Master Cat Training with These Simple Tips
Discover the ultimate guide to cat training in this episode of Vetsplanation featuring Kay Rutland and Poppy Foxheart from Cascade Canine. From solving common issues like scratching and biting to successful leash training, these experts share their proven methods. Enhance your cat's behavior and strengthen your bond with practical, positive reinforcement techniques. Listen now for essential tips every cat owner needs to know!
What You’ll Learn:
Expert tips on stopping cats from scratching furniture
Techniques to reduce and prevent cat biting
Steps for successful leash training for cats
The importance of positive reinforcement in cat training
How to use alternative behaviors to replace undesirable actions
Understanding and addressing the root causes of cat behavior issues
Practical advice for integrating new pets into the household
Insights into cooperative care and handling for cats
The benefits of training foundational behaviors like recall
How to create a stress-free environment for better cat behavior
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"With cats and with any creature, the use of punishment is not only not necessary, but it will often create side effects that you don't want." - Kay Rutland
"Scratching is a biological and behavioral need. We don't want to take scratching away from cats... but we do want to direct what they're scratching." - Poppy Foxheart
"If you only taught your cat one thing, if you thought it would be a fun idea to try training a cat something very simple, if you only trained the one thing, it would be a recall." - Poppy Foxheart
Resources From This Episode:
Cascade Canine Training & Behavior
Products Mentioned:
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Read The Transcript:
[00:00:00] Dr. Sugerman: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Vetsplanation. I'm so excited for today's episode because we have a special treat in store for all of you pet lovers out there. So today we are joined by not one, but two fantastic trainers from Cascade Canine.
So don't let the name be deceiving. Even though it's Cascade Canine, they actually do work with other animals as well. And then today we'll be diving into the fascinating world of animal training with a particular focus on our feline friends.
We'll discuss how to address common issues like scratching furniture, biting, and even how to train your cat to walk on a leash. So get ready for some expert insights and practical tips that you can apply at home.
Before we dive in, don't forget, if you like what we do to make sure you like and subscribe and tell your friends about us. All right, let's get started.
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vetsplanation. I am so excited today because I have not one, but two trainers on from Cascade Canine. I am going to have you introduce yourselves. If you don't mind starting, I'll have you start Kay.
[00:01:05] Kay Rutland: Yeah, sure. So I'm Kay Rutland. I'm the co owner of Cascade Canine Training and Behavior. I've been working with dogs and animals in general since I graduated in 2010. I started working as a zookeeper at Point Defiance Zoo, then took that on to, yeah, I then became, started my own business as pet sitting and pet training.
And then the business kind of evolved over time. I became a parent and brought Poppy on board and our business has just grown ever since. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. At home I have two kids, I have one dog and two cats and a leopard gecko.
[00:01:47] Dr. Sugerman: Oh, I got a leopard gecko too.
[00:01:49] Kay Rutland: Yeah.
[00:01:50] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:01:50] Kay Rutland: They're super fun.
[00:01:51] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And Poppy, how about you?
[00:01:55] Poppy Foxheart: I'm Poppy Foxheart, she/they, I don't have a leopard gecko. I'm, I'm sad to report.
[00:02:00] Dr. Sugerman: I'm not sure if we can have you on after this, but that's okay. We'll, we'll, we'll let it slide.
[00:02:04] Poppy Foxheart: I didn't know it was a leopard show. I do have two cats and a dog, and the dog have some leopard spots. So maybe that could count.
[00:02:11] Dr. Sugerman: We'll, we'll, we'll let it slide for now. Yeah.
[00:02:16] Poppy Foxheart: I have been a lifelong animal trainer of one kind or another.
Even when I was a little kid, I remember that my family dog was going deaf. And so I enjoyed trying to train her to follow hand signals. In retrospect, who knows how good that was. I was a kid, but I've always had some kind of work or volunteer connection to animals, and at some point I decided to make it real.
I was tired of giving unpaid, quasi educated advice to friends. I still knew more than they did, but I thought let's make it real. And I went and pursued certification. Kay and I both have the same credential. We're both Karen Pryor Academy certified training partners.
[00:02:56] Dr. Sugerman: Can you tell me what that means?
[00:02:57] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah. So in the U.S., there is no regulation for pet trainers.
There isn't any kind of certifying body, unfortunately, that is nationwide that everyone agrees upon. In other countries, you have to take an examination to even be called a dog trainer. But here, anyone can call themselves an animal trainer without any education, so it makes it very hard for people to help dig through everyone's claims and know who they should trust to get information from. However, within that there are educational institutions, there are guilds and memberships that people can have that clarify not only what kind of education you have, but also what kinds of ethical and practical agreements you've made for how you will be training animals.
[00:03:46] Dr. Sugerman: So meaning like positive training versus negative training type thing, right?
[00:03:50] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah, meaning I am a person, for example, both Kay and I are positive reinforcement trainers. I would definitely identify myself as force free, even though it's a complicated notion. But for me, what that means is that when I have the opportunity to train an animal and my job is behavior change, I will always be looking for, I will never want to intentionally use force to create the behaviors I want to see.
[00:04:11] Dr. Sugerman: Got it.
[00:04:13] Poppy Foxheart: Also different certifications might mean that you have more education in behavior modification versus, trick training. It might mean that you have additional education in different ways. And, oh, and also other species because you can get certifications in other species.
[00:04:33] Kay Rutland: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Poppy Foxheart: The Karen Pryor Academy, the, the accreditation that both Kay and I have is a multi species credential.
I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area and I moved up here to Tacoma about three and a half years ago. And shortly after that met Kay and joined Cascade Canine.
[00:04:52] Dr. Sugerman: Very nice. So you primarily do dogs and cats, is that correct? And then Kay, do you
also do leopard gecko training?
[00:05:02] Kay Rutland: That's the grand idea, right? Is that we got the leopard gecko and I'm going to have some really cute training videos of him learning how to touch his nose to a target stick. Yeah. So like I, to go further on with what Poppy was saying too, is that, with behavior in particular, there's a lot of certifications you can get, but there's no governing body for it.
I have a degree in animal behavior psychology but there's no real governing body saying that somebody else can't claim the same thing. We were talking about this earlier, but Yeah,
[00:05:33] Dr. Sugerman: That's pretty crazy.
[00:05:34] Kay Rutland: And I'm sorry you asked me too if I train other animals. Yes, like I obviously have a really big background of working with zoo animals. I've recently been working with some horses here and there and then obviously cats and dogs. So the thing that I think important to remember is that animals all learn the same way, right?
So we can use the same principles that we use with dog training with any animal and with humans. So yeah, we can use it with any animal we want.
[00:06:01] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. That's good to know, especially because today we decided to talk about cats and is it even possible to train a cat?
What do you guys think?
Yeah?
[00:06:12] Poppy Foxheart: Absolutely.
[00:06:13] Dr. Sugerman: Okay.
[00:06:14] Poppy Foxheart: Maybe, maybe not just possible, maybe critical.
[00:06:17] Dr. Sugerman: Critical. I do like that. I think that is true as well. So let's talk about some of the things that people really want to know about like how you train your cats.
So I think one of the very first things is can you train a cat to stop scratching your furniture?
[00:06:34] Poppy Foxheart: Yes. Absolutely. So I think when it comes to scratching furniture, scratching is a biological and behavioral need. We don't want to take scratching away from cats. It's a stress release. It helps them shed the nail sheaths, so it's good for their body, good for their brain. We don't want them to stop scratching, but we do want to direct what they're scratching.
There are a lot of options for how we can train a cat to stop scratching our furniture. My personal favorite one is just get different furniture that you don't mind your cat scratching.
