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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Look at that cat!

I was flipping through my copy of Control Unleashed recently, and decided to give the Look at That! game another try with Lotte (now that we've been using the clicker more lately, and she's gotten more savvy to it). I've been playing with it on walks, mostly with people across the street and barking dogs behind fences so far.

Where I've seen the most impact, however, has been at home. One of my biggest issues with Lotte has been her chasing Doc (the older kitty) and pestering him. Now, while Doc does know how to tell Lotte to back off, he doesn't appreciate being chased or barked at, and generally spends most of his time upstairs - where Lotte isn't - if she's out.

On a spur one morning, I threw a handful of treats on the kitchen table while Lotte was outside, and set my clicker next to my coffee. Gave the cats their food, let Lotte in, and immediately started clicking her every time she looked at the cats. Amazingly enough, I am to the point of being able to feed the cats right in front of her with no complains from either party. For even more fun, I was giving both Lotte and Doc treats for sitting next to each other (the finicky old cat who turns his nose up at most everything under the sun is rather fond of Lotte's soft training tidbits... go figure).

It'll take more mornings like this and some time before anything changes permanently (point in case, someone chased Doc about this morning), but I have been told already that Lotte has been relatively mellow with the cats all week. That, right there, is enough for me to keep going.

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