Building Confidence Through Enrichment: From Hesitation to Exploration

Building Confidence Through Enrichment: From Hesitation to Exploration

We are continuing our conversation on empowering animals. We’ll look at how purposeful enrichment can help animals that find people, proximity, or touch stressful and how confidence can keep growing between training sessions. Join me to learn what hesitation looks like and how to design enrichment that encourages exploration, choice, and success.

Building Confidence

Confidence is not something we demand from animals. It is something we teach. We’ll look at how fear can show up in different ways, why labels can limit what we see, and how training can help animals move from avoidance to participation through clarity, predictability, choice, and reinforcement.

Labels Don’t Solve Behavior Problems

Before we label an animal as aggressive, stubborn, anxious, hormonal, difficult, or “just being bad,” we need to understand what the behavior is doing for the animal and what the animal may be learning from us. In this live-stream, we will take a powerful look at the definition of a label, and explain why using them hinders changing behavior concerns.

If We Can’t Describe Behavior, We Can’t Change It

Behavior problems do not happen for no reason. Before we label an animal as aggressive, stubborn, anxious, hormonal, difficult, or “just being bad,” we need to understand what the behavior is doing for the animal and what the animal may be learning from us. In this live-stream, we will take a powerful look at why behavior matters, how animals learn from their environment, and why we may accidentally reinforce the very behaviors we are trying to stop.

Q&A with Lara

Lara answers followers questions about behavior, training, and enrichment!