How tic-tac-toe-playing chickens changed my life (and your dog’s too)

For decades, Marian Breland Bailey and her husbands taught farm animals to do tricks for fun and profit. They ended up revolutionizing animal training.

A couple of blocks from where I grew up in Manhattan’s Chinatown, there’s a gaming arcade called Chinatown Fair. My parents were divorced, but in the 1980s and ’90s, on special occasions, we would take a trip à trois to the rather dingy (and super ding-y) Mott Street arcade. We weren’t there to play pinball or Ms. Pac-Man, however. We went to see a chicken play tic-tac-toe.