A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words

by lennearb2 Comments
When I started training, we used to describe using a clicker to taking a Poloroid photo of the desired behavior. These days, however, many of my (human) students are too young to have more than a hazy idea of a Poloroid, so the analogy doesn't work quite as well anymore. However, I recently realized that the concept is even more relevant than it used to be. In an era when cellphone cameras capture every cute pose and expression our dogs make, what could be more relevant than the concept of taking a photo to capture desired behaviors? That is what markers help us do. Markers signal to our dogs when they have done something right. Of course, we reinforce our approbation with food or play rewards, but the use of a marker makes this connection cleaner and clearer. If you are rewarding a sit, during the delay between sit and treat, your dog may have looked at the ground, licked his lips, and...
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Anything Dog Can Do…

Anything Dog Can Do…

by lennearbNo Comments
Most of us focus most of our training attention on our dogs. I do this just as much as others. I balance talking about training my dog with discussing cute things my cat does: sit in boxes; climb on my shoulders—sometimes while I am trying to brush my teeth; sit on my hands while I'm typing. But in doing this, I am selling my cat short, and you may be doing the same to yours. Cats, like most animals, are perfectly capable of being trained to do a number of things. Since most of us have cats that are smaller—and quieter!—than our dogs, we are often able to ignore a great deal more of their obnoxious behaviors. But I encourage you to pull our your clicker and treats with your cat in mind. I would guess that you would be shocked at how much your cat can be trained to do. That old adage that you can't train a cat is...
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Road to the “Peaceable Kingdom”

by lennearbNo Comments
This post tells a personal story. In subsequent posts, I will address some of the details of introducing new pets and dealing with conflicts. A lot of people ask me how long it will take to reconcile their new or newly conflicting pets, especially their cats or their dog and cats. People would really like a timeline, a “drop-dead” date by which they will no longer have to engage in the complicated ballet of managing multiple pets who do not get along, must be kept separated, requiring two separate routines and extensive demands on people’s time. People would also like to know when they can expect to see progress, and how much they can expect to see, what it will look like, and so on. I call this process—the process of moving from managing multiple pets who are in major or minor conflict to one in which everything is running smoothly in an integrated household—the road to the “Peaceable Kingdom” (a phrase...
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Trouble on Easy Street

by lennearbNo Comments
This post briefly sets the stage for why we should take time to train our cats. It is the first in our cat-training focused series. I don't know anyone who would argue with the statement that cats love sunbeam. Yesterday morning, I found my cat, Nefertiti, lounging on the bathroom rug right in the path of a morning sunbeam. However, most cats are looking for a lot more out of life than 20 years or so of moving from sunbeam to sunbeam - unfortunately, that is all that is expected of many of them. While there is not a lot of detailed evidence about the exact evolution of cats, most scientists seem to agree that cats evolved to live with people primarily as vermin hunters with a side of companionship. This is in distinct contrast to dogs, who evolved as co-hunters and protectors as well as companions and were subsequently selectively bred for a variety of tasks, including herding, tracking, retrieving, as...
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