[00:07:09] Dr. Sugerman: That's a great idea. Yeah.
[00:07:11] Poppy Foxheart: To an extent that's not a terrible solution. There are materials that cats, in general, don't really enjoy scratching, and that's the option that we've taken, is I've bought a couch that's made out of microfiber. That's a pet friendly material, and looks kind of like, like velvety kind of material, and none of the cats are interested in scratching it.
And so no more cat scratching. But we have to pay attention to what kinds of, first of all, if we're trying to get, we have to provide an alternative. We can't just ask them to stop scratching our furniture unless we have another alternative for them to scratch. So that might be a scratching post, a scratching box.
There are floor scratchers. There's diagonal ones, vertical ones. IKEA sells this thing. I think it's very affordable and it's just a piece of sisal with three Velcro..
[00:08:02] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:08:02] Poppy Foxheart: Can turn the leg of your, of your dining room table into a scratching post if you want to.
[00:08:08] Dr. Sugerman: I've definitely seen the ones that they, you can put on door handles and stuff too, right?
[00:08:13] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah. Lots of options. Just make sure that it's stable. I don't love the ones that hook over like by a rope because they're, when a cat goes to scratch, they're just going to move. But if you have something that's either adhesive, like that really strong adhesive with command hooks or nailed on, that's awesome.
They make like climbers that go around a door, which is great if you're renting and you can't put stuff into the walls. A great option for a cat to have something to get some vertical space on.
[00:08:41] Dr. Sugerman: Mm hmm.
[00:08:43] Poppy Foxheart: You just want to pay attention to make sure that you have something that.
[00:08:45] Dr. Sugerman: No, no, go ahead.
[00:08:46] Poppy Foxheart: Just making sure that you have something that's tall enough for your cat. That's at an angle that your cat enjoys. Some cats are horizontal scratchers, some cats are vertical scratchers and that it's made out of a material that's appealing to your cats. That's step one is giving them something that you want them to scratch and that they will scratch something that, you know, observe.
What did they scratch in your house? Are they scratching wood? Are they scratching fabric? Are they scratching the carpet? Can we make something that's like that? And then step two would be, can we entice them? Can we positively reinforce them for scratching the thing we want them to scratch? And there are a lot of really great ideas about how we do that too.
[00:09:24] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. I've even seen, so my cat really likes like a, a circle one too.
[00:09:29] Poppy Foxheart: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like the tunnels.
[00:09:32] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So go ahead, Kay.
[00:09:32] Kay Rutland: Yeah, just finding what the cat finds reinforcing is the most important thing because behaviors only exist when they're reinforced, and we know that scratching is naturally reinforcing for the cat, so just trying to punish the cat for scratching an area you don't like is simply not going to work.
It is going to create scratching in other places rather than that spot. And so it's going to seep out in places that you don't like. So finding what the cat finds most reinforcing to scratch on and then providing those opportunities in areas that you like is the really important step there.
[00:10:09] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. I, I think even too sometimes that they just really like scratching boxes. Like super inexpensive, just a box, right? Yeah.
[00:10:17] Kay Rutland: Providing that kind of..
[00:10:18] Poppy Foxheart: Love a box for every animal.
[00:10:20] Kay Rutland: Super good.
[00:10:21] Dr. Sugerman: Right. What do you think about, so you had talked about like positive reinforcement for scratching the thing you want them to scratch. So let's dive into that. What positive reinforcement things can we provide to them?
[00:10:31] Poppy Foxheart: Do you want to do like a popcorn tag team? I'll say a thing, you say a thing. We could put something fragrant that the cat likes on the scratcher that we want them to use. And that might be catnip. It could be honeysuckle spray. It could be paw pad pheromones, right? There's pheromones in those little feet.
So you could rub, rub a paw pad with a cloth and rub that onto your desired scratching post.
[00:10:57] Kay Rutland: Yeah, one of the things that I've noticed with my own cats is that putting those scratching pads in places where they walk by a lot. So scratching can be a form of communication, right? So if they're passing by a specific spot in the hallway a lot, putting a scratching post there might entice them to scratch in that spot because they're communicating with other cats in the house.
[00:11:19] Dr. Sugerman: That's really cool. I didn't even realize that. That's a, that's a great idea just to have them in like a general area where everybody is, right?
[00:11:26] Kay Rutland: Yeah, or just like places where they tend to walk by a lot. So if you have a long hallway that leads to their litter box, or then on the other side of the hallway is where their food is, if they have that spot that they frequent a lot, that's a good spot to put a scratching post.
[00:11:41] Dr. Sugerman: Cool. Was there anything else? Any other popcorn? Okay.
[00:11:46] Poppy Foxheart: Oh yeah, yeah. And then I
[00:11:47] Kay Rutland: We can keep going.
[00:11:49] Poppy Foxheart: There visual matters weirdly. You could take a couple of little forks. I know this is going to sound very silly, but it works. I learned this from another cat behavior consultant. Take a couple of forks, go to your scratching post. And scratch it with your little fake claws because cats see the visual clue as well of a surface that's been scratched invites more scratching.
That's why when your couch is looking pretty ratty, your cats are still working on it because it looks like a scratchable place and your cats will continue to scratch. I also find that doing it gives my cat, if the cat is watching, they're like, wait, wait, what are you doing over there? Is that scratching? Is that scratchable?
So demonstrating a little bit, making it look like it's a fun thing to do. And then what do you do when the cat does scratch? What's the consequence? When they scratch the thing you want them to scratch, could a little treat just land over by the scratching post? Even what Kay was saying, putting it in a place where the cat is passing by a lot, and maybe, maybe you put a couple treats around it, just to inspire a little interest and exploration.
[00:12:54] Dr. Sugerman: Very cool.
[00:12:55] Kay Rutland: I think with a lot of behaviors that we're trying to reward, it's important to have little jars of treats sitting around the house so that you can easily grab something and reward in the moment. So maybe if you have that scratching post, that's like a pedestal and you can put a little jar of treats on top that you can quickly open and give the cat after they've scratched just to say, Hey. You did the right spot.
[00:13:16] Dr. Sugerman: I will ask, since you guys have dogs as well, how do you get the cats the treats without the dogs getting the treats?
[00:13:25] Kay Rutland: Airtight containers. Poppy has a lot of ideas here.
[00:13:27] Poppy Foxheart: Oh, okay. Oh, you meant, oh, you meant like, how do you, do you mean like when you're delivering
[00:13:32] Dr. Sugerman: Yes, when you're delivering them. My cat, exactly, when you're delivering them, because if I went to put a treat out for my cats, I would have three dogs on it immediately. Two dogs. One of them she wouldn't care, but two dogs on them immediately.
[00:13:44] Poppy Foxheart: Probably sprinkling the treats is not a great plan if you do have dogs around, unless there's a gate and the dogs don't have access to it. No, you probably would want to wait until you catch your cat scratching. I love this concept that we talk about all the time in Positive Reinforcement, that you want to catch your animal doing the right thing, catch them in the act of being good.
So I think you can wait and, and perch nearby, and when you see the cat doing it, you can, a little treat goes bazings right past them.
[00:14:12] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. Okay. I like the idea. Were there any other positive reinforcement things?
[00:14:19] Poppy Foxheart: There is some kind of machine that I don't have and I don't know the name of, but there is some sort of device that is a scratching post that dispenses treats.
[00:14:29] Dr. Sugerman: Oh, that's cool.
[00:14:30] Poppy Foxheart: I can't remember the name of it. I'm sure some really motivated person can find it on the internet.
