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: