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- This topic has 11sd replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by
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I’ve had great success clicker training my Nigel and thought I’d share a brief video of a few of his tricks. You’ll notice several of them are basically the same skill of shaking and throwing but he also jumps on command, runs through his tube and gives kisses. He was a rescue bun and I don’t know if he ever had access to toys before, whenever he was back in his cage he would just sit and stare and ignore his toys, it broke my heart. So I used clicker training to teach him to play with his various toys, hence all the balls, and rings and the slinky.
We then progressed to the other tricks. I’m currently working on lay down but it kills him to have his belly on the ground when treats are available.He is now cage free and I often hear him playing with his toys when he is on his own now. Sorry about the poor camera angle on the video but I was desperately trying to stay out of frame. You can find the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amwm79bhJs4
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He is really engaged! I even saw him line up for the next trick like he knew ahead of time what was next. It’s great that he chooses to play with these things now. : )
I’m currently working on lay down but it kills him to have his belly on the ground when treats are available.
Aww Thanks so much for sharing the video. He’s so beautiful!
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Yes well I’m biased so I think he is the world’s smartest bunny! But I’m guessing that any rabbit would do as well. The reason Nigel picks up on tricks so fast is that he will do ANYTHING for food.
I use his pellets as treats, he gets an 1/8 of a cup a day and I give it to during training sessions. We go through that amount in about 5-15 minutes depending on wether or not I’m treating him something new or just running through his current tricks.
I didn’t start out looking for a rabbit that can do tricks but he really does love to play this way so much I’m constantly tryi no to figure out new tricks to teach him and keep him engaged. If I ever get the time and figure out a way to do to, I’d like to build him an orbs tickle course next. I think he’d love it.
New bunny owner you were asking about how I started, if you google clicker training in general you will get lots of information but I can give a quick explanation. The trick is to always reward with a treat every time you click, so even if you click in error, you still reward immediately. To get Nigel playing with toys I would click if he looked at a toy and reward. He quickly learned a click = a treat, and started to try to figure out how to get another one. Next I waited until he moved towards the toy before clicking, then he had to touch it, finally he didn’t get a treat until he picked it up. For the jumping and kissing moves I basically bribed him with a treat through the motion, when he successfully followed through I would click and reward.
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