[00:14:36] Dr. Sugerman: Yes.
[00:14:36] Poppy Foxheart: The, the reason why I wouldn't like it is the same reason why I don't like a lot of robot things is that I don't have a lot of choice about which thing comes with the robot.
I like a lot of robot things, but this is the one that's what if it's not the right height, material, angle, texture, whatever, for my cat? Then, it's the only one on offer.
[00:14:56] Dr. Sugerman: There is a really cool one. Yeah, there is a really cool one called Pet Tutor that you can use that you can use for dogs. I wonder if you could still put the same thing in for a cat because it's like when they're quiet it'll do it or you can use a button and it'll just drop it.
[00:15:09] Poppy Foxheart: Mmhmm. Yeah. I have a similar type of robot that is the treat and train, which is the original. It's a little bigger, but it has some different functionality, but same concept. You could set it up on the countertop right above your scratching post or on a shelf above your scratching post. And when you see that scratching happening, you push your button and whoop, treats go down.
[00:15:33] Dr. Sugerman: Perfect. Let's talk about biting. Is there a way to train your cat not to bite you?
[00:15:42] Poppy Foxheart: What an interesting question.
[00:15:44] Kay Rutland: Yeah, I feel like what's important there is what is causing the biting to begin with, right? Because cats aren't just going around saying, hey, I like to bite. It's not, just an ingrained behavior to aggress without reason. So looking at what's causing the behavior to begin with? So is the animal in pain and you are petting them in a place that hurts?
Are they easily overstimulated? And so they resort to biting because they don't like that touch. Yeah. Poppy, do you want to continue?
[00:16:16] Poppy Foxheart: No, I think that's exactly what I would say is I am a current, current family of a four year old cat who for the first two years of her life, at least, was definitely a biter and she was just overstimulated by petting and I will say, I think this is a really good moment to put in something that I think, otherwise, I, I wish I could just, everything I'm about to say, put it in a little capsule, and then later on push a button, and everybody knows I'm referring back to that capsule of information, which is when you are training an animal, especially a cat, since that's what we're talking about.
Using punishment is not only ineffective, but it will do the opposite of what you're hoping it will do. In this instance, if your cat bites you and you go on the internet and you look, what do I do when my cat bites me? I see it in all those cat behavior forums on Facebook. Everybody wants to tell you that you should do something that begins with an S.
You should spray them with water. You should hiss while that's an S. But at the end, you should hiss at them. You should scruff them. You should..
[00:17:17] Dr. Sugerman: Shake a can?
[00:17:18] Poppy Foxheart: You should shake a can. You should swat them. You should spank them. Everybody has an idea about ways that you firmly, you should scold them. You should firmly say no.
And I'm here to tell you that none of that is going to get what you want. All of those things, when we punish, when we suppress a behavior, it might stop in that moment. But especially with cats, that behavior is going to go somewhere else. It's going to squirt out the edges. And you're going to end up seeing stress related behaviors that you didn't, that are even worse than that initial behavior, right?
You're going to end up seeing inappropriate elimination. You're going to end up seeing conflict between the animals. You might even see increased aggression towards you. And these are all things we want less of. So please, please, please put down the spray bottle. You don't have to spank your cat. You don't even need to talk to them firmly.
I promise it gets better with positive reinforcement. An additional thing that you as a vet I'm sure can speak to is that when we increase the stress level for our cats, we also put them at risk of physical conditions.
[00:18:21] Dr. Sugerman: Oh yeah. Yeah. We get a lot of cats who spraying is a big one or, it's an inappropriate elimination. Then they end up having urinary blockage because of it, because they're so stressed out. And then I start asking people, what, what is it that's changed in the house? Is it a diet change or is there something stressful that happens?
Most of the time people say no, but definitely one of the main things I see is that, they're like I did notice that my cat's been biting a lot more and so I've been, getting really angry at him. So obviously the biting has caused all this in the first place. It's not quite how it works.
Your cat is stressed.
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:19:00] Poppy Foxheart: They're having a hard time.
[00:19:01] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly. So how can we use like positive reinforcement then to help them stop biting?
[00:19:06] Poppy Foxheart: Kay, do you want to start that one?
[00:19:08] Kay Rutland: Again, I'm just going to go back to what, what can we do to reduce the cat stress? We have to listen to what the cat's trying to tell us when they are biting. So if what the cat's trying to tell us is that they don't like being petted that way, can we find something else to do with our cat? Maybe it's the specific spot that they don't like being petted, or maybe it's just as simple as being overstimulated by that touch.
So with positive reinforcement, you want to focus on what the cat finds reinforcing, right? So if the cat doesn't like to be petted and that's why they're biting you, let's find something else we can do to make it so that the cat enjoys interacting with you and may also reduces the stress.
So a lot of cats are super playful. Can we find a toy that the cat enjoys chasing instead? And that's how you interact with your cat is by playing with a flirt pole. So yeah, poppy, do you want to expand?
[00:20:07] Poppy Foxheart: I can, I can, I obviously have clients I can talk about, but I'm going to just talk about my own cat, my, my little biter. Glimmer is her name. She, She has a lot of, she had a lot of petting aggression. And when she was, even when she was very young, she was a singleton. Her sibling died. It was very sad for everyone, but she just was never a great. She, she was a behavioral cat as they sometimes say in the shelter.
[00:20:33] Dr. Sugerman: Good thing she got you.
[00:20:34] Poppy Foxheart: If I tried to pet her, yes. If I pet her, I couldn't get through one typical length pet before her head would whip around and sometimes make contact. And sometimes just as if she's going to make contact. And for a long time, we just focused on anyone who came over. We would say, don't touch the black and white cat.
She's not for touching, but she is for looking at. So please look at her. Please admire her. Please remark on her beautiful bunny soft fur. Look at her and tell her she's glamorous. Wow, you must be a kind of a predatory beast. Like we encourage people, all the feelings that you want to put into touching her, use your voice instead.
Pet her with your voice, is what we said. And I'm here, I'm here to tell you that she's just recently turned four. And at this point, we no longer even have to give a warning to anybody because we stayed within her threshold. We never, we would, we started out, we said, okay, if one whole pet is too much, I'm just going to move my hand towards her and then take it away. I'm going to move my hand towards her, a treat falls, I'm going to take it away. And we gradually acclimated her. The thing she needed was less of, for her, it was just gradual acclimation and knowing that we were not going to push her boundary. When it got to the point that you could pet her five times before she flipped her head around to bite you, we pet her three times and then stop.
And then we wait. And sometimes she would go, we'd wait for her to go, why'd you stop? And then we'd say, okay, one, two, three.
And then I'm just going to wait.
[00:22:10] Kay Rutland: I, I love that. And one of the things I would expand on that too, is choice that the cat has the choice there to continue being petted or not. And so this is something I actually talk about with my kids a lot, where I say, you need to ask an animal if they want to be petted before you just rush in with your hands.
And so with like my own cats, what I offer is for them to come to me first. I don't rush over to them. I'll offer a hand to them to let them sniff because that's a huge part of, of cats is they want to be able to smell things. And if they then knock their head against my hand, that's for my animals is their way of saying, Hey, okay, you can pet me now.
And then I can proceed to petting. If the cat then walks away, I'm like, Oh, okay. Not today.
[00:22:56] Dr. Sugerman: So it sounds like a lot of it is just, just watching their body language too, right?
[00:23:01] Poppy Foxheart: Yes. Yes. I wish all cat owners had some kind of easy, mandatory course you could take that was like 30 minutes on the internet just learning about cat body language. And there are resources out there about cat body language that could help you understand what does it mean when their whiskers do that, right?
