Qiwi's Tribute to Kiwi, the Smart Cat. continued . . .

In the last blog entry, I wrote how Qiwi and I were going to learn how to do high fives in honor of the Late Kiwi, Maia's Smart Cat. Well it has been a long time and while we got the practice off to a good start, family gatherings, road trips and job searches took up more and more of my attention. We haven't practiced any clicker training in over a month now.

While visiting a friends home, Qiwi was acting finicky about her beef dinner. It was the third time she'd begged for food and refused and I was worried that the meat was going to go off. So I decided to trick he into taking it as a treat. I dangled it in the air before her nose, and when I got her attention, I hid it away. She seems baffled for a moment then lifted her paw into the air. "oh my goodness, she remembers!" I said "touch it" and put out my finger and she touched it. After that she felt entitled to her "treat: and gobbled it happily.

That was last week. Today was beef day again, so I cut up twenty treat size pieces and got the plate and clicker, but not the wand. This time instead of presenting the wand or just my finger, I presented my whole hand in the high five position. This usually puts her off and she backs away looking affronted but this time she just looked at it for a moment and pawed it right in the middle. I used to say touchit, so I said it once to make sure she know what we were doing, then thereafter I said "high five" (I figured I can use "touch it" for some other project now)

With only one walk away in the middle, we got through 20 high fives in less than 5 minutes.

I have enough snacks for two more sessions. But I think this is the first trick that she has learn completely and by cue. I still have to train for one-hundred percent cue, But I am proud of Qiwi.

I hope Maia and Kiwi can be proud too. Thanks for the inspiration!