Skills for Every Day

My wife and I have a eight-year-old cat named Phoebus, whom she rescued as a kitten. When she found him, he was one week away from being put to sleep by the local shelter; his mother had leukemia, and of his entire litter, only he had survived. He's a great cat, with a firm but sweet disposition, and, until recently, he had never been clicker trained. He did all the normal things you want a cat to do—use a litter box, hunt mice, play, purr—but he also did some of the normal things you don't want a cat to do.

"Come" is no harder to shape than any other behavior BUT in real life it has a huge component of criteria to raise. Start indoors. Use a clicker and desired treat, not kibble, for several one-or-two minute training sessions daily. Call the dog, and click if he comes toward you. Do this in your living room. Call him from a few feet, and click, when he takes one step, then more steps, of if he comes right to you. Then call him back and forth between two people. Click and treat good responses. Ignore poor responses. If you get more than one or two poor responses, retreat to an earlier shaping step and reshape upwards; this just means you don't have the behavior at that criterion level yet.