Adventures in free-shaping: Be careful what you *click* for...

I've had a couple of epiphanies these last couple of days and since I've been meaning to create a training log anyway... Voila! And there was "blog".

Woozle was so cute yesterday. We've been working mostly on picking things up lately, but this time I was trying to get him to run around a chair in the kitchen. I've free-shaped this before and he was offering lots of behaviors (platz, back up, barking, mouthing objects, jumping on stuff), and I was marking just glancing at the chair, but for some reason this evaded him.

Enter Shadow. Shadow is an interesting cat. He loves water. He loves dogs (or at least my dogs anyway). He cuddles with Daisy and wrestles with Woozle. Shadow has supervised many training sessions so this isn't unusual. He likes being on the middle of things and is often very interested in the treats (or maybe he just likes watching the dogs make fools of themselves?).  He hops up on a chair (the one I am trying to get Woozle to run around) so he can get a better view of the proceedings and I am mostly oblivious to his presence..

Woozle looks at the chair. Click-treat. A few seconds later he looks at the chair again. Click-treat. And again. He sidles up to the chair. Click-treat. I of course am thrilled that we finally seem to be making progress. He kinda side steps around the chair. Click-treat. Then again, but this time as he is moving I *click* just as his nose touches Shadow's tail, which is gracefully draped over the edge of the chair. Of course I realized my mistake, but figured it was "just one click". Woozle sits down next to the chair and looks at me for a second or two as if he is pondering something then half glances at Shadow, which I ignore. Then he gives me a lovely sideways glance which clearly says, "Well if this is what you want... Who am I to argue?"  Then he nibbles Shadow's tail. This is way too fresh for Shadow who swats Woozle on the nose. At this point of course the situation totally disintegrates as cat and dog are careening all over the kitchen in a ball of flying fur. All hope for my training session is gone, but I am giggling too hard to care. All my fault and I should have seen it coming a mile away, lol.