually, when Steve Layman was in college learning OC as a psychology major he had the great insight to realize that the Conditioned Reinforcer is a simple one word language. It means "Yes!" or "Do that!" And to take this even further and more complicated, you can also fold in another concept from a competing psychological theory (Aversion training) and incorporate something akin to "No!" or "Don't do that!", although this is a bit delicate to pull off with an animal like a hawk.

With an animal actively trying to get you to give them the reward, you can accomplish a LOT with just that one (or two) word language. It can be like having a remote control wired to their brain.
Great example!! Thanks very much...