IT'S OOOOOOOON! HERE, my two daughters and I had a big competition-really serious stuff ;-).
My daughters have been asking me for another cat. Ahhhhh, surely we don't have enough animals with five dogs and a cat....LOL. My youngest daughter especially wants a cat, one that she can carry around more. My girls are both cat people and to be fair they have done an excellent good job taking care of our current cat- Kimmie. I have never had to feed Kimmie, or do the litter box, I do occasionally have to remind them to scoop the box, and I do occasionally have to bug them to brush her, and I do occasionally brush her because I do not want her to mat, but that is the extent of what I have to do.
As part of her campaign to get a new kitty and show how good she was with her cat my youngest challenged me to a contest. We would see who could clicker train a trick to their animal first. Neither of my kids have ever clicker trained or shaped anything so I said well, that would be great and I gave my daughter the choice of who I had to train. LOL, surprisingly they challenged me to train Cricket. My daughter is SOOOO CUTE, she was seriously thinking about what her criteria was and what she would click for, she asked me to throw the treat for her but she was doing the training and making all the decisions-I just followed her directions-TOO CUTE!! It really was so much fun to see the girls doing some training, that has always been "my" thing so they have never really shown an interest in doing much....but watching them they have picked up quite a bit more then I knew ;-).
HERE IS MY YOUNGEST CLICKER TRAINING THE CAT
IN the interest of fairness I told them they should rethink that because Cricket could learn just about any trick really quickly, I offered to train all the dogs, except Chloe who my older daughter was supposed to train.
My youngest has been a training fool with the cat and taught her to go through a hoop, not an easy task for a first try at shaping--given Kimmie is an older cat. She is doing great at it, and is now also trying to teach her to touch a target stick.
A RARE APPEARANCE BY SKYLER, CHLOE, LIZZIE, BREEZE AND CRICKET all doing their hoop trick
My oldest daughter will not admit she is teaching her dog Chloe, LOL, she trains when she thinks we will not see her, so no way was I going to get her on tape. My oldest daughter is 15 1/2 and definitely not into doing what mom does, LOL.
So soon all the animals in our home will jump through hoops, we can start a circus! WHOO HOOO!
As a side note I have been doing some simple training with the dogs to foster harmony in the pack, and it is going wonderfully, in the video there is a picture of Chloe and Lizzie working together, in the same room, they could not do that a few months ago, I am pretty proud of that-I will post more about that on another day!