Is what your doing now getting any work done (improvement)
L
lily2021
? I may have already done my spider phobia analogy for you. You know, some therapists do gradual desensitization therapy to get humans over phobias. They start with something easy, like watching Charlotte's Web, then the spider 12 feet away in a cage, then 10 feet away on the therapists hand, whatever. The therapist moves on when there is no longer any real improvement. You know, maybe your heart rate is still elevated watching the spider eat a bug 6 feet away, but you've stopped shaking and sweating, and watching the spider do that another however many times isn't necessarily going to get you all the way to stone cold bored watching it, so its time to move on. So just take a look at how your cats are doing at the current step, and ask yourself if you think you are still squeezing improvement out. If not, your ready to move on.
If there is still a lot of hissing and growling without visual access, then usually extending the introduction will do additional work. If there isn't a lot of hissing and growling, maybe the cats aren't totally at ease yet, but its likely going to be difficult to get additional improvement without advancing. You can always give it a few extra days and assess if you think improvement is still going on. (I probably could have just said that without the spiders I suppose, but my spider analogy has a lot of fans!)
Its totally fine if the visual step produces a lot of additional stress -- thats what its there for, to let the stress come out with nothing bad happening. Its like the therapist moving the spider from 8 feet to 6 feet and having it eat a bug -- the patient is NOT going to be happy at first, but thats ok, and kind of the point.
If there is still a lot of hissing and growling without visual access, then usually extending the introduction will do additional work. If there isn't a lot of hissing and growling, maybe the cats aren't totally at ease yet, but its likely going to be difficult to get additional improvement without advancing. You can always give it a few extra days and assess if you think improvement is still going on. (I probably could have just said that without the spiders I suppose, but my spider analogy has a lot of fans!)
Its totally fine if the visual step produces a lot of additional stress -- thats what its there for, to let the stress come out with nothing bad happening. Its like the therapist moving the spider from 8 feet to 6 feet and having it eat a bug -- the patient is NOT going to be happy at first, but thats ok, and kind of the point.
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