hi everyone julian jones here and today i'm going to be showing you how to harness train your cat
hi we're julian jones and we show you how to teach your cat
fun and practical skills to enrich their life and strengthen your bond
we are working with the cat school harness the cat school harness is a vest style harness
it just goes over your cat's back you do up the velcro and then you do the velcro under the belly
it's really easy to put on i'm a big advocate for vest style harnesses for cats a brightly colored
vest makes your cat more visible to people who are walking their dog so they can see you at a
distance the vest covers a large surface area of your cat's body making it very challenging
for them to pull out even though the harness is very safe it's important to know that there is no
such thing as an escape-proof harness encourage everyone who's leash-walking their cat to use
multiple measures to keep your cat safe including the addition of a caller with a tracking device
when i walk jones on leash a lot of times people stop me and they ask me how did you teach your
cat how to do that usually they're expecting me to say i started when he was very young i only
started harness training jones when he was close to a year old so if age is not the biggest factor
the biggest factor in harness training your cat is just doing a step-by-step method that i'm going to
show you today to harness strained cats we use the desensitization and counter conditioning method
desensitization means that we expose the cat to the harness in a very easy way counter
conditioning means that we pair it with delicious food i'm going to be using two types of treats to
train jones little pieces of chicken just tiny pieces and then a churro tube this is a lot less
calories so when i'm giving him lots of treats i like to use one of these instead of pieces
but of course when i'm talking or distracted i like to put some treats in here to keep him busy
the first thing we're going to do is we're going to show your cat that the harness is
a good thing so we're just going to put some treats on the harness so that the cat first
sees the harness and then eats some treats off it the presentation is very important with training
we always want the cat to see the the trigger or the thing that they're worried about first
and then we show them that good things happen when it's around so we present the harness first
and then we put some treats around it
to accomplish this step you want to make sure that when your cat
sees the harness they're not running away or they're not nervous at all
now we're going to desensitize the cat to the sounds of the harness the velcro
can be a scary sound so it's a good idea to make sure that they
are not scared at this step so all i'm gonna do is just close it open and then feed
if he was scared i could be further away from him so there's always a distance that the cat can hear
a sound and not be scared so don't work this close if your cat is scared go in another room
open it and then throw a treat at them
we're going to want to make sure the cat is comfortable being handled in the zones where
the harness is going to rest so we want to touch first present the food and then as soon as the
touch stops the food goes away and we're gonna do the same thing with the belly present the food
and then as soon as the touch stops
the food goes away if you're training with all dry treats
just give your cat multiple tiny pieces in a row
now we're going to do the exact same thing with the harness we're going to touch your cat in the
zone where the harness is going to rest so we're going to get our food ready present the harness
and then let him lick the food so all i'm gonna do is brush him with the harness present the food
and then we stop i'm gonna do the same thing with his belly present the harness good
it's important to know that each step could take several days so don't rush the training
so all i'm going to do rest it on his back and then feed
as soon as i remove it i'm going to take away the food
so let's do that again we're going to rest it on his back and then feed
so now he's getting used to the heaviness
the weight of the harness in this step and that's one of the goals
rest close feed
so now he's getting used to the sensation of the harness resting on his back
and having it closed around his neck
now we're going to do the same thing under his
belly now this can be a little bit trickier because if he's sitting
i can always draw him forward with the treat
and undo the belly
again we're going to try that again rest do the belly feed goodbye
let me see if you can get you to move forward thank you
good boy
let's try again let's try again
in this next step we want to get the cat moving a little bit so i'm going to
switch to some dry treats and just make a treat trail just getting him moving to get the treats
this is like our ping pong kitty game we want the cat to get the treat and come back
if your cat likes toys you can switch to playing with a toy if you just want to give your cat
some practice wearing the harness and walking around and moving getting comfortable with it on
the snuffle mat can be great because you can get them to wear the harness while they're looking
for their treats what can we do your training with the harness on you wanna do fist bump
up until now i haven't used any clicker training for introducing the leash and
encouraging your cat to start walking with you a target stick can be a great tool
because we can use the target stick to encourage the cat to move forward
so
okay
remember when i was saying that it's really important to layer safety measures well i'm going
to add a tracking device this is an essential piece of equipment for leash walking your cat
all right jones do you want to go for a walk now thanks for watching
and have fun harness training your cat
you ready let's go