What does it mean when their eyes look like that? What does it mean? The tail language, especially, right? Oh, I think Kay might be, let's imagine she's getting a resource about cat body language but what is their tail doing? Is it, is it like question mark tail where the end is just going or is the whole thing whipping back and forth?
Tails whipping. Beware.
[00:23:43] Dr. Sugerman: They have so many more expressions, I think, than dogs do. That it is more complicated to, to read what a cat wants than it is a dog. But I feel like we've been around them enough and like really pay attention to it. You can see those tiny little, subtle changes.
Alright. Let's talk about cats on counters. Do you guys care, or Will you train cats to stay off of counters?
[00:24:08] Kay Rutland: I'm gonna let Poppy field this again. I, I want to be fully transparent, that I feel..
I feel like Poppy is the cat behavior expert of the two of us.
In her house, the way she does this is so amazing.
In our house, we really don't care. We, when the cat gets on the couch, honestly, my cats just don't do it very often. And when they do, I just don't care. They tend to do it when we're not in there. And so I'm kind of like, meh, doesn't really bother me, but I have seen what Poppy does and it's beautiful. So go for it, Poppy.
[00:24:40] Dr. Sugerman: Okay.
[00:24:41] Poppy Foxheart: Oh, you. I was curious too. That's why I was like, yes, please answer this. I actually know if Kay's cats are on her counters or not.
And I think, so I think chapter one is it's definitely up to the individual. I am never going to walk in and say, you let your cats on your counters. They're dominating you.
That's not happening. I, in my house, cats don't go on kitchen counters. Where food prep happens, because that's the only thing that happens on kitchen counters. But they do go on the dining room table, and I'm fine with that. They don't go on the dining room table when food appears.
So it's the same rule I have for my dog, except my dog isn't quite agile enough to get onto the the counter.
The rule in our house is when a human has food, the animals belong on the floor. And it's a very easy thing to train. If my animals could all be laying on the couch and if I came over and sat on the couch with a plate full of food, everyone gets off the couch immediately and sits in the floor in front of me, because..
[00:25:35] Dr. Sugerman: Wow.
[00:25:36] Poppy Foxheart: That's what pays.
[00:25:37] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:25:38] Poppy Foxheart: They're like, we're the best ones. Look at me. I'm sitting. Oh, I'm the sittingest.
[00:25:43] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:25:44] Poppy Foxheart: So in my house, I don't like cats on the counters. I don't judge anybody who does have cats on their counters. It's a personal choice. But it is, originally, it was interesting to me to teach it more as an experiment because I feel like so many people, especially on the internet, would say, Help! My cats are on my counters! What do I do?
And everyone had so many answers for them and almost every single answer was punishment. It was startling the cat, hurting the cat. And I just couldn't, I thought this can't be the only way. So what I do is I have stations for my animals. That are a desirable alternative to being on the counter. For a dog, that might be a mat or a bed, a cot, something that they go to. For a cat, it could be a spot up on a tree or on a stool. I have these little kind of step aerobics steps with yoga mat on top that are our platforms and there are enough that there's something for everyone to sit on. And I just pay heavily when animals are on those spots.
Pay, meaning feed, food.
[00:26:50] Dr. Sugerman: Feed treats and, and cat foods, right? Not, not your food.
[00:26:54] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah. And if I'm cook, you know, the best part is when I'm making their food, when I'm like prepping a big batch of food, everybody knows and they're all, I'm so on my spot. I'm the most on my spot any cat has ever been on a spot.
And they'll sometimes take one step forward and be like, see, I'm on my spot just to show me they're getting on the spot. And so everyone stays on their spots, they're glued to their spots, waiting and hoping that something falls onto their spot, which it does all the time. Lots and lots of heavy reinforcement for being on those spots.
So if you're on that spot, you're going to get affection, you're going to get food. It might be how we start a game together. But when it comes to cats especially, that spot is something that will have a better vantage point of what you want to see in the kitchen than being on the counter would. So having a tree nearby can be helpful.
My cats have a couple different stations. They could be up high or they could be down low. Down low does mean they're closer to food. So it is desirable. Lots and lots of reinforcement for that. And in the learning process. You want to do two things, right? You're training and you're managing and management is how we prevent our learners, our cats, our dogs, our leopard geckos from making the choices that we don't love while we're learning the new skill.
So, think about a baby, right? Babies don't know how to climb up and downstairs safely. Baby humans I mean. They don't know how to climb up and downstairs..
[00:28:15] Dr. Sugerman: Neither do baby puppies and kittens, I'm just saying.
[00:28:17] Poppy Foxheart: No, no, they don't, but for this case, I think it's very relatable to understand how management works for baby humans. We put a gate at the top of the stairs because we don't want a baby to fall down the stairs until they can safely walk down them.
So there's a gate. Now there's a learning process where the gate is up most of the time, and then when parent is walking baby down the stairs, they might hold baby's hand, open the gate and walk down together. They're still learning. They get some learning time in, but they're not left unattended to just roll down the stairs. And we do the same thing with animals.
[00:28:50] Kay Rutland: Yeah, hopefully
[00:28:52] Poppy Foxheart: If you can block off the kitchen when you're not there, if it's possible, if you can't block off the kitchen, can you block off the counter in a way that doesn't make it enticing for animals? No food left on the counter, nothing that smelled yummy, not even a crumb if you can avoid it while they're learning about how great it is to be not on the counter.
And concurrently, when they're in the kitchen, they have your attention because you are training them to stay on their spot.
[00:29:18] Dr. Sugerman: Okay. I like that. Yeah. My, my cats definitely are cats that go on the counter. I'd say, I'd say only one of them, the rest of the other two that wouldn't care. But I also think that she's actually a Labrador in a cat suit.
[00:29:32] Kay Rutland: We've talked about this, the "meowlinois".
[00:29:36] Poppy Foxheart: The meowlinois, yeah, that's my cat. She's a, she's a border catty.
[00:29:41] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. That's your one that, that was the bitey one?
[00:29:44] Poppy Foxheart: Yes.
[00:29:45] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:29:46] Poppy Foxheart: The other one is the opposite. The other one is only wild, she only turns into a wild animal when vegetables are involved.
[00:29:52] Dr. Sugerman: With vegetables? I think that's definitely the first time I've seen that, heard that with a cat with vegetables.
[00:29:59] Poppy Foxheart: She's got a problem.
[00:30:00] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:30:01] Poppy Foxheart: She's a, she's a green bean freak.
[00:30:03] Dr. Sugerman: Nice.
[00:30:04] Poppy Foxheart: Broccoli, anything, anything. Zucchini.
Yeah.
[00:30:09] Dr. Sugerman: Interesting. Yeah.
[00:30:11] Poppy Foxheart: If I handed her a piece of raw meat, she would take it very politely. But if I held out a green bean, she just savages it. Grr! Ha ha!
[00:30:23] Kay Rutland: Yeah, I think in our house too, like my cats don't really want to go on the counter all that much. And I think it's because of just like how our kitchen is set up where it doesn't, like Poppy said, provide much of a vantage point. So they have in our kitchen, we have two of our walls have those built in window type mantles, and they much prefer to sit and watch from there rather than actually get up on the counter.
So I think having a spot like that where the cat gravitates to a preferred station rather than your actual counters is best. I shouldn't say best. It's just an easy way to manage the problem to begin with.
[00:31:05] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. I like that. I can, I can definitely imagine like that little window thing. That's great. So they're like up above they can see everything. Yeah. Nice. Do you give them treats up there as well when you're cooking?
