Training Video

Here is a post of  me training Rooth to do her trick.

Rooth Training Procedure And Diagram

Here is my diagram of how I am training Rooth. I am starting with only clicking when she rears up on her hind legs at all without touching the sides of the aquarium between markers one and two. Then as she gets better she has to rear up between markers one and two and marker three. Afterwards the area will be narrowed to markers two three and four until eventually she is only rearing up on marker 7.

If I have enough time I will increase the length of time until she can rear up for longer amount of times, up to five seconds.

And On To Trick Training

I discovered the other day that Rooth was finally clicker trained, so I moved on to teaching her her trick. I’ve decided to train her to rear up on her hind legs in the middle of the tank at a relatively specific spot in the tank and facing the right side of the tank as it relates to me. I want her to hold this position for five seconds.

So far she’s doing well. She’s rearing up a lot and trying different places and seems to get agitated if I don’t click when she does so. I only click when she rises at the right spot, though maybe I should be clicking every time she rises in the middle of the tank for now, I’m not sure. I’ve been doing this for a few days and it seems to work, so I hesitate to change the way I’m doing things.

The only thing that seems to get in the way is that she itches a lot and stops to bathe herself a lot. That’s probably because I’m not feeding her as often so she gets distracted more often.

Feeding

On a different note, I noticed earlier this week that Rooth was losing weight. I thought that it was just a bloop but I gave her a little more food anyway. This happened for a few more days. Today I’m happy to report that after boosting the amount of food I gave her she is up over 200 grams! I was starting to get worried.

Another thing that I found interesting was that Rooth no longer leaves presents when she’s on me. This I very much appreciate. It seems like she has learned not to pee on me, or at least that she’s no longer as afraid and feeling as much of a need to spot pee. I’ll have to see if this remains true in the future.

Here is my video of Rooth. It shows her going for the food when I click. Unfortunately it also looks like she’s reacting to my hand pointing towards the food as much as to the click. I need to work on making sure that she’s not connecting the food with my hand instead of connecting the food to the sound of the click. I think the best way to do that is to put my hand in there a lot without food and with food and to vary it by dropping the food. Or at least I should make sure that she’s faced the other way when I put down the food.

Another Weekend

I’ll admit it. I’m starting to get frustrated. Rooth hasn’t quite made the association yet. This isn’t her fault of course. I’ve run into two main problems:

1) I’m not patient

2) I’m worried that I’m doing it wrong.

Taken in combination it’s not entirely surprising that she hasn’t gotten it yet. I keep turning my coniditioning into extinction trials by clicking to see if she’s made the connection yet. She hasn’t.

How long did people click and treat before they tried it once or twice without?

Also, I’m worried I’m not doing it right. Which is part of the reason I’m tempted to see if it’s working. I’ve tried a couple of different things the past few days including putting newspaper around the sides of the aquarium so she can’t see me and the white cap. I gave up on the cap the second day as she decided it was a play toy.

I’m trying not to get too frustrated as I know that I’ve changed my technique a little bit so it may take a few more days. In the meantime I’m just paying close attention to what she’s doing.

More Trials

So the past few days I’ve tried a few different things in trying to clicker train Rooth. I discovered (as some of my classmates have) that just dropping the food in can lead to it bouncing all over the place. In an effort to minimize this I decided to take the cap off of a water bottle and put the food in there (or at least roughly near there.) At first this slowed things down as Rooth spent a lot of time turning it over and chewing on it after I’d put food in it. Eventually she started leaving it alone and I think we were finally making more progress.

The risk, of course, is that she is focusing on associating food with the white cap and not the click. I think after a while I will remove the white cap again. I’ve also been allowing the food to lay just outside the cap if it falls slightly outside of it. The biggest thing I want out of her right now is to know to look in that corner for food while I continue to work on getting her to make the association between the food and the click.  I’m hoping that by Monday or Tuesday she’ll have it.

Trials and Tribulation

I never anticipated clicker training Rooth to be quick and easy and so far I’ve been right. Not that I mind, I like the challenge.

I started our little bit of fun today by putting Rooth in the aquarium in the small room off the lab. I let her run around and explore a bit while I cut up some of the food I pre-weighed for her. Easier said than done. The pieces of food were not eager to be cut into smaller pieces and when they were the food had a tendency to crumble too small to be exceptionally useful. On the other hand I was left with pieces that took more than a bite or two to eat. This might be a skill that will need some practice. Then again, maybe Dr  MacEwan will let us use other types of treats sometime.

Besides the food issue, I was having a hard time getting Rooth to sit in one place long enough so that I could keep clicking and giving her food to hopefully speed the process. Then there was the fact that eventually she got bored with eating and stopped taking the food offered. Definitely a sign that I may need to  limit the length of time spent trying to  get her to work as after a point there’s no use.

At least she worked some, Poor Joni was in there and when I left the lab she still hadn’t convinced Tinkerbell to take even one piece of food. Tinkerbell must just not have been hungry and was too wound up. Quiet possibly she might have settled after I left, but I’m not sure. It just reiterated to me that Rooth needs to be hungry and to have had a chance to calm before starting.

A Party In the Lab

I swear there must have been a party in the lab and I just missed my invitation as I arrived at my normal time to see Rooth today and the lab was fool of people playing with their rattie girls. It offered a good chance to get Rooth a little more used to commotion and a chance to get used to the sound of the clicker as other people were starting to use theirs. I want to wait at least until tomorrow before I go that next step, but I was glad that she was at least exposed to the sound. At first she jumped, but she started to quickly habituate herself to the sound and didn’t jump as much so long as the clicker wasn’t right next to her. We’ll just have to see for when i start pairing the click with food.

Also, I was able to talk to some people with small rats, including Brian. They all reassured me that their girls weren’t gaining 10 grams a day and that Rooth was normal.

Does Rooth Ever Sleep? Or: Two Questions

So I’ve solved the problem of how to calm Rooth down. In the process two questions have come to my mind (well many actually, but these two I wanted to address today). 1)  Does anyone else have a rat that’s _not_ gaining 10 grams a day? And 2) Does Rooth ever sleep?

For question number 1: I’ve been weighing Rooth for a few days now. She started at 158.1 on the first day, was still around 158 on the second day, and today she has gained at most  4 grams to become 162. Does anyone else have a more active rat that isn’t gaining lots of weight all at once?

Which brings me to question 2. Today I happened to witness the very cute event of almost every rat in the lab sleeping or at least curling up with their backs to the front of the cage and closing their eyes. If I’ve come in and seen Rooth sleeping even once since I got her I don’t remember. Now she does relax and seem to half-doze in my arm, but when I go to see her when she’s in her cage she’s sniffing at the bars and rearing up and generally not sitting still.

Now logically she has to be sleeping. My best guess is that she’s likely to be awake when I come in around 4 because she’s adjusted already to my schedule. As for her being awake when I’m in there other times, there are usually at least one or two other people there when I come in so maybe she’s too interested in all the commotion.  In that case hopefully she’ll habituate soon.

Goal for tomorrow: Go in at a time I don’t normally and when there are hopefully fewer people around to see if I can catch her sleeping.