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!