Grant's training session, Khristine's cage, and conclusion

So Grant had a very interesting training session with Meeka on Saturday, with relatively good results. It was pretty starightforward: he sat down with her for an hour and let her continue to bite him. From what I understand, she would approach and bite him, and then he would scruff her and put her back down. THIS LASTED AN HOUR! Now I don't generally think that intense hour long training sessions like this work, but he said he just kind of lost track of time. And as she could've easily left the room and he would've left her alone, she didn't. Maybe she viewed it as a game or some kind of battle of wits, I'm not really sure. The end result was this: by then end she would approach him but not bite. So this tells me that maybe we just need to up the ante a bit and lengthen our training sessions. Instead of waiting for the behavior to happen, put her in the situation where the behavior happens repeatedly and show her that this is the result, every time. In the long term, it resulted in her biting him far less than she previously did. However, she still bites me, so maybe I need to try this one out myself?

(A Grant and Meeka session. She'e not actually biting as hard as it seems)

My one and only (and most awesome) follower, Khristine, had a great idea the other day. She explained to me that when they sent her nephew to his bedroom, he didn't really care until they unplugged his T.V., and then all hell breaks lose. She equated this with the problem I had been experiencing with Meeka that I mentioned in a previous post about how she doesn't seem to view her cage as a punishment anymore, and suggested I put her in her carrier for time outs instead. I think this is a great idea! My only problem is that when I tried to do it I discovered that my carrier was warped from taking it apart and putting it back together so many times, so as soon as I can get a new carrier, I'm going to try this. Now this may make it difficult for future carrier trips if she sees it as a punishment, but those are ffew and far between and this is a risk I'm willing to take.

(Meeka, trying to give me a guilt trip while on a time out)

So this is my last post before I pass in my case study..I definitely feel that the training I have done has come a long way in improving Meeka's aggression. I mean, she isn't perfect, and by no means would I trust her around a stranger yet. However, I feel much more comfortable around her than I did when we first got her. During the first week I remember thinking "What have I done? What kind of insane monster have I let into my house?". I don't feel that way anymore. I would never have tried to approach her then in the ways I do now. I think we are on the right path to having an aggression free (or at least a solid aggression diminished) ferret. This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight, and ferrets aren't always easy to train. I believe there are too many ferret owners who bought one thinking that it would happen overnight, and this kind of thinking is what lead to ferrets like Meeka being in this kind of situation in the first place. You can't predict how long it's going to take an animal to change their ways (if ever, in the case of some abused animals), but it makes me feel better just to know I've made some progress.

And maybe, someday, some poor victim of toe terrorism will stumble upon this blog and it could help them out, just a little.

Bitter spray!

Wanted to do a quick post before I forget this:
So we just figured out how to get her to respond to the Bitter Spray. When we were first using it, she was biting right through it like it didn't bother her at all, so we had really stopped using it at all. Tonight, however, she started biting the gloves, hard (which she would normally be doing to our hands if we weren't wearing the gloves), so we doused the gloves in the bitter spray, and just let her bite it like crazy until she realized how horrible it was. Then she stopped. So, it turns out that maybe her tastebuds just aren't as sensitive as other ferrets I've used this on, and she just needs more of it to respond. This might be a big breakthrough in using the bitter spray as a negative reinforcer, we'll see.

Bath day: how did we do it?, immediacy, the ferret mansion, and the human skinner box

After re-reading my last post I thought I should take the time and explain my methods in getting through bath day with no bites. My trick was mostly gloves and treats. I wore the gloves the whole time, even though she didn't bite them once, and she got a treat after every step of the process: one half way through the nail clipping, one at the end of the nail clipping, and one at the end of the bath. As I have said before, everyone likes a good old fashioned bribe. I can't tell you how happy I am that this went so well; a month ago this wouldn't have been possible.

I have noticed that the cage is becoming less and less of a punishment. It works if she has just recently been let out for playtime, but if she has been out for a while and is kind of tired anyway, she fusses for about 30 seconds and then goes to sleep. I guess its like that case of trying to reward a dog with a treat if it isn't hungry; it's meaningless. So I've decided that if shes been out for a while and she bites, I'll try to reinforcement of not letting her go for quite a while. If she remains calm and doesn't bite again, I'll let her down and give her a treat.
She basically lives in a ferret mansion. I probably wouldn't consider it a punishment either to be banished to my comfy hammock with my toys and food:

(The Ferret Mansion)

(Meeka being "punished". Life is hard.)

She is rarely biting now when we pick her up, and when she does she isn't biting hard, just a kind of warning. Usually, we can tell when shes going to bite because she gives of that "get your filthy hands off me" look, which I don't have a picture of because its surprisingly hard to get.

The more recent problem of biting, however, is the sneak attack (see post about toe terrorism). The one were she darts out from random places, bites hard, and then hides again. Sometimes she even tries to take the appendage with her. This is a little more difficult, for several reasons:

• She isn't doing this out of fear, I think shes doing this because I may have inadvertently reinforced the behavior. When shes in a playful mood, she chases my feet and after getting bitten and knowing that pain a few times, I cringe back or run away. This only encourages her more to think its a game, and thats my fault.
• She think it's fun and therefor the behavior in itself is  reinforcement
• Do you realize how hard it is to provide and immediate and consistent reinforcement for a ferret?! There are a million little places in my apartment where she  can hide and I can't get her, and I'm pretty sure she knows every one of them. If I don't get her right away, she runs to a hidey hole, finds a toy, and within 30 seconds she has forgotten all about the previous indiscretion. Tricky!

So I think my best plan is just to try hard to immediately provide a reinforcer, because really, I don't have another option.

Oh, and shes also learned another neat little trick (that I must've inadvertently reinforced through once of my initial bite reactions). I tried to give her a treat the other day and she sniffed it, and then she bit my hand. As soon as I withdrew my hand, she came out a sniffed the ground where the treat should have fallen. I must've dropped it once when she bit me, and she noticed. Thats right folks, she is trying to turn me into a human Skinner Box. Sneaky monkey..........

Thats it for this week!