We had our 14th Cat session with Jedda yesterday, it was slightly less than satisfying as she went back to pinned ears and nose stuck out when Kate got closer this time. Should we have increased the distance again to stay just under this level of reaction? Kate said she very much felt this was not aggression directed towards her, but "stay out of my space you rude person!" When I reviewed the video it didn't look as bad as I expected, but Jedda wasn't nearly as engaged in the process as during the previous session. Jedda was unusually "grumpy" and evasive with having her halter put on beforehand though as well, I tried CAT with the halter, but CT worked best to settle her in the end. She also chased Pedro away from me while this was going on, just wanted to play clicks with me on her terms at liberty I think. Do I just write this down to a bad hair day? Someone said on 5Q that JRR said to "trust the organism"........Jed has always gone two steps forward and one back throughout all her training, KF Hemplfling calls it 'the confounded 4th day' of learning.......As an experiment I did about 5 minutes of CAT with her in the pen and me as decoy using the same approach run but with one hand slightly extended, and she was touching my hand nicely, but then walked to the far side of the pen and stood for some minutes *yawn* with her butt to me. Then she turned and quite briskly walked up and touched my hand again.
HI Laurel -
I have noticed that it is not a good idea to think in terms of good hair days or a grumpy mood etc- it does not matter the reason but the fact that she is giving the actions then you take care of them ala CAT (even those given to Kate) I would go back behind the threshold and start. Don't fall into the explaining trap now - remember that if you don't take heed of her yelling at you (in this case) you might be proving to her that there is something to worry about....
now if it was early on in your CAT trials and you saw her present as I have underlined...what would you say to explain this?
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