This weekend, I’ve (finally) had some success with clicker training the rats. I was having a lot of trouble at first with keeping Georgie in one place long enough to have a training session.
She’d run off, crawl up my arm, or wander over to explore something. However, we’ve made a handful of changes and finally found an arrangement where she could focus on me and the session.
Currently I’m teaching her how to get the food and what the sound of the clicker means. She’s pretty much got the hang of it, so hopefully this week we can start doing some shaping and really training.
I plan to write more about some of the early difficulties we had, as well as the steps I went through to train her that the clicker meant come get a treat. For now, enjoy this short video of Georgie!
looking good! What a cutie. She is obviously getting the hang of it and she looks very relaxed and calm in your setup. Can’t wait to hear more!
How cute!!! I thought for a second she was going to jump off the side lol. Looks like she’s definitely figuring it out. 🙂
Oh and thanks for the comment about Chrome’s teeth. He seems to be doing fine, but I noticed he was dropping some of his food. I don’t know if it’s his teeth or because he’s fending the chickens off of his feed bucket. He also does a weird thing with his tongue like he’s trying to get trapped food out of his teeth. As soon as I have the money I am definitely going to have a dentist out, but I do appreciate the comment as I have a tendency to latch on to things and worry too much. 🙂
LOL. She’s trying to find a way to jump down so she can go exploring.
This arrangement seems to be working for keeping her contained. Previously, she could reach the legs of the table and would just slide down them!
Once we can get the clicker figured out, I think the rats are going to be a lot of fun to train!
Mary
I was going to suggest station training but I see you’ve already done that. I am working with our kitten on station training in the kitchen to keep her off the counters.