Gizmo's Collar Training Diary

The following is a guest post by our lovely friends over at Kitty up the Curtain. We would like to thank Leanne and Gizmo of course for taking the time out to chart their progress in collar training. If you'd like to keep up to date with Gizmo's progress you can follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We'd love to know about your collar training experiences in the comments below!

Gizmo isn’t keen on wearing a collar following a traumatic experience he had when he was 5 months old, you can read more about this in his blog post. However, I have been working on helping him overcome his fear and get him used to wearing a collar!

Here is our diary of how we got on during the first 7 days of training...

Day 1:

In an attempt to keep all my limbs intact and unscratched, I distracted Giz with his new toy and quietly put his collar on. I could see the collar needed adjusting, so I removed it, and adjusted, before putting it back on. Gizmo was (thankfully) distracted by his new toy, and didn’t pay his collar much attention, so after 2 minutes I removed the collar. I repeated putting the collar on three times on day 1, only keeping it on his for a few minutes at a time before removing it and praising him.

 

Day 2:

Yet again, I distracted Giz to put the collar on. He must have been quite tired (from a night outside partying I imagine) so he fell asleep wearing it?! I left it on for a few minutes before removing it. I put the collar on a further two times later in the day, and I removed it after a few minutes each time.

Day 3:

Gizmo was more tolerant of the collar being put on today, and he ate his dinner whilst wearing it too. After dinner, I played with Giz and then removed collar. I repeated putting the collar on once more, and left it on for about 5 minutes each time.

Day 4:

Gizmo spent most of the day indoors, so I was able to put his collar on and supervise him for a longer period of time! He occasionally kept trying to lick the collar under his chin, (which is how I suspect he previously got his jaw caught in the collar when he was younger) so I distracted him when he started licking, and after a few minutes, he calmed down. I left the collar on for 10 minutes in total today.

 

Day 5:

Gizmo was more tolerant of the collar today! I put the collar on, and he ate some lunch and played for a while after lunch. The collar was on for about 20 minutes in total, and I was pleased that he seems calmer.

Day 6:

Collar training mainly involved snoozing, purring and a bit more snoozing!? The collar was on for over 35 minutes, and he showed very little interest in licking the collar, so I’m pleased he seems to be settling whilst wearing it.

Day 7:

Gizmo and I went out into the garden to enjoy the sunshine, whilst wearing his collar! He was more interested in staring at birds hiding in the hedge, than his collar...phew! However, things took an interesting turn when Gizmo caught sight of a bird and chased after it...disappearing out of sight?! I had to pop out for an hour, so Gizmo was left to get used to his collar outdoors. This was not how I had hoped the training session would go!

Final thoughts:

I had my doubts that he would still be wearing the collar when I got home... And as I expected, when I returned home, he was NOT wearing the collar! At least I was happy in the knowledge that the collar would unfasten itself if he got stuck somewhere, and he wouldn’t choke or hurt himself. However, what I wasn’t expecting, was to walk into the living room and find the collar on my seat on the sofa! I’m not sure whether to congratulate Giz on removing the collar and leaving it somewhere I would find it.

So, to cut a long story short, Gizmo is slowly getting used to wearing a collar, but it will take time, patience and repetition before he is actually happy about wearing it! But for now, he is more tolerant of the collar, and I still have all my limbs intact, so I think that’s progress?!!

Thank you to the team at Cool Cat Collars for finding the perfect collar for Gizmos collar training!