86. VIDEO: Parts per million

With Gus’s tolerance of the spritz bottle getting stronger every day, I now up the ante and switch from water to actual fly spray.  This stuff combines permethrin with a lemony citronella scent.  It’s not a chemical/medicinal smell, but Gus knows it’s fly spray and he says the hell with it.  When I squirt just a teeny bit out into the barn aisle and then offer the butt end of the bottle to him, he backs away with an unmistakeable pee-yew expression on his face.  As I catch a whiff myself, I can hardly blame him:  the citronella is strong and sharp, and it’s a scent commonly used not only in mosquito repellent but in dog and deer repellents too.

We dial back several steps.  First, I mix just a drop of the fly spray into a bottle full of plain water.  I can still smell it, but it’s a lot less noisome.  Gus agrees, and touches the open bottle a few times.  Since the crappy little trigger on the bottle jams and fails, I return to using the actual fly-spray bottle, with its full-strength scent.  This, of course, is a mistake.

Gus tolerates the tiny squirts out in the aisle, but when I spritz in just a nanosecond burst anywhere nearer to him, he departs and refuses to play this smelly game.  I wait.  And wait.  And finally click him just for looking at the spray bottle.  That entices him to return to me and even touch the bottle again.  But I press my luck, spritz again, and lose him.  

I’ll need a working spray bottle, for ve-e-ery gradually increasing the solution strength.  And I’ll need plenty of patience, for even more gradually moving the spritzes nearer to him.