30 Tricks in 30 Days – Update Day 5

Things are going well! Now, we have a LONG way to go, but we are trudging through school around here. I have laid down the basics for a half a dozen new tricks, and I have cleaned up a bunch of other behaviors they already know.

Cosmo is proving to be much more interested then I suspected, to the point I now have to separate her while I train the others because she prances into the middle of a session and insists that it is her turn!

Asia is back to being ’so so’ when it comes to treat motivation. She was this way when she was younger so I have employed a new tactic. We work with her favorite wand toy instead of treats! I will show how that works in upcoming videos. I sometimes use ‘pets’ as reward for Bayou since he loves attention so much.

Dexter….well….Dexter loves food, so there is not much to stop him from accepting a treat. No issues there.

I picked up some new props, and I am excited to try those out. Here is a sneak peak of one that Bayou really likes:

I am learning quite a bit with these intense training sessions. Fine tuning some of my techniques, and overall, everyone has been super enjoying the time.

Here is one item learned……keep props far away from the training area or you end up with things you were not looking for.

One of the largest things I have learned in this process, is that I need to selectively video sessions. My camera storage capacity and battery life cannot match the decision making time required by a cat. So rather then start investing in additional hard drives, I have decided to choose what I film carefully.

As I start to solidify some behaviors I will start posting those complete videos up.

So far so good!