Introducing old cats to kittens can be tricky. The truth is, they usually don't make the best roommates! Kitten energy pairs best with kitten energy. This doesn't mean you can't teach a kitten and an elderly cat to coexist peacefully in a household, it might just be a longer process of getting them acclimated.
This is usually because the older cat isn't as playful, and is more defensive of their personal bubble. Young male cats tend to have a wrestlemania style play, and aren't very socially savvy. They might not respond to subtle cues that the older cat is giving off that they would like some space, and instead will relentlessly pursue and attempt to play. Older cats, especially female cats tend to do things like birdwatch out windows, meticulously groom their paws, and crochet tiny hats.
Eliza and Edgar's owner has been diligently working on a behavior plan that includes a few different categories, but here is a snippet of their actual exposure sessions to each other on either side of the baby gate.
- Reward marker sounds to capture behavior. Each cat was conditioned to their reward marker beforehand. (Eliza = "good!" Edgar = "cluck" sound).
- High value food reward
- wearing Edgar out with toys in his room before sessions with Eliza
- Physical objects on Eliza's side since she is the defensive and insecure one, to allow her to have a home base and not feel like a sitting duck.
- A "shield" (peice of foamboard) nearby in case Eliza becomes stressed and charges at the gate, to interrupt that interaction quickly.
- Eliza's main trigger is direct eye contact from Edgar. Here we are really focusing on capturing and rewarding moments of direct eye contact before she gets too stressed to still be interested in the rewards. Whenever Eliza wants to take a break and go inside of her cardboard box, she can. We try to end each session before that happens and leave things on a good note.
For a great comparison of agitated and tense body language VS. friend
Just loosening up his brain before the real work begins :)
Don't mind the ridiculous words they are just: down, sit and heel in French because we thought it would be funny to teach him like they do a serious bitey protection dog, but he's only a serious spotty affection dog.
"¿¿What's that??"
That's a cat.
Alfie already knows the "what's that" cue from when we were acclimating him to construction workers in his house last year, as well as seeing dogs on walks. Alfie has a high prey drive (he likes to chase stuff), and is an easily excited, energetic dog that struggles with impulse control and calming himself down.
Because of his temperament, we have dedicated a lot of time to teaching him certain behaviors that will help him out. One is to relax on que (put hips to side and head down), and another is to notice things in his environment and choose to look away from them, instead of going level 10 bananas.
Here we are applying these behaviors to one of his house-mates: an elderly grumpy cat that absolutely doesn't want to be chased.
Teaching a dog to look at something interesting on cue in exchange for rewards completely changes the context of it and help them calm down and process what they're doing rather than build a rousle that leads to chasing and barking.
You can get started teaching your dog this cue by simply capturing them looking at something you know they will be interested in, but not too interested to want treats. It could be anything at all as long as it is not overly exciting or stressing them.
Every single time your dog looks, immediately mark with their marker sound, (Alfie's is "yes"), then feed. After 30 to 40 repetitions, your dog will start to catch on that you mark when they look at it. Begin hesitating by a second or 2 before you mark and see if they will look back at you on their own anticipating it. If they do, mark them looking back at you. Now the new behavior will be to look at the thing and then look away from it on their own.
Once you have 30 to 40 repetitions of your dog repeating looking at the thing then choosing to look away from it on their own and back at you, you can name it. Say what's that a moment before your dog is going to look at the thing anyway, and repeat the above. After
3rd Alfie indication session! (touch and hold)
This isn't his longest, (he did 6 seconds a few reps before this, then had a big brain fart and so we decreased time). But this IS the highest quality one, which is even better. (Notice his entire body freezing).
#dogtraining
#dalmatians
#nosework
#detection
#cancerdetection
"Dot" and "Dash" are siblings (roughly 4 months in these clips). Their mom wanted some tips for introducing 2 rambunctious kittens in the house, with as little chaos as possible. (I think we *mostly* succeeded).
During one of our sessions, we accidently switched on the fan rather than the light. Dash went flying out of the room and across the hall so hard she slammed into the stairs :( She then was hesitant to come back into the room at all.
