Shaping Day 1

 

On 9/15/22 we started shaping Pixies behavior to press the lever. This was our first day of shaping. We started off by using the handswitch only. For shaping day one we trained for about 22 minutes. DD and I realized that this was less than preferred time, but Pixie was becoming uninterested after the first 20ish minutes or so. To help train her to push the lever, we would reinforce her every time she went near the lever. Whether that be her sniffing on top of the lever, rearing her paw down or around the lever and etc. By doing this, it helped Pixie understand that in order to get a pellet she had to be around the lever. For shaping day1, she was reinforced 70 times (70 hand switches= 70 pellet deliveries). We used this same method over the course of the next few shaping days. She weighed 214.7g, which is a little over weight for her so we fed her 7.3g.  If we would have trained for the full 3o minutes, she would have had an average 100 responses. 

Stay tuned for more progress!