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Successful Cat Training – 3 Rules To Follow
Cat training is not always easy, but it is
possible. Though your cat may seem too independent and stubborn to
change its behavior, you can get the job done if you make a commitment
to the right strategies.
There are a few basic tents of successful training about whichever
cat owner should be aware. Let us look at three of those cat training
fundamentals:
The Need for Immediacy
Cats are incredibly smart animals, but they do not necessarily make
the same kind of connections people do with respect to cause and
effect. That is why it is essential to take action immediately when you
observe inappropriate behavior. If your response is delayed by even a
few seconds, it will lose a great deal of its effectiveness.
Never assume that your cat will remember what it did earlier in a
day or that the cat will make any connection between your discipline
and past behavior. Rarely, if ever, will that happen. If you correct
your pet for something it did earlier, it will have no idea of why it
is being corrected and may incorrectly link your actions to the
behavior displayed immediately before you took action.
Encouraging Alternative Behaviors
One of the best ways to teach your cat not to engage in an
undesirable behavior is to encourage the animal to do something else
instead. This strategy works even better when the encouraged behavior
is completely incompatible with the undesired action. This technique
works because cats, like all animals, are more responsive to positive
reinforcement.
You will have greater success encouraging and rewarding what you
would like to see than you will by trying to stop what you do not.
Instead of discouraging your cat from scratching a table leg, encourage
your pet to exercise that instinct on its scratching post!
Avoiding Physical Discipline
Physical punishment will not contribute to successful cat training.
Negative reinforcements do not work well for cats and hitting or
otherwise physically reprimanding your pet will only make your
relationship more difficult while inspiring unnecessary fear in the
animal.
Cats are not always the easiest animals to train, but if one
approaches the project with the right attitude and strategies, it is
possible to direct a cat’s behavior. The three elements of cat training
we’ve discussed all share features common to all successful
techniques--they are all based on the understanding that positive
reinforcement offers the greatest chance of success and that cat owners
should always use the least aggressive means of correcting behavior.
Those three rules of thumb are at the very core of smart cat training.
Tags: Cat Training and Behavior Cat Training Successful Cat Training – 3 Rules To Follow teach your cat training techniques |
