Magazine Training

Catnip Enjoying Her Reward!

It took Catnip a total of 7 minutes to be magazine trained. She was trained within the first day and seemed to understand she needed to be near the lever in order to get rewarded a pellet. At first, my criteria was for her to just go to the lever and have her nose be on it. She got the hang of this quickly. So, I moved onto only rewarding her when she placed her paws onto the lever and her head was above the lever. She then began to get the idea of the lever being associated with food and would stand with her paws on the lever. She eventually pushed the lever down and realized that the lever would deliver food. I noticed that her behavior during the beginning of the training was more aggressive than when she got the hang of things. At first she would jump when the light and sound would go off, but then she got to the point where she would try to pull and eat the bar before she realized she needed to push it down. I think that Catnips training was similar to the class disscussion we had. It reminded me of the training game we played and how we had to be careful and specific with rewarding the individual when they walked into the classroom. I had to remember to be mindful of when I pressed the hand lever to not confuse her.