We have made many mistakes when it comes to Jake and his counter surfing. But I think I finally understand what needs to be done to correct the problem.
Last night I was in the kitchen making dinner which can be frustrating for me because Jake constantly puts his paws on the counter which resulted in me constantly pushing him off and sometimes timeout in his cage. Other times we would get lazy and not move things like towels and clothes out of the way and Jake would grab those and turn them into a game of chase.
After reading Jean Donaldson's Culture Clash, I have a far better understanding of what we were doing wrong and what we need to do to correct the issue.
I started dinner around 4:30pm yesterday at a time that Jake was likely very hungry. I put his food in his bowl but instead of giving it to him I put it on the counter. Every time that Jake jumped up on the counter I stood there and did my best to ignore him. Then when he sat down beside me he got a morsel of his food. After doing this for 30 minutes Jake was putting his paws up less and less and getting rewarded more often. The exercise ended there because my husband came home and I didn't have Jake's attention anymore.
We are also working very hard to keep everything out of reach on the counter so he doesn't get that inadvertant reward.
This will take more time, but I have some more cooking to do tonight, so I'll repeat the same exercise again tonight. I at least feel like we are going in the right direction now as opposed to allowing the same behavior all the time which just resulted in frustration.
Jake has just as much to learn as we do.
No comments:
Post a Comment