[00:31:16] Kay Rutland: I haven't needed to because cats tend to naturally want to be up high, right? So they just naturally gravitated to that and I haven't really needed to specifically reinforce it. It's just about setting up the environment to be conducive for cats.
[00:31:31] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. Okay. Let's talk about do either of you have cats that are leash trained?
You do.
[00:31:40] Kay Rutland: I would say, I would say that my two are leash trained, I don't do it as often as I should to like keep the behavior solid simply because I have dogs and two kids and I just don't have a whole lot of time to go out with a cat on a leash.
But they were, and I did train one of them from the get go from a really, really young age where we got her really just conditioned to doing it with positive reinforcement.
And the other one is just lackadaisical and would probably let me do whatever I wanted. So she was really easy to, to get to do it. And plus like the positive reinforcement issue part of it, of just getting to go outside was a really big motivator in itself. So yes, they are at least trained.
I sadly can't get them out as often as I wish I could, but yeah.
[00:32:30] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. And Poppy?
[00:32:32] Poppy Foxheart: Uhh, the bitey one.. She has a name.
[00:32:38] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:32:38] Poppy Foxheart: Glimmer
Glimmer is. She, she doesn't like the part where you put the harness on. That still irritates her, but once it's on, she's fine. And she's great outdoors and I have a long line for her. So she mostly spends time out in the garden. For being such a bitey cat.
She's also a little bit of a fraidy cat. My younger cat is a year and a half now, and I wish I had done a lot more training with her when she was a baby, but she had a lot of medical needs, and those really took a lot of our energy. Now that she's doing a lot better she is acclimated.
They both wear collars 24/7, so they're both accustomed to having something on. And she's acclimated to the harness, but she hasn't spent a lot of time outside on it. I have good reason to believe she might be our adventure cat. She might be the one who's a little more chill in public and would enjoy going out on adventures.
We will probably start getting her outside this summer, which is great because it leads me to something else I want to say. Which is if you only taught your cat one thing, if you thought it would be a fun idea to try training a cat something very simple. If you only trained the one thing, it would be a recall.
I wish that everyone would tame everybody's animals for recall. Now, we can make it fancy. Let's start with a very basic recall. What a recall means is you are going to say a word or make a sound and your animal, no matter where they are, no matter what they're doing, is going to turn tail and run back to you.
That's a recall. We can make it very fancy. We can teach our animals things like when you hear the fire alarm, you run into your carrier. And then we're ready to be evacuated. We can do that. We can teach them all kinds of things like that. But the main thing I would want is a recall, because no animal of mine goes outside on adventures unless they have some kind of recall.
And for the cats who are made out of liquid and can slide out of harnesses, there is no perfectly escape proof harness in the world. And who, who, could be intrigued by a bird, or frightened by a dog, or whatever, could, could slip away. I want to know that there's a way for me to get them back inside.
Especially since some cats are door dashers. Once they've had a taste of the outdoors, if you don't do it right, they might decide that they just need to go, go out on their own and I'd love to know that there's a way to call them back. So recall comes first before anything else and then acclimating to the outfits that you might need to wear, a walking vest or a harness and then leash.
[00:35:16] Dr. Sugerman: So with Glimmer, how did you get her trained to the harness since she didn't really like to be touched?
[00:35:25] Poppy Foxheart: Oh, that's a great question. I'm going to tell you right now, it's a whole other podcast.
[00:35:29] Dr. Sugerman: Okay.
[00:35:30] Poppy Foxheart: The biggest difference because we are patient people. I can wait, as I have years for her to want, it didn't take years, but I can wait a year for her to want me to touch her, to actively seek out touch and want to be cuddled and held and finessed.
I don't mind waiting for that. But in the meantime, there are other things happening, including nails are growing, right? Animals need to be brushed. She's a short hair, she can get away with not too much brushing. But the nails are not going to cut themselves. And no one wants to cuddle a cat whose nails are like literally destroying your clothing, just existing and nails need to be clipped. And on a cat who doesn't want to be touched, I can't, I'm not just going to manhandle and hold her down and do it because the next time I go to hold her, she has that, that history of knowing, Oh, she holds me. She's going to pin me down and do something terrible to me. This is where there's two concepts.
There's cooperative care and pattern games. And cooperative care is all of the amazing training that we can do to help our animals opt in, consent to us doing things to them, either a veterinarian, a groomer, us. And there are a million things in life that we, unfortunately, have to do to these creatures that we keep captive like nail trims, medical exams, tooth brushing, grooming, giving them their eye drops or ear drops, taking blood.
All these things have to happen if they're going to live in the modern world with us. And we have a lot of options about how to do it. And cooperative care is this whole world of can we spend some of our training time training our animals to not only tolerate these things. Oh, yeah, I forgot accepting injections opting into injections Taking a pill willingly swallowing a pill that tastes bad.
[00:37:28] Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
[00:37:28] Poppy Foxheart: You can do that. Those are real things that we can train dogs to do and cats.
[00:37:33] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And it's so hard, especially for cat people. Like I definitely have, I have, I ask every single person do you think you'd be able to give your cat a pill? And I'd say 99% of them say absolutely not. . Yeah.
[00:37:46] Poppy Foxheart: Really? Oh my goodness. Can you just give them my card when they say that?
[00:37:51] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. It's exactly, yes. Yes.
[00:37:52] Poppy Foxheart: I'll walk them through it. Okay. I've, I've, I've truly. I have a small cat who's had some medical issues and needed some pills and also some ointments and it's a lot of things have had to happen to her and I've never pilled her.
I've never like forcibly pilled her. I just have a lot more creative ways of getting medication into animals. Cooperative care was one element of how it worked. Which means that she gets to say whether or not I touch her paws, she gets to say whether or not I brush her, and she has a way of telling me, yes, continue to do the job.
And pattern games, which are this whole other thing that is, they're like little, I feel like this is way too deep of a subject matter for right now, but the idea is that we create little conversations. It's a way of a conversation between the teacher and the learner, between the handler and the animal, where we ask our animals, would you like to do this thing? And they say, I would like to do this thing because I know it's predictable. I know what you're going to do. It feels safe. It's comforting. It's calming. It's something that an animal can wrap their head around. I know what you're going to do, you told me that you're about to do the thing and I will tell you, yes, please do the thing.
And I say, great, I will do the thing now. And we both keep our agreement. So we both listen to each other. And if at any point the animal says, that's not the conversation I want to have anymore, then that's fine. I learned something. I learned what kind of conversation my cat doesn't want to have. And it's my job next time to change the conversation.
[00:39:19] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. It sounds like it was probably a very complicated process getting Glimmer to do that.
[00:39:26] Poppy Foxheart: I know it. I really did complicate that. It's a special skill I have. It, it was, it was, it was easier than you'd think. It was basically just making a very, very simple pattern of a marker sound, which is like a click that I make with my mouth and a treat, click, treat, click, treat. She already knew that from our other training, that if I make a click, a treat is to follow.
And then I started adding things into the pattern, do this, click, treat. And I had her essentially what it looks like now as I hold the brush in my hand and Glimmer looks at the brush. She just glances at the brush and that says you may brush me once and then click treat and I wait she looks again, you may brush me and now it's not once now It's more like five times and then I pause. Yeah.
[00:40:14] Kay Rutland: Is that how you did it with the harness then, too, where you presented the harness and she offers to put her head through the loop or head into the harness?
[00:40:25] Poppy Foxheart: Like I said, she's not awesome at the harness and I think it's because I did push it a little bit too fast previously but I would present the harness and any interaction with the harness, any sniffing the harness, looking at the harness, I would mark that with a click and a treat and treat away from the harness.
