"Clickertraining with my two cats" by Any

I started a project in "Learning how to Learn" with my two cats Gin and Mary.
My goal was teaching them tricks with the "clickertraining method" which means that I "mark" a desirable behavior with a click, and after that I reward the behavior with a treat.
This means it would be an experiment of classical conditioning after Iwan Petrowitsch Pawlow.

For this clickertraining method the right "timing" is very important. If the cats does something she should do, I made a click in the moment, she does it.
One second later she gets a "reward" - a treat - for her action.

As it is known, it´s much harder to teach cats or even get their attention than working with e.g. dogs.
Expecially my two cats have a very strong character.
They are very autonomous and just do what THEY want to do.

So I had the idea it would be great if I could bring them into a "focused mode".
I knew I had to practice a lot but when I started to read about "clickertraining" it became clear that cats cannot focus on something new very long (pormodoro technique for about 3 minutes).
I learned that I myself have to stay focused and also let them time to excercise (haha, thats what I call "the crazy five minutes of a cat") or to sleep (I learned that cats sleep about 16 hours per day).


THE PROJEKT

I started my learning project with Gin and Mary on October 14th and I was very excited if and how they behaved.
Also I was hoping to learn from this project how or if I could use the results of this expential project in my life (does any of the methods I learned the last few weeks here work for the cats/for me?)

Before the training started I read a book about clickertraining with cats ("Clickertraining für Katzen" von Martina Braun http://www.amazon.de/Clickertraining-f%C3%BCr-Katzen-Erziehung-macht/dp/3861271249), I did internet research (Clicker Training for Cats: The Basics (http://www.catster.com/cat-behavior/clicker-training-for-cats) and read about classical conditioning after Iwan Petrowitsch Pawlow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning).

My motivation starting this project/experiment was getting a better understanding of IF and if yes HOW my cats learn new things. I hoped it would strengthen our relationship and communication and I was very excited in the results.

Training with my cats - 1st day:

I realized that Gin and Mary are afraid of the noisy clicker I bought. So I tried to use my voice to make a sound of a click. That was much better.

My goal of the first day was teaching them „something easy“. After 5 minutes without any success I realized that Gin and Mary weren´t focused. I decided to start working with just one cat at the moment and I started with Gin. She is the more curious cat and I thought she was kind of understanding  that I wanted something from her. First she did not really get what it was but as I said she was curious.

I put Mary in another room so I could work with Gin.

I showed her the yummy treats she loves, and she immediately was in the focused mode. As I mentioned before I wanted to start with something easy. That was „staying in the focussed mode“.

I wanted her to look me in the eyes. Whenever she looked into my eyes I clicked and gave her the treat. Timing is very important for the clickertraining method. As soon as the cat does the expected action I have to click and at the latest one second later she has to get the reward/treat for the action.

After one minute of training with Gin I opened the door and Mary was interested what we were doing. So I thought she could learn by watching us doing the excercises. Gin was not really focused any more so I learned from Gin that one or two minutes are enough of training (promodoro technique will only work for about 2-5 minutes for cats).

I gave them time for the diffused mode of thinking and hoped, they would remember the things we learned for the next session.

About six hours later (they were sleeping, playing and eating) I did the second session clickertraining with Gin and Mary. Mary was not interested. Gin was not remembering what we did before. I had to start from the beginning. Sitting down on the floor with the treats in my hand waiting till she was looking into my eyes. Than there was the click and she got one treat.

I learned that her memory was not as good, that she really got what I wanted from her from the beginning of the second session, but it was easier to teach her than before.

2nd day till now:

When I got the box with the treats on the second day I shook it and said „do you want to play??“ immediately Gin AND Mary were focused. So I clicked and started the training.

First they got a treat whenever they looked me into the eyes. Than I started with the second lesson: „give me five“. After about 8 more training sessions Gin was perfect in this!

I teached her 4 single steps like it was discribed in the book I read.  This was the process.

1.       Gin moves her paw on the floor – click

2.       Gin moves her paw off the floor – click

3.       Gin moves her paw to my hand – click

4.       Gin moves her paw to my hand and  touches my hand – click

When she combined all 4 steps it was the procuct „give me five“.

That was a new way of „Chunking“! It was obvious that I had to practice every little step like chunks so that Gin could come into the process of doing what I wanted from her. It was not the result I was teaching her, it were a lot of little movements that, after all, resulted in „give me five“ – the product.

Mary was not as fast as Gin but one day she was around and watched Gin and me doing the training. When Mary was focused and willing she was learning from Gin. I noticed that she was looking at her sister and tried to copy what she did. So in the end she learned from watching the „product“ and not learning all the little steps in the process that made it a little bit easier for Mary to learn. So working with others was perfectly proven by Mary as a good and easy way of learning new things by just watching her sister.

What I learned from the beginning of my project was that cats can´t stay focused more then 3-5 minutes. It is very easy to distract them with sounds so I try to practice with radio, inside and outside, in different places to teach them to stay focused in different „test-enviroments“.

I´m happy that this experiment showed me how you can teach even cats in doing and learning new things. If they are willing and of course the treats have to be yummie you can achieve a lot of results.

If I´m not focused, the cats aren´t focused as well.

It is proven by my cats that practice and repetition helps them to keep things in mind. I hope this will be something for their long term memory. But I couldn´t prove this in just two weeks. I´m sure I will continue in this clickertraining method, in 2 years I can tell you if clickertraining is like a storage warehouse for my cats.

After this two weeks I can summarize that I learned a lot about learning!

There are a lot of similarities in learning techniques between human beings and cats. The contact between me and my cats is stronger than before and this is a very nice byproduct of this project/experiment.

I made a youtube video to introduce myself and give you a short introduction into clickertraining and to show our results. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lLSePavvU4

I hope, you enjoy the text and the video and I love to get feedback from you!

All the best, happy learners! :-)

ANY