People ask me how I leash-trained Cheeto, and honestly, I don’t have a dramatic story for them. It didn’t feel like a fight. It never really was one.
The decision to leash-train him came from realizing that keeping him safely indoors didn’t erase the part of him that belonged outside. Cheeto began his life in the desert, and ordinary indoor play was never quite enough to satisfy his need to explore. I’ve written more about that—and the nights he makes his opinion known—in Why Cheeto Yowls All Night When He Doesn’t Get His Walk.
Leash-training became our compromise: Cheeto could keep experiencing the world he loved, while I could keep him safely attached to me.
Thankfully, Cheeto has always been an agreeable cat. I wish I could tell you there was some big breakthrough moment, some week of struggle that turned into triumph, but the truth is closer to this: I put the harness on him, I had treats ready, and he decided pretty quickly that this was a good deal.
And from his perspective, it really was. The harness brought treats, attention, and eventually access to the desert. Instead of becoming something that restrained him, it became the thing that made his adventures possible.
Making the harness part of something positive
Treats did the heavy lifting, if I’m being honest. He’s motivated by them in the way most cats are motivated by very little else, and that made the whole process less about training and more about just… showing him what was in it for him.
Putting the harness on became part of a petting session. He’d come up for it the same way he comes up for pets, rubbing against me first. He still had to learn to stay still for the few seconds it took to fasten everything, so timing mattered more than anything. I’d put a treat on the ground, wait until he was mid-chew, and use that little window to clip the harness around his neck and then his tummy before he finished the bite. A Churu would have kept him occupied considerably longer and made this much easier, but I hadn’t quite been sold on them yet.
Choosing a secure cat harness
The harness itself went through a change, though. I didn’t start with the one we use now. Cheeto could slip right out of his first harness if he really wanted to—which is a genuinely unsettling thing to discover when you’re somewhere with roads or open space nearby. That’s when I switched to the Buddy Armor harness we use now. Its more secure design makes it much harder for him to back out of, while still allowing him to move comfortably on the trail. You can find the exact harness on Cheeto’s trail-ready checklist.
Why recall is a backup, not a replacement
And in the meantime, praise the Lord, I’d already been working recall with him—not just on walks, but around the house too. Different rooms, different distractions, over and over, before we ever needed it to matter outside.
His recall word is simple: “kitty.” That’s it. He hears “kitty,” he comes—because in his mind, “kitty” has always meant a reward is waiting. I’ve never called him without rewarding him when he came to me.
That recall practice has blessed us on the rare one-off occasion when he has slipped past someone through a door. But it does not replace his secure harness and leash on walks, and it is never something I count on instead of keeping him properly attached outside. It is simply one more layer of preparation for an accident I hope never happens.
Looking back, I think that’s the real lesson in it. Not some clever leash-training trick, but the order of operations: build trust and practice recall while also using the physical safety equipment meant to keep him with me.
These days, I don’t rely on treats nearly as much as I did when we started. The harness, backpack, and promise of an adventure have become rewarding on their own. But that doesn’t mean the treats stopped mattering—it means they did their job. They helped build the positive association and trust that now carry us beyond the front door together.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” — Galatians 6:9
Lord, thank You for the patient, unglamorous parts of building trust—with Cheeto, and in every other place You’re growing something in me too. Amen.