And she would go, Oh, is this like a game of hot and cold? Do you want me to be close to the harness? And I would say, click and treat. And she's Oh, this click treat. So I just got her used to the harness itself. Sometimes we say leaving the harness where your cat eats is helpful to just acclimating them to the idea.
[00:41:01] Kay Rutland: Positive association.
[00:41:04] Poppy Foxheart: It's not a snake.
It's a cool thing. And then, just checking for consent. Can I put this over your head? Ooh, there's food involved. Boop. If I stick this over your head, Churu appears. Squeeze that Churu.
And then it comes off again.
[00:41:18] Dr. Sugerman: I think that's really great.
[00:41:19] Kay Rutland: One of the hurdles I had with one of my cats was the leash part of it. She was, they were both okay with the harness pretty easily. It was the leash that scared them. I don't know if it was like the dragging of it, if the sight of it behind them, the feeling of it. And that was essentially what I did too, where it was like, I presented the leash, click, treat, present the leash, click, treat.
And then you add more difficulty to it as they progress. Where at first I present it and it's not moving, then you present it and you move it a little bit. And eventually it became a bit of a toy.
So like the end of the leash became a fun little flirt pole at one point. And so they weren't scared of it anymore.
It's become a little bit of a game of tug sometimes. But yeah, it helps them get over the fear of it. So..
[00:42:05] Dr. Sugerman: I think that it would work really well too just even with, so I have a lot of cats that we have to do treat for asthma. And so I have this special little mask that goes over their face. And that sounds like the perfect way to try to help treat them, for something that they, is life threatening, they absolutely need this to have happen, and unfortunately we need to have it happen quickly, but just trying to get them acclimated to it by keeping it near their food bowl and giving them treats like you were saying, yeah.
[00:42:30] Poppy Foxheart: Mmhmm.
[00:42:31] Kay Rutland: Would you say, Dr. Sugerman, that that's something that you would hope that all cats were trained to do. If all cats were trained to put their head into a thing like from a vet's perspective, I guess my question is what's one thing you wish all cats were trained to do.
[00:42:48] Dr. Sugerman: That absolutely is because let's say they're in respiratory distress. They're having a really hard time breathing for some reason. It may not be asthma. It could be so many other things. Heart failure, house fires, so many things. And we have to put a mask over their face initially to try to help do whatever we need.
Whether we need to get a weight on them, or we need to put an IV catheter into them. And that's scary, right? To have something over their face like that. It's not quite like there are cat muzzles and stuff that block their eyes, and this is not quite that. They can see everything that's happening. And also we have this air blowing into their face at the same time. So it is very difficult.
[00:43:23] Kay Rutland: Right, which a lot of cats don't like.
[00:43:24] Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Most people don't like that, right? Yeah, but we have to do this life saving thing just to, it's a temporary thing. It's not like we have to hold that mask on them for long periods of time, but it's still something that it's really important to give them in order to help them to get them into an oxygen cage or somewhere that's gonna be a little bit less scary.
[00:43:43] Kay Rutland: Yeah.
[00:43:45] Poppy Foxheart: Can I one thing to what Kay was saying?
I just want to say one thing about the leash stuff. You can also try desensitization, where you start with something light, like a piece of string or a shoelace, and you gradually work up to whatever your leash is, but also use like a size appropriate leash, Right?
[00:44:04] Dr. Sugerman: Don't use your Rottweiler's leash.
[00:44:07] Poppy Foxheart: mm mm, mm mm, mm mm.
[00:44:08] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:44:09] Kay Rutland: No,
[00:44:11] Dr. Sugerman: Okay. Great.
[00:44:12] Poppy Foxheart: I did have an asthmatic cat, and so you, training a cat to use that, the AeroKat pump thing is really helpful.
[00:44:19] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, it is really helpful. And it's a scary sound, even I try to make sure to train people that they do the pump away from the cat and then put it on. But still the sound is scary. The smell is scary. It doesn't smell like them. There's definitely lots of scary things to it. And like I said, we have to do this pretty quickly because the fact that we need them to have this life saving thing immediately.
It's not like I can be like, okay, I can train you in the next four weeks. So we have to do a lot of that. Even just in the clinic, trying to make sure that they are a little desensitized to it even there. We use a lot of Churu for that.
[00:44:56] Poppy Foxheart: Oh yeah. I buy it the big, the big tub.
[00:44:59] Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. What other things do you guys like tend to see with your, with your clients as to what they need help with, with their cats?
[00:45:07] Poppy Foxheart: The biggest thing that you haven't mentioned that, that people ask about when it comes to training, two things. Probably cat/dog integration Uh, and, or cat/cat integration, but because we're Cascade Canine, we very often get cat/dog integration stuff. And the litter box issues.
[00:45:30] Kay Rutland: Yeah.
[00:45:31] Dr. Sugerman: I do feel like litter box issues are usually a stress and medical thing. Would you agree?
[00:45:38] Poppy Foxheart: I would say that I usually am taking in a lot of information when somebody is doing a consultation with me. I want to know everything about those litter boxes. I want to know how many cats, how many boxes, how big are the boxes? What are they shaped like? What kind of litter? How full is the litter? How often are we scooping? Where are the litter boxes located? If I didn't already say that, I have a lot of questions, but almost every time I also, unless it's something very obvious Oh, you can't have five cats and one..
[00:46:10] Dr. Sugerman: Litter box?
[00:46:10] Poppy Foxheart: Two square foot litter box.
With one kind of substrate that is pretty known as like a not a thing that most cats like. So unless it's obvious, I really do send them to the vet first I say please take your cat to the vet tell them you're experiencing inappropriate elimination. Check it out with your vet first because they don't want you to spend your money on a behavior consultant or on a trainer or anybody like that until you first made sure that it's something that that isn't medical. So medical first.
[00:46:42] Kay Rutland: Yeah. And I would say that's true of like almost everything that we do, where we want to rule out medical problems before we delve into anything. So whether you're reaching out with a dog or a cat, if it's a behavior problem, like biting inappropriate elimination, all of that. It's, it's, it's, it warrants a vet visit.
[00:47:03] Poppy Foxheart: Because we all act strange when we're in pain. And animals don't always present it in a way that's easy for humans to acknowledge or understand as pain.
[00:47:11] Kay Rutland: Yeah, yeah and the number of times we've heard people say things like, oh she's just really stubborn or she's just a mean cat or dog.
And it's have you checked to make sure they're not in pain? Because it's a lot, a lot of the time. So that's the underlying cause.
[00:47:29] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
I do find that most of the time when they bring their cats in, a lot of times they say, oh, they, she was just eliminating on my bed because she was angry at me. I'm like, that's most likely not the case.
Yeah. Yes, Exactly.
[00:47:43] Poppy Foxheart: I promise your cat's not spiteful.
[00:47:44] Dr. Sugerman: Right.
[00:47:45] Poppy Foxheart: It's not a thing that happens for cats. They can have, they have a rich internal tapestry, they have a complex emotional life and very elaborate social world. But none of it is, is spite or revenge. That's just, these are not things that are happening inside of a cat.
[00:48:05] Kay Rutland: Yeah, those are very human feelings that most animals cannot experience. So let's stop labeling them as spiteful.
[00:48:14] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
[00:48:16] Poppy Foxheart: But when someone says that, when someone says, my cat, oh my cat is peeing on my bed because she's mad at me. She's peeing at me to get revenge. I think the next thing I want to know is what do you think she's getting revenge for?
[00:48:29] Kay Rutland: Yes.
[00:48:30] Poppy Foxheart: That you think that you think this is happening? And let's talk about it, right?
