Bath day!

Quick update:
We survived bath day (AND A NAIL CLIPPING!!!!) without a single bite!!! Woohoo!

Recap, Gloves and more....

Recap

I know it's been a few weeks, but among midterms and other work I've been pretty busy, and I also wanted to wait until I actually had something to report. I'm going to start off by recapping the behavioral shaping techniques because I've changed my mind here and there about how to approach the situation according to how I've seen Meeka responding to me. I've settled on using a combination of negative and positive reinforcers. The outline is as follows:

• Using the cage as a time out: As I mentioned before, this worked that time she was picking on Marley, and this is something I know she really hates, and it's humane.She still gets plenty of play time outside of her cage, and her time outs only last for around ten minutes. If I pick her up and she bites me, I put her in the cage immediately (if possible, it's like there are a million places in a house a ferret can run and hide if she doesn't want to be found). Unfortunately, unwanted cage time coincides with another behavior problem: when shes locked up and doesn't want to be she makes as much noise as possible and rips her cage apart. It's like a five year old throwing a tantrum.This is my fault, because I inadvertently reinforced this behavior the first time she did it by letting her out to keep her quiet. Trust me, I've learned my lesson. So, I put her in there until she quiets down, and then I let her out again, in the hopes that this will positively effect both behaviors. 

• I combine the above behavior with some immediate scruffing.I've been told that this is how a ferret mom does it, and usually it subdues her pretty fast. Occasionally, if shes really angry she keeps biting right through it, but usually she just starts yawning and goes completely limp.

• Treats! Everybody likes a good old fashioned bribe, right? I'll pick her up and if she doesn't bite, she gets a treat.I'll sometimes get her to come over to me and take the treat out of my hand, in the hoped that she associates being near me with a treat. I try to use this the most, but some days the desired behavior is hard to come by. Pretty straightforward positive reinforcement, and at first it was really all I was using, but I found it wasn't enough. Combined with the negative reinforcement though, she seems to be getting the hint. 

• When she bites me, I don't immediately let her down. I know this seems pretty simple, but do you really know how hard it is to ignore your reaction to something that just bit you until to bleed and will probably do it again if you don't let it down? It's hard. very hard. It seems like nothing, but I'm hoping she views it as a negative reinforcer, because her goal when she bites me is to be let go.

Gloves/ Conditioning

After reading numerous websites, articles, blogs and books on ferret training, I feel the need to defend my use of gloves in my training. So here is my defense/rant:

A lot of people seem to think  that gloves are dehumanizing, that there is something necessary about the ferret feeling the warmth and skin of a human hand.. I shouldn't say "a lot" of people, but its probably about 50/50 pro-gloves to no gloves. After listening to the "no glove" people for the first few days (I still have scars), I'm firmly pro-glove.

It really comes down to one thing: conditioning. As much as I'm trying to condition Meeka to stop biting people, shes trying to condition me to leave her alone by biting me.  As I mentioned earlier, it's very, very hard not to have a reaction to being bitten, and all the reactions to being bitten (shying away, letting her down to play, yelling, some kind of physical punishments-which is the sort of thing that caused her to behave like this in a previous abusive home) are not providing the type of training environment that I think will be successful to achieving the behavior I'm trying to shape her towards. I also know it would make me want to handle her less if I knew I was always going to experience pain when I do it, so, this is my way of blocking her conditioning efforts.Call it dehumanizing, but the way I see it, it's better than the alternative.

(I'm well aware they look like creepy serial killer gloves)

Progress

Meeka has good days and bad. At the risk of giving her human qualities, it's almost like mood swings. Some days shes great, almost cuddly (key word being almost, we're not quite there yet), and other days shes a force to be reckoned with who bites everything in her path. For the most part shes stopped biting very hard, which makes me think that she's making some progress but it's going to be very slow. There are times now when she just kind of outs her teeth on my hand but doesn't bite down like "I'm gonna do it, be careful". She seems like shes biting now as a warning and not to injure out of fear. Sometimes she just bites when she wants to play. She has mostly also stopped biting after you pick her up, she just kind of goes still.

Also she has become a pretty serious toe terrorist. She runs out of nowhere, bites a toe, and then runs back. Half the time I don't even know shes in the room, she comes out of nowhere. I think it's her way of trying to play (its kind of how she plays with Marley sometimes), but I still treat it like a normal "pick-up" bite to show that it's unacceptable.

(Latest victim of toe terrorism)

In other news, shes surprising well litter trained, and she gets along great with Marley. Also, noticed earlier that she has started a science project by combining a bottle of Tums and a bottle of water in my dresser drawer. The combination looked lovely after she decided to roll in it,and then all over my clothes. :)

Until next time, heres a picture of Meeka and Marley being all cute in a ferret pile, when they aren't ripping my house (and toes) apart:

Progress?

Progress is slow, but I think it's happening. Meeka has went through a few changes in the last week, some bad, some good.

I think the time I spent kind of ignoring her and just letting her do her thing was helpful. She doesn't jump every time theres a noise now, and she doesn't freak out when the screen saver changes on my computer anymore. This is a big change from the first week we got her. Grant tried to play with her by throwing her a blanket (which Marley and every other ferret I've ever had LOVES) and she let out this weird scream like I had never heard come out of a ferret. It shouldn't be funny, but after I got over the initial shock of hearing that noise I couldn't stop laughing. She actually seeks us out to play with us now, which is a step forward. This said, she is still pretty skittish (she frequently runs around the house with bottle brush tail for no apparent reason), which is something I'm not sure if she'll ever overcome.

She also spent a few days doing this weird dominance thing over Marley. If Meeka was in her cage and wanted out for playtime, she would scruff Marley and try to drag her around. Now Marley didn't look like she was in pain (she just yawned a lot like she was so over it), but it made me nervous. I think Meeka finally stopped doing it when she realized that it resulted in Marley getting out for playtime and her staying in the cage. It only lasted a few days.

She has effectively made a nest in my couch with discarded, crumpled up essay papers, and she has several hidey holes where she stashes all my stuff (which she believes is rightfully hers), so I think shes made herself at home and it's time to move onto the next step of applying some reinforcements.

Her biting has definitely calmed down now that shes used to us, to the point where sometimes she'll let me pick her up without the gloves sometimes, and not bite me. She also does this mild have bite sometimes where she doesn't actually bite, she just puts her teeth down on me, which I think  is her way of warning me. I could live with that.

Shes really at risk to bite when she thinks shes playing, when she doesn't want to go back in her cage, when she is startled, or when she doesn't want to be picked up. So my plan of attack is this: let her out for good long playtimes until she tires herself out and to not startle her. I going to try handling her the most when shes wiped out from playing and doesn't have the energy to fight me. Depending on how I feel about her mood, I may still wear the gloves, or I may not. When she bites I'm going to use the same reinforcer I did when she was bullying Marley: Jail time. She seems to effectively associate it with something she isn't supposed to do, and it's the least mean of all the negative reinforcers, so I'm going to go with it. As a positive reinforcer, I'm going to hand feed her treats as much as I can, to associate myself with a treat.

Sorry there are no pictures this week, I'll post some later on in the week when my phone decides it wants to send my picture messages again.