Thursday, July 30, 2015

Cats Can Do Tricks Too!


Who said tricks were only for dogs?? Here's KitKat doing 3 tricks (the only tricks he knows haaa), sit, high five, and paw shake. I used clicker training to teach him to do this and it was surprisingly a lot faster than I thought it would be! He picked up pretty quickly and it only took a few sessions/days for him to master these tricks. Not bragging or anything but KitKat's pretty much an evil genius (he taught himself to open doors too just from observing me). If you have a cat (or any pet for that matter - I've seen bunnies respond well to clicker training too) and want to train them to do tricks, you should definitely try out clicker training!

Reasons why clicker training is so effective:
-animal associates the distinctive "click" sound with the behaviour & is prepared for the reward
-less confusion since the click sound isn't something the animal hears all the time, unlike your voice
-allows you to click right as the animal is doing the appropriate behaviour

Tips for clicker training:
-the shorter the sessions the better - animals have short attention spans yo
-cats are infamous for doing their own thing and not caring too much about pleasing their owners/peasants - make sure the reward is something your cat really likes and you'll be more likely to succeed
-if your pet loses interest during a training session, stop and try again another time/day

Here's an old video of him when he was first learning how to high five:


Useful Links
-CLICKER TRAINING (CAT) TUTORIAL
-Clicker training for cats
-Clicker Training for Cats by Karen Pryor
-Clicker Training for Clever Cats: Learning Can Be Fun! by Martina Braun

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