What do you, how do you think your cat felt about this thing? And I don't know if it's revenge so much as big fear, big stress, big uncertainty, big anxiety.
[00:48:48] Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. I'd say like a good amount of them are usually like, I went on vacation and I came back and she peed on my bed. I'm like it's usually an anxiety portion there then, right? Not necessarily because I'm angry at you. It's I'm really anxious that you were gone.
[00:49:03] Poppy Foxheart: Yes, I wish I could tell you the number of times somebody says I got a new boyfriend and my cat is jealous, so she started peeing on my bed cause she's jealous. And I want to know what happens when you're not there between the cat and the boyfriend.
I want to know, does the cat all of a sudden not get as much attention? Did we stop playing with the cat? Are you sometimes not coming home at night anymore? There's a lot of things that are happening, and I don't think the cat is jealous. I think the cat is struggling because their routine has changed.
New things are happening that are frightening, or things that used to be reliable sources of comfort and regulation and stress relief are now not there anymore. And your cat needs some support to cope.
[00:49:47] Dr. Sugerman: It sounds like a lot of this is you will need to figure out the background behind them to try to figure out why they're doing this inappropriate elimination, right? Yeah.
[00:49:54] Kay Rutland: Yeah.
[00:49:55] Poppy Foxheart: Oh yeah always.
[00:49:56] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:49:56] Kay Rutland: I was just going to say, I think like with all behavior cases that we take, we're always looking for the underlying cause because in order to address the problem, you have to first address the cause. We can't just slap a bandaid on it and call it good. So no matter what you're looking for the underlying cause and working from there to fix the behavior, not just let's stop the behavior where it's at.
[00:50:18] Dr. Sugerman: You had also mentioned like integrating them together, dogs and cats together, cats and cats together. What are some good techniques to do that?
[00:50:26] Poppy Foxheart: That's a whole podcast episode, too.
[00:50:27] Kay Rutland: I was gonna say, that's a huge one.
[00:50:29] Dr. Sugerman: We could definitely do that on another podcast episode. Is there like a quick, quick tips?
[00:50:36] Poppy Foxheart: Okay, quick quick tips is when new animal comes home animals are separated. They can smell each other and hear each other but they don't have to interact yet. Everybody gets time to acclimate to that level of interaction. Smells. Sounds. Before they ever have to meet each other in person
[00:50:56] Kay Rutland: Mhm.
[00:50:56] Poppy Foxheart: Introductions happen slowly and you relate the existence of the new family member to something wonderful like new family member is over there and that's when you get your bone.
Or if you're, if you're the cat member of that family, then see that dog over there? Yes. Now there's Churu because that dog exists. We want to go slow and make sure everybody's really comfortable. And move through a stage where there is a barrier, definitely barriers at first.
[00:51:26] Kay Rutland: Protected contact.
[00:51:28] Poppy Foxheart: Protected contact, yes. Until both animals are showing that it's not a big deal. They can act regular even though the other animal exists, and then we slowly fade out the barriers and we do things that continue to improve relationships, like training together.
[00:51:48] Dr. Sugerman: Yes.
[00:51:49] Poppy Foxheart: Yes.
[00:51:51] Kay Rutland: Side by side fun activities with protected contact.
[00:51:57] Poppy Foxheart: And, and that's a really cool thing. Somebody who I think is probably definitely a mentor of mine and I'm certain a mentor of Kay's too, Ken Ramirez, he has this protocol for helping any two animals live together safely. And part of what I love about it is the cornerstone of this, this protocol is having both animals train separately at a distance and gradually training closer to closer and closer together so that they are experiencing something enjoyable, which is positive reinforcement training.
They're doing cool moves and getting snacks for it. It feels great. And it's in the proximity of another creature who's doing this same thing. I do this kind of thing almost every night at my house, we have training time where we'd set up a little platforms and everybody gets.. It's also wonderful for teaching them all impulse control and waiting their turn and reducing resource guarding. Yeah, it's great. But everybody gets a little turn to do their thing.
Right now, the dog and one of the cats are learning to play the piano. We don't know what instrument Glimmer's gonna play, but Chiquette is a piano whiz. She's ready. And Sparrow's like the child whose mom forced her to take lessons. But I think that Chiquette would prefer like a, a bass or something.
[00:53:15] Dr. Sugerman: I guess they some sort of like guitar or something. Yeah.
[00:53:18] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah. She could be a drummer. She's just got an attitude. She doesn't, she's she's too cool for that kind
Piano, piano is a nerd, nerd instrument to her. The other two are nerds.
[00:53:27] Kay Rutland: Yeah.
[00:53:28] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah.
[00:53:29] Dr. Sugerman: Cute.
[00:53:31] Kay Rutland: The thing I like about that protocol you were mentioning is that the two animals aren't becoming necessarily magnetized to one another. They're just learning that they can do these activities side by side and without having to focus too hard on each other in that moment, if that makes sense. They just..
[00:53:50] Dr. Sugerman: Distracted, you mean?
[00:53:52] Kay Rutland: Yes, but they're still very aware that the other animal is there. They're just not being reinforced for directly doing something with that other creature, which might create some kind of magnetism that the two parties involved might not necessarily want.
And yeah, having them do their separate activities, but in each other's presence, I think is a really beautiful way to do it.
[00:54:15] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. Was there anything else that you guys wanted to share with us just about cat training in general?
[00:54:22] Kay Rutland: I think Poppy, we were talking a little bit earlier about this, about how we really just wanted to mention that with cats and with any creature, the use of punishment is not only not necessary, but it will often create side effects that you don't want. And it also really does not create a positive bond between you and the creature.
And positive reinforcement is what will do that for you. It can create a just really solid, strong bond between the animal and the person. And I think that's why we all have pets, right? It's because we want to have that bond. Do you want to expand more on that?
[00:54:57] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah, that's exactly the last thing I was going to add is the reasons for positive reinforcement training of your cat, period. But I will also add that who, like who should train their cat? You don't have to have an especially clever, training savvy cat to train. I trained my 18 year old chronically ill cat.
She, she died last, not the February, a year and a half ago. But, but I trained her too. And pretty much every being that is alive is capable of being trained. Hello, Shiva.
[00:55:32] Dr. Sugerman: Aww.
[00:55:34] Kay Rutland: 'Besides me.'
[00:55:35] Poppy Foxheart: And that it's great for if it's an older cat, it's a wonderful way of, of delaying cognitive decline. And keeping our cats stimulated and engaged and enriched. It's great for building relationship.
If it's a new cat or shy cat, it can build confidence. If you have a cat who's a bit mischievous, it's a great way to channel that brain. If you have one of those border catties. Who needs a job, otherwise they do destruction. Then that's great, give them a job. Give them a job. If you are really silly about it and it's fun for you, you can get titles.
You can train your cats to do tricks and get titles for that. There are people who do like circus type tricks. You could do agility. You could do, there's sports you can do with your cat these days. But for me, I think that even if you were just gonna train a few things, I would train a couple of really simple foundational behaviors because those foundational behaviors can then turn into tricks if you want to, or they could turn into the basis, the foundation for cooperative care, better grooming and handling, medication administration, easier vet visits.
Or they could be how you resolve behavior issues. I know that for me, the fact that my cats, my pets all have certain skills means that when I have a problem, I have a lot, I, I feel like I have these tools in my tool pouch. What even is the expression? Tools in
[00:57:06] Dr. Sugerman: Your wheelhouse. In your wheelhouse, I think.
[00:57:09] Kay Rutland: Wheelhouse.
