Clicker Training - Co-founders

Co-founders

B. F. Skinner first identified and described the principles of operant conditioning. Marian Kruse and Keller Breland, two of Skinner’s first students (and later married couple) first saw the potential of the new technique for animal training business.

After participating as research students with Skinner in pigeon behavior and training projects during World War II, the Brelands left graduate school and formed the first company to intentionally use operant conditioning, Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE). They created the first free-flying bird shows and a host of commercial animal exhibits.

Bob Bailey was the US Navy's first Director of Training and later came to work at ABE in 1965. Keller Breland died in 1965 and Marian married Bob Bailey in 1976. Together they continued the pioneering work at ABE. Radio-carrying cats were steered through cities and into buildings under a contract with the CIA. Dolphins located targets many miles from their trainers, at sea. Ravens and other birds, carrying cameras and directed by lasers, could fly to a specific window of a skyscraper and photograph the people inside. Gulls, expert sea searchers by nature, could locate and report life rafts and swimmers far offshore.