Glossary
Animal Trainer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential animal trainer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key animal trainer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in animal trainer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Counterconditioning
- Changing an emotional response.
- Cue
- A signal for a behavior.
- Desensitization
- Gradual exposure to reduce fear.
- Extinction
- Behavior fading without reinforcement.
- Generalization
- Performing behaviors in new places.
- LIMA
- Least intrusive, minimally aversive.
- Luring
- Guiding with a treat.
- Marker
- A signal such as a click that marks behavior.
- Negative reinforcement
- Removing something unpleasant to increase behavior.
- Positive reinforcement
- Adding something good to increase behavior.
- Public access
- Service dog behavior in public.
- Reactivity
- Overreacting to triggers.
- Recall
- Coming when called.
- Shaping
- Rewarding small steps toward a behavior.
- Threshold
- The point an animal can’t focus.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Animal Trainer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Animal Trainer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.