[00:57:10] Poppy Foxheart: Tool belt? Wheelhouse? No,
[00:57:13] Dr. Sugerman: Tools in your wheelhouse. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know.
[00:57:15] Poppy Foxheart: Tools in my..
[00:57:16] Kay Rutland: Tool box!
[00:57:18] Dr. Sugerman: Tool box. Sure.
[00:57:19] Poppy Foxheart: My box. This is, none of this is right.
[00:57:22] Kay Rutland: You're saying it so strangely.
[00:57:23] Poppy Foxheart: Okay. I feel like I have all these tools available to me that, that a person might not have otherwise.
So that when there's a problem, when my cat starts trying to steal my wife's ice cream and grabbing it with her foot just give me that ice cream. I have options, at, at first. And I'm so sorry, I, it's possible my wife never listens to this, but sorry to blow you up here, sweetie.
But at first her method was to push the cat away. And I'll tell you what.
You push that cat away and she comes back for ice cream. You push her away. She comes. Yeah. Amazing. She built a beautiful behavior of basically cat shoving games, right? Where the cat push her off. She comes back. Did the cat change her behavior?
Did she stop climbing on top of her for ice cream? Absolutely not. But, I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, our cats know about stationing. What if you just put a station on the floor in front of you and then wait and see what happens? And the cat jumps onto the station and you're like, oh, deserves little taste of ice cream.
[00:58:26] Dr. Sugerman: I'm gonna say as a veterinarian, I'm not gonna recommend ice cream. Maybe do a treat instead.
[00:58:33] Poppy Foxheart: Okay. Okay. I'm talking literally like the film of milk on a fingertip, but let's say treats. I also have little jars of treats on the couch. So we'll pretend. Erase that. Delete that from the record.
[00:58:44] Dr. Sugerman: Lots of people will do it, but yeah.
[00:58:47] Poppy Foxheart: Okay. I do have little treats that are, and the treats, they're just kibble. So I, I, is that okay?
[00:58:54] Dr. Sugerman: That's fine. That's fine. Your, your ice cream is okay. I just usually, when people come to me and they're like, my cat is vomiting excessively and I'm like, do you give them any people food?
And somebody says no. I'm like, what about that ice cream?
[00:59:06] Kay Rutland: And then they're like, milk.
[00:59:07] Dr. Sugerman: Yes, when, when Poppy comes into the cat and I'm like, do you give them people food?
She says no. And I'm like, what about that ice cream?
[00:59:15] Poppy Foxheart: No, I will tell you.
[00:59:15] Dr. Sugerman: Then I'll know. Yeah.
[00:59:17] Poppy Foxheart: Dr. Sugerman, I give, I give my cat people food in extremely tiny portions, only cat food, only people food that is okay and safe for cats to eat. So like a green bean.
[00:59:26] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
[00:59:27] Poppy Foxheart: she eats a green bean.
[00:59:28] Dr. Sugerman: Yes.
[00:59:29] Poppy Foxheart: Could have two grains of brown rice sometimes.
[00:59:31] Dr. Sugerman: That's okay. Yeah.
[00:59:33] Poppy Foxheart: Also I know my cats do not have a sensitive stomach and tend to tolerate things like veggies very well.
Not cucumbers we learned, but where are we going with all this? Let's rewind a few steps.
[00:59:44] Dr. Sugerman: The ice cream, not pushing your cat away, creating a station. Yes.
[00:59:49] Poppy Foxheart: that, Knowing that I have behaviors like targeting, like stationing, and like a recall, those are like my Swiss Army Knife things. I can use them to solve a lot of problems. If your cat, let's pretend you didn't teach your cat leave it. But you see them running towards a pill that you dropped on the floor.
What if you just tried to, what if they had a really strong recall and you just said, Shotzi! Or whatever your recall word is, and your cat turns tail, runs right back to you. Marvelous. You didn't need to train leave it, drop it, and here, you just needed one thing, which was a recall. So if you just trained a couple of simple behaviors, you can use them in a lot of different contexts.
[01:00:29] Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. I think that's great. That's a, that's great advice for them. Cause I would think the same thing, when you think about training your dogs, like I need to try and train, sit, stay, leave it, recall it, but you don't really have to have all of those things, right? If you at least have at least the one simple thing of having recall, just training, just a couple of basics first.
[01:00:51] Kay Rutland: Yes.
[01:00:52] Poppy Foxheart: Absolutely.
[01:00:54] Dr. Sugerman: Was there anything else you guys wanted to share with us?
[01:00:56] Kay Rutland: Poppy's available for cat consults.
[01:01:00] Dr. Sugerman: You don't do cat consults, Kay?
[01:01:02] Kay Rutland: At the moment, not really. I just, my schedule at the moment's really full to begin with, so I'm not really adding more things to it. And I, again, like I have a wide repertoire of working with lots of different animals, but I feel like Poppy is your cat person. Like she's, she's the, she's the one I'm going to defer to.
[01:01:20] Dr. Sugerman: How do we get a hold of you guys then?
[01:01:25] Poppy Foxheart: We can be found at CascadeCanine.com and it's canine spelled out C A N I N E. So CascadeCanine.com. And there you can, there's a form to reach out and get in contact with us. You can see some of the kinds of training packages we offer. We do in home training and on location training. We do not have a facility that you bring your dog into.
So we train pets where they live, where they encounter the world. Whether that's in a park, on the sidewalk in their neighborhood, or in their living room.
[01:01:57] Dr. Sugerman: Do you do online consults at all?
[01:01:59] Poppy Foxheart: Yeah. Especially for cats, because a lot of times they don't behave the same when a stranger's in the house.
[01:02:05] Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. I was gonna say, I feel like a lot of them, if you tried to train one of my cats, you wouldn't see her.
[01:02:10] Poppy Foxheart: Yes. Yes. Yeah, we do online consults too.
[01:02:14] Dr. Sugerman: Very nice. Okay. And then when you put in like your information on Cascade Canine, does it, it'll go to both of you. Is that correct?
[01:02:23] Poppy Foxheart: Yes.
[01:02:24] Dr. Sugerman: Okay. Perfect. All right. I really appreciate you guys coming on.
Thank you so much. I know that this is one of the most common things that people ask about. It's like, how can I train my cat? So I'm really excited have some tools for it. Yeah. Yeah. Especially like the pill problem. The pill problem and the asthma problem. I get that a lot.
[01:02:40] Poppy Foxheart: Mm hmm.
That's a special thing that I love, so I love cooperative care.
[01:02:46] Dr. Sugerman: Nice. We'll also link just an information on how to get a hold of you guys on our podcast. So again, I want to say thank you so much you guys and I know that we're gonna have you on again soon to do another topic.
[01:02:59] Poppy Foxheart: Thank you, Dr. Sugerman, it's been a pleasure.
[01:03:02] Dr. Sugerman: All right.
[01:03:02] Kay Rutland: Yeah. Thanks for having us.
[01:03:04] Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. And to everybody else, thank you. Always make sure to keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe. Thank you guys.
And that brings us to the end of another episode of Vetsplanation. I hope you've enjoyed our deep dive into the world of animal training with our amazing guests from Cascade Canine.
[01:03:21] Dr. Sugerman: We covered a lot today from addressing common cat behaviors to tips on positive reinforcement and even training techniques.
A huge thank you to our friends Kay and Poppy for sharing their expertise and insights with us. A great thank you to our friend Shawn Hyberg for doing our podcast for all the editing.
As always, we love hearing from our listeners. So if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes, feel free to reach out. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast if you enjoyed today's episode.
Your support helps bring you more great content, and helps us to be able to help more pets. As always, make sure to keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe, and we'll see you next week.