FR 5 Training Days

 On 9/26 and 9/27 we trained Pixie on FR5. We decided to do 2 days on the FR5 schedule because we noticed that she was having a harder time understanding that she had to push the lever 5 times before a pellet would be delivered. This did slow her progress down some, but she still did fairly decent. Both days that she was on the FR5 schedule, the number of times that she pressed the lever were very close. On the first day (9/26) she pressed the lever a total of 623 times and on the second day of FR5 (9/27) she pressed it 639 times. Both training sessions we went the whole 30 minutes so it would give her plenty of time to be reinforced. I think she was used to getting a pellet after each time she pressed the lever that when she did it one time and nothing came out she became a little frustrated. Eventually she got the idea of what she was supposed to do and that if she pressed the lever 5 times or more that she'd get a pellet on that fifth press. At the end of the training sessions we weighed her. Her weights for both days on FR5 are as follows:

9/26: 215.9    8.3g

9/27: 216.2.    7.8g

If we would have trained the full 30 minutes on FR5 day 1 (9/26), she would have pushed the lever an average of 812 times. For FR5 day 2 (9/27) if we would have gone the full 30 minutes she would have pushed the lever an average of 766 times.