Thursday, May 27, 2010

Goat Associations

Our goat Arlene has learned that if we're sitting on the pond bench, she'll get petted. Oddly, though, she's come to associate the bench itself with the petting. So if we're standing nearby, she'll go rub against the bench to show us that she wants to be petted.



She's fairly strong, so the the bench is taking a bit of a beating.



She's knocked it over before doing this.



Unfortunately, we usually give her positive reinforcement by petting her when she does it.



Come to think of it...she's right. She does get petted when she rubs her head on the bench if we're around.

Smart goat...

The people...not so smart...


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4 comments:

  1. That bench arm is the perfect horn scratcher. It's the only way she can reach back there. They will use whatever they can find for this. I've tried making them scratching spots, but they always want to find their own. They are so creative about it.

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  2. Yep. Humans are easily trained animals.

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  3. We certainly are! The goats, cats, and ducks all have us trained to do exactly what they want.

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