Training & Behavior

The cat was the problem, not the dog, which is unusual in this house. Mabel, a tabby with the confidence of a landlord, would not sit on command, would not come reliably, would not do a single thing anyone asked, and I'd been told cats don't train, which I'd half believed until a friend lent me a clicker and said try it on the cat, the cat's the easier one, and I laughed, because the cat is never the easier one.

She was. Within three sessions of click-and-treat, the click meaning food's coming, Mabel sat the instant she heard the sound, the way cats do once they've decided something's worth their time, which is to say completely and without the theatrical hesitation dogs bring to the same deal. The dog, Bramble, a lab who'd watched the whole thing from the rug, developed an opinion about the clicker that nobody had invited her to have.

She got jealous. Not dramatically, labs don't do drama, but she inserted herself, shoved her head into the click zone, presented a paw, offered a sit, anything to be the one making the noise happen, because the noise meant a treat and the treat, to Bramble, is a personal entitlement she'd briefly been denied by a cat. The cat, unbothered, kept sitting. The dog, offended, kept auditioning.

It became a small comedy at dinner prep, me clicking the cat, the dog wedging herself between us, the cat giving the dog a look that said this is mine, and the dog giving the cat a look that said share, and me, holding the treats, refereeing a dispute neither of them had the words for. The clicker, meant for the cat, had inadvertently trained the dog to resent being left out, which is its own kind of training, just not the kind I planned.

I let the dog in on it. Click for her too, sit, click, treat, and the jealousy evaporated into a smug competence, because Bramble, once included, stopped auditioning and started performing, and the cat, once the special one, became one of two, and the household, briefly thrown by a noise, settled into a rhythm where the click meant a turn for whoever was sitting, and the turn, fairly taken, ended the dispute.

The lesson I hadn't expected was that the dog was watching the cat the whole time, learning the click meant good things, and the jealousy was just her version of paying attention, which is what training actually is, attention paid and rewarded, and the cat, who'd seemed untrainable by reputation, turned out to be the better student, and the dog, who'd seemed easy, turned out to need the inclusion to behave, which is the opposite of what I'd assumed walking in.

If you've got a cat who won't and a dog who watches, click the cat and watch the dog, because the dog's keeping score, and the score, once settled fairly, makes both of them better at the thing you're actually teaching, which is that the noise means a turn, and the turn means a treat, and the treat, fairly shared, is the quietest peace this house has managed since the clicker arrived and upset the natural order for a week.

Mabel still sits for the click, the dog still auditions, and the peace, such as it is, holds, because the turn's fairly taken and the treat's fairly shared, and the clicker, meant for the untrainable cat, trained the dog to mind being left out, which is the most honest thing it did, because the dog was always watching, always keeping score, and the score, once settled, made them both better at the noise that means a turn, and the noise, finally, means a turn for whoever's sitting, cat or dog.

The dog, once included, stopped auditioning and started performing, and the cat, once the special one, became one of two, and the household settled into a rhythm where the click means a turn for whoever's sitting, and the turn, fairly taken, ended the dispute that the noise had started, because the noise, to Bramble, was a treat she'd been denied by a cat, and the denial, more than the treat, was the insult she couldn't let go of.

If you've got a cat who won't and a dog who watches, click the cat and watch the dog, because the dog's keeping score, and the score, once settled fairly, makes both of them better at the thing you're teaching, which is that the noise means a turn, and the turn means a treat, and the treat, fairly shared, is the quietest peace this house has managed since the clicker arrived and upset the natural order for a week, a week the cat spent sitting and the dog spent fuming, both, in the end, trained.