by Grayguy » Sun Aug 06, 2006 2:16 pm
Sorry it took me so long to reply...we were getting in touch with Cosmo's African roots by suffering thru the Midwest heat without A/C waiting for a repair to our A/C unit!!! Needless to say, Cosmo did much better than I did.
Anyway, thank you for the clarification. I'm sure we probably would have much more success working thru the bars, assuming that Cosmo comes close enough to the side to allow a scritch.
Cosmo is not stick trained, unfortunately. We were going to do that long ago, but he reacted so badly to the stick when we first introduced it that we decided not to continue. I believe that now would probably not be a good time to be working on other new things like stick training, so I guess we'll just have to keep up with what we're doing.
My wife and I had been saying how he seems like he's getting even worse this week. Then yesterday, my wife had been sitting with Cosmo when he decided that he was too scared to be near her any more and jumped off of her and would not come back. She didn't chase him, but allowed him to wander thru the house supervised. He walked into the bathroom (it's a happy place for him where he gets to whistle while the shower is running) and hid behind the toilet. My wife called me to help, and I laid down on the floor and called him. He immediately came out to me and crawled up my arm onto my shoulder. I gave him back to my wife, then met them at the couch 2 minutes later. She gave him back to me, and he was so relieved to see me (and mad at her) that he let me scritch him for as long as I cared to! I guess I was rewarded for not being "the bad guy" with "the honor" of being able to scritch him. It's pretty convienent how he can turn his phobia on and off.
When Cosmo and I have an "argument" he seems to favor my wife a bit more, at least for a short time. I think sometimes he is trying to train us not to test him by making us jealous of each other! It's funny how he can hold a grudge for a short time, as well as a phobia for a much longer time.
Well, thank you again for your input. If you feel strongly that we should exclusively work on the scritches thru the bars, then we can try. But as you can see, we do have breakthru's outside the cage. I am reluctant to warm him up with treats thru the bars, though, since the treats are how we have rewarding him for coming out of this cage. Maybe use a different treat? Anyway, let me know what you think.
Thanks again,
Greyguy