Overall, I really enjoyed the training process. Although it was difficult at times to schedule other things around my training schedule, I was actually surprised by how much progress I saw in the relatively small amount of time that Mitzy and I spent training. I was so impressed with Mitzy's rate of learning, especially on her first few days of training. She seemed to very quickly form an association between the response and consequence (reward), and I felt like a very proud psychology student/ trainer/ rat mommy. I was also surprised when I was somewhat disappointed that it was over!
I really liked being able to work with a live animal, which I was initially nervous about--not because I disliked rats, but rather, because I was worried about what kind of conditions we might have to subject the rats to. In general, I think that I had some very misguided notions about what using animal subjects is like. Spending time in the rat room, however, and seeing how they were all treated by Dr. Trench, Devon, and all of the rest of the students, greatly improved my attitude toward using animal subjects. As far as I know, everyone really bonded with their rats, and I think that Dr. Trench and Devon are pretty protective of them :P
Over the course of this project, I continued to look forward to hanging out with Mitzy for a few minutes after each training session, even though she tended to be kind of antzy at this point. I never had any problems with her biting me, and she seemed perfectly comfortable with being picked up and handled. Mitzy was a great subject, and she made my job pretty easy most of the time. I really enjoyed carefully observing Mