It seems that "everyone" who tries clicker training is SO AMAZED at the awesome instant results. Everyone has wonderfully fast and consistent results from day one. No one ever has any obstables to training, or the obstacles are easily dissolved with just a few clicks . . .
Well, I guess I'm not everyone, and I've yet to hear about the real struggles or unsuccessful attempts at clicker training a possibly unwilling or unruly animal. I'm not talking about the abused psycho dog, or the scared to death row kitty, they just need positive human attention. I'm talking about the regular house cat, who is already living the high life, and is either not food or praise motivated, or just too lazy or spastic to pay attention. Or the animal that never seems to connect the click with the treat. Or the animal that has so many negative actions accompanying the desired action that it's almost impossible to separate what is actually being clicked. I get ready to click for a nose touch and just as a click the cat has shoved the target into it's mouth and is trying to kill it.
Come on, can we inject a little bit of reality here. Cause all the wonderful success stories are no help when you have one of the above animal. I want to know what people did when things DIDN'T go the way the book dictates it should. Seems the biggest divide is that while dolphins and horses and dogs really want to please you, the cat could care less.
What do you do when after 3 or 4 session of just click and treat, the animal still doesn't show a definite response when it hears the clicker. It's just enjoying the treats you give it and doesn't care if you stop. Or it is so busy attacking you for the treats it pays no attention to the click, and doesn't even see when you put the treat down for it to eat!
What do you do when the cat would just as readily attack the target stick as look at it and you spend more time extracting the stick from teeth and claws as trying to just show it to the cat so you can click for the cat looking at it.
What do you do when you want the cat to just touch it's nose to the stick, but it does so by swiping it with it's claw, and dragging it into its maw. I don't want to reward biting. and i don't want to reward scratching. He does too much of that already. But I've got three actions and I only want to reward one. Do I not click when he uses his paws to pull the target to his face? then we get nowhere cause that's standard kitten behavior.
I don't know where people got all their calm kitties. that just sniff at things . My cat wants to kill everything, including me. it doesn't"start to lift" it's paw, it's LIGHTNING CLAW! It doesn't curiously sniff at the end of the stick, it is JAWS. You never see it till it's got you.
I've got the book, I've read it, but it assumes everything goes perfectly from the start.
So any normal regular people with normal regular pets who've had normal regular experiences that they can give advice about?
Thanks for comments, Tips. Additional clarifications and Queries
Hey Snickdog, thanks for the anecdotes. My BF's mom has to glucose test a cat too. Thankfully he's a senior and not psycho! LOL.
I will be training him for the dinner plate too, though most of his dinner gets ate during Training.
Thanks Naynay for the suggestion of incompatible behaviors. I'll have to think of some.
Thanks for the link to the video. It's hard to find quality video of people training cats properly. I've seen so many that aren't training correctly that it is frustrating. this was very neat to see.
I'm gonna have to figure out how to train an incompatible behavior to non-aggressive biting/scratching. See Bean is not attacking when he claws he's just trying to jump in my lap, or put his paws on my chest to stand up. And he often bites me not when he's mad, but when he's pleased, or calm. Also, he will bite at times when I can't remove my hand, like when I'm picking him up, or holding him. If I just remove my hand, then won't he learn that he can train me to avoid him my biting even when I need to hold him? Right now "ssss" works to stop him from doing something like chewing a single cord, so I don't have to pick him up, but sometimes he gets tangled in many cords and wrestles with them. Then I have to untangle him, but I have to hold him to do so. "sss" makes him stop but the tangles hold him so he starts again, and when I reach for him, the biting goes from the cord to my hand. If I remove my hand, he keeps chewing the cord, but if I let him bite me I can remove him from the tangle,but get bit. What mouth oriented behavior is incompatible with biting? Should I put my hand near his mouth and C/T for not opening his mouth or biting? What about when he does bite and I'm not training him?
Maybe I'm dense, cause I don't know how to fade a behavior that's on it's own variable schedule and i have to reward it's opposite which is happening all of the time he's not doing it??!!??!!??. How do I reward not doing something when everything else is not the behavior. Should I entice him to bite and then reward him for not biting?
Again, I'm loving the advice and there are so many other things that he can and is learning. I just don't want me or other people to be afraid of him because he's trying to be affectionate in his own way.
Clicker training obnoxious/unwilling/unruly animals
Hi,
Sounds like you're making some strides here! Regarding your first post: I am a behavior consultant who also lives in a full house: 4 dogs, 4 cats, 2 bunnies, a couple of reptiles and an ever-changing assortment of boarding and foster pets. I use clicker training exclusively with all of them, and I started well before I became a professional -- Clicker Training is what really got me fascinated by animal behavior! 3 of the dogs in my home are Siberian Huskies, including at this point one adolescent Sibe... believe me, there are few as contrary as an adolescent Sibe... I discovered clicker training when our first Sibe was an adolescent and we were ready to send her back to the breeder due to her shenanigans. I haven't looked back since, and she's absolutely lovely now!
