I think I might have made some small progress last night with Lenneth. We worked before supper with little chopped up bits of her beef tongue while Red was in his crate eating, not hanging around trying to figure out why I was clicking and not feeding him. I spent about 5 minutes just clicking and offering a piece of food as fast as I could. I had initially set a timer for 3 minutes, but it took her so long to investigate the treat, decide it was food, leave the room because a cat was looking at her, wander back in and chew the 1-cm morsel thoroughly, that I went a little longer. In hindsight I should have stuck to a fixed number of treats and locked up all the cats as well. She seemed to show some curiousity this time, althought it wasn't Red's slavering attention. At least she turned her head slightly and looked at my treat hand occasionally when she heard the click. I'll work with her again tonight on the same thing. I want to make sure that she's formed some association between click and treat before I start asking her to make an association between behavior and click.
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I tried the same drill with Marduk a little later that night. Cat treat-delivery is much more difficult! He goes crazy for canned food so I was using a little dab on my fingertip for his treat, but he definitely takes much longer than Red to eat and re-engage. I can tentatively say that the clicker is charged for him now, but I feel like I should do one more session to be sure.
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I really don't remember this being so hard with Red... that dog must have spoiled me! I appreciate him more and more as I work with other animals. We worked last night on Treat Zen in two 3-minute sessions. By the end of the second one, I had a treat in my open hand under his nose, following his motion as he looked away, and he would totally ignore it until I dropped it or held it out in my fingertips. If when I work with him tonight he does as well at the beginning of the session I'll pass him through Level 1 there.
