Shaping

 Our first day of shaping started on our first day of training. Once Betty was magazine trained, we had time to get the ball rolling on shaping. Getting Betty to approach the lever was fairly easy. She is a very curious rat. She began to bite the lever out of curiosity which made the shaping process a little more difficult because we had to extinguish that behavior before teaching her the new one. However, Betty was consistently staying by the lever, and even put her paws on it, by the end of day one. This happened a little faster than the book expected, however, she did not have the behavior down completely. This was a lot like the book expected. 

The next and final day of shaping went very well. She was consistently putting her paws on the lever, the biting habit was broken, and Betty was enjoying all of the reinforcements. Shaping went so well that day that we began with FR 1 in the middle of the training session. We spent about 45 minutes shaping Betty.