Anyway, we have a cat named Psycho Killer... yes, he hates people when they're not polite (or for that matter, most other times, too!). Clicker Training turned him into different cat. We started when he was diagnosed with diabetes, and we needed to do injections and blood glucose monitoring at home. Not something we were looking forward to as this is a 20 lb Tux that's all attitude: if you patted him when he didn't want you to, you would end up with 4 sets of claws and his jaws around your arm, and he wouldn't let go.
We started out just teaching him calm behavior, like sitting for his dinner (my cats aren't free-fed, they have set mealtimes). Sitting calmly got his plate put down... then we started withholding it a bit until he could wait until we put it down before attacking (grin). Once we were getting calm behavior elsewhere, we started targeting... then teaching follow the target. Next, we started teaching him to allow us to touch his paws momentarily, working our way up to holding his paws. The key is to take it really really slow, never work for more than 2 or 3 minutes at a time, and to find something the cat goes nuts for as a reward. Killy loves cream cheese, so having a spoon of cream cheese nearby and offering a lick or two was his reward. Within a week of working with him, we were able to start doing blood glucose tests on his hind paw pads 2-4 times daily... without a trip to the (human) hospital to extract cat claws and teeth.
Look at the documents on site that pertain to clicker training Feral Cats for some great ideas on how slow to go with this kid, and as well, dig through the videos here for ones by Jacqueline Munera -- here's one:
http://clickertraining.tv/product.html?item=FREE-36
I used Jacque's videos to teach another of my cats who was known to be annoying at feeding time to go to his 'spot' and stay there in order to get fed.
Have fun!
Jo Jacques, CDBC, CPDT, CPCT
WiggleBums! Dog-Friendly Training & Behavior
President, International Siberian Husky Club
Mods based on watching Chickens
I looked at some chickens doing clicker training( very interesting),and this evening tried a couple of things differently.
First I played with the kitty a good bit to take some of his energy down, and maybe get some of the attack out of him.
Secondly, I switched to using the dinner food rather than the soft treats. It's a bit messier, but it worked better with Qiwi also, so . . .
Third I tried starting with something that was pretty much no fail. He's been wearing a walking harness all day in prep for a road trip. I put it on him before playing and feeding in the hopes that the play and food will distract him from chewing the harness, and that appears to be working.So I hooked the lead to the harness. of course he immediately began chewing on the lead, but I clicked as he came closer and . . .
This is the fourth. I think he couldn't see the treats before. So based on what I saw with the chickens ( pecking an area, starting large and getting smaller) I put the treat on a large yogurt lid. Hard to miss.
So I clicked him for walking toward me, and I clicked for walking with me a certain distance. That was easy since he walked toward me in anticipation of the treat, and was less distracted by the lead touching his face and back. I did this till he seemed to understand that walking to/with me is what got the click, not flopping and chewing the lead.
So then I took the harness off and decided to try for the nose-to-wand again since I still had his attention. I don't know if this was right or if it was shaping, but I first clicked for him to sit. I treated him away from that spot so he'd have to stand, and then sit again. once he was sitting kinda calm like, I reintroduced the wand again. He accidentally turned and bopped his head and I clicked for it and treated. He kept coming back to sit position, and the wand would touch his ear and he'd turn again and bop! after a few more times he started actually touching his nose on purpose.
Learning seemed to be happening cause twice he raised only his paw to grab it but tentatively ( not like the swiping, mouth stuffing motion of before), and I didn't click. Then he only touched it with his nose, mouth closed and I clicked. I'm glad he didn't try to bite it, otherwise I would have been rewarding the wrong thing. But I think the exercise before calmed the scratch/bite urge a bit. unfortunately I ran out of beef, but by the end he was nosing it on purpose.
So this wasn't a perfect session, We still had a fight at the beginning over the harness, cause he still had some energy at that point.
So Next time I will:
Exercise him before training, drain some energy
Use a large target for the treat delivery
Try an unfocused no fail activity before trying a focused activity.
I'm fighting his urge to swat, which is one of the things the cat clicker book says to encourage as tricks, ( high five and waving) I need him to think, and right now as a kitten, he's too used to just acting. I'm still trying to figure out how to get him to quit running up me like a tree, claws extended. And also not to bite.
Here are some ideas
Train him to do an incompatable behavior to fix the running at you with claws extended. For example, train him to sit on cue. When he has got that down, every time he comes running at you tell him to sit. He can't sit and run at you at the same time, plus the sitting gets him what he wants food or attention (if that is indeed his goal). Same thing can happen with the biting. He can't sit and bite you at the same time.
Also when he is biting you, try not to move your hands or push him away. Just like a dog, this can become a game and be fun thus rewarding. Instead, stand up and just stare at the ceiling, unmoving. And then tell him 'sit' or whatever incompatable behavior you came up with.
Well, I hope that helped you out or at least gave you some ideas. Good luck!