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?