We did this impromptu desensitization + counterconditioning session to undo some of the fan's bad 1st impression. The fan will need to be on some days, & it's the room the kittens spend the most time in, so she needs to get over it! Unfortunately, due to instagrams weird video dimension limits, I had to choose between cropping out the cats or the fan.
Desensitization = Systematic exposure to something at a very low level of intensity, and slowly increasing the intensity toward a "real life" version of it. The goal is to give the brain a chance to acclimate before increasing intensity. If you have ever crept into a cold lake or pool a few inches at a time, giving yourself a moment to adjust before swimming, that's desensitization! (The opposite method to desensitization is "flooding"... just jump in!)
Counterconditioning = Changing the way the brain feels about a stimulus by making a new association.
Combined together= slowly spinning the fan at a level the cat notices and feels *mildly* concerned about, but not enough to flee, and it predicts a food reward.
This cat's marker is the word "yes". If you've heard of clicker training, it works the same. The marker captures the moment the cat did a behavior OR something happening in the environment, that predicts a reward.
Fan moves >cat notices fan moving> cat hears marker word while looking at fan> reward happens
After many repetitions, Dash will feel happy & calm when the fan turns on, because instead of "THAT'S A HAWK!" flight reflex, she will anticipate food.
Once
E collar conditioning phase: default recall.
When David's arm is up hes beginning to hold down the stim button at Rowan's "working level". (We found her level prior to this conditioning session). This means she is feeling a prickling or tickling sensation on her neck during the time David's arm is in the air. She feels this sensation enough to register it, but it's not at a level to cause stress/distress.
This is Rowan's 3rd session with the E collar. The 1st was to find her working level inside around no distractions. (the lowest level she registers any sensation at). The second was to teach Rowan that when she feels the stim it means "turn and head towards me", with a leash on as guidance. The leash is important because when the dog encounters literally anything they find more interesting or distracting than the stim from the E collar during the conditioning phase, they will simply ignore the stim sensation the same way they might a bug buzzing in their face or you tapping on their butt, because it becomes background noise. Rather than dial up the e collar we keep holding the stim and layer over guiding the dog toward us with leash until they catch on.
The last round we did with leash off and me as a distraction (standing by the back door as if I'm going to open it).
What I really love about this particular clip is you can see the entire process in action. She begins to feel the stim and instead of immediately calling her David gives her a chance to sort out what the sensation means because she's had some practice at it. You see her slow down on her own, think about it, and begin turning to run towards him *before* he actually says her name.
This is what a thinking dog looks like and it's beautiful. Please compare what you see in this clip to the horror stories and fear mongering propaganda of anti e collar activists (side not - I used to be one 😅😬).
You don't need to listen to them when you can listen to *the dog*. Does the dog look scared of
Just some good kitties doing good kitty things.
Now that "Vista" and "Lynx" have learned how to go to place marks briefly on cue, we switched to smaller place marks that will fit better in kitchen, and it's time to proof the behavior. This means make sure they can continue to stay there, even if there are added distractions & temptations, or I walk or turn away from them. I am loudly shaking their kibble bag which which gets them super excited and tempts them to fall back on their old conditioned response (circling around legs like sharks, reaching up to grab/knock bag out of hand, meowing loudly and attempting to climb up legs and jump on the countertops, and other general mayhem). I'm especially proud of Vista, the black cat on the left in this clip because she's trying so hard. She is so motivated by food she unfortunately had to make a trip to the emergency room a few weeks ago because she ingested a rubber object that food was on while her owners weren't looking. This is why she has 2 shaved front legs. These cats are absolutely BONKERS for food, some of the most food crazy cats I've ever seen! They're causing major problems at home during meal time both for themselves but also for the humans in the house because of the chaos that erupts the moment there's any hint of anything food-related happening. Even just walking into the kitchen causes them both to start meowing and racing around your feet and trying to grab objects out of hands (which is obviously not that great if you're boiling water or handling knives. They have stolen entire pieces of chicken and other food being prepared right from under their owner's noses and devoured it before anything could be done. These 2 definitely still have some work to do but they're starting to get the hang of this game, and their super fund to work with ❤
Little 3 month old Bengal "Gabby" went from learning what the clicker meant to understanding verbal cues for tricks in 15 minutes... record breaker!
#trainyourcat
Congrats to David and Rowan for their continued metamorphosis into show ponies
Phyllis is very nervous around strangers who enter her home. Her usual MO, like most nervous cats is to slink away and hide under the bed and not come out until she's sure the person has gone.
Cats and humans have opposite body language when it comes to saying "I'm friendly". We tend to make direct, wide-eyed contact and move closer. We shake hands or hug, many times even with complete strangers (at least in western cultures). This is our way of saying "i want you to like/trust me". This is a shy cat's worst nightmare. For cats who are already nervous, when a person who means well comes in and immediately begins making noises and approaching, leans down or reaches out with their hand while staring directly at them, it confirms their suspicion that the person is trying to eat them, or at least, is a space invader 👽👾. (Get it, because you're invading... their space).
Here you can see Phyllis, who's usually hiding by now, practicing some target training that we did earlier on in the session and is already familiar. She has also already been conditioned to her marker word "good" which means: the choice or behavior you just did is going to cause a reward to happen.
In the beginning, it was completely up to her to approach me and target the stick in exchange for a treat tossed to her several feet away. Over the course of the hour, she became comfortable with me sitting down on the floor nearby her and leaning towards her, and taking treats directly from my hand. This was accomplished in one session and is the most calm and content around a visitor her owners have seen her in a very long time!
If you take the time to give a nervous cat some space and teach them an alternate behavior that has you both focusing on something other than putting your hands on the cat, you will likely see big changes in a short amount of time.
At the end of the session, I was able to give her a scratch under the chin and on her cheek which she really enjoyed, because we slowed t
Asi = sit!
Couché = down
Why teach your dog their cues in French?
Why not!?
Training Chickens is a great way for kids (and anyone) to learn the basics of classical and operant conditioning, the concept of spacial and social pressure, timing, and how to motivate an animal to do something you want. (1 gallon bucket of mealworms). Fun.
Here we are laying the foundation of target training and conditioning a clicker, so we can teach Loretta (the big gold girl in front) and her cohorts to do more complicated tasks in the future, like spin in a circle, ring a bell, jump through a hoop or steal wallets.
Just kidding. I would never teach a chicken to ring a bell.
Beans has some issues with impulse control and frustration. Basically, he has kitty FOMO. He needs to learn to interact with his new brothers and sisters politely, but they are not quite ready to accept him yet, so he must be confined into his own room for parts of the day to allow for more time to adjust.
He becomes very vocal and upset while alone needs more stimulation to keep him from building frustration and fixating on the cats, who are just on the other side of the door.
Here he is learning how to trade impulse control and polite manners for the type of play he needs. We didn't get any of his CRAZY jumps on camera but this boy is athletic and has some moves!
Remember that the best type of play is 50% mental and 50% physical. Get your cat thinking, especially if you have a cat who paces, keeps you up all night looking for trouble, or is overwhelming other animals or people in your household with there over-the-top play.
Here he is learning how to give up the toy without launching himself at me (only happened once!), sit to get the game started again, and some target training. His owners will be able to apply these new skills later when he will be in the same room as one of the other cats so we can keep him focused and encourage him to move away from the other cat. (He's a bit....exuberant).
!!!PLAYING TUG WITH DOGS MAKES THEM AGGRESSIVE!!!
Just kidding, no it doesn't. That's dumb.
Tug *with rules* is one of the best and most useful exercises you can do with your dog to work on impulse control, listening skills, desensitization around new/scary things, and wear them out with 50/50 brain & body stimulation.
Teaching puppies to be "addicted" to fetch and tug from a young age can really help with off-leash training and ability to ignore distractions later on.
It's also great to have something that your dog is pumped about and motivated to "work" for other than just food.
How to wear out a dog with bad joints. Chasing balls, running on pavement, and "dog parks" (great way to spend your day breaking up a fight) aren't the only options!
#trainyourdog
#spotondogtraining
Teaching settle or "relax" on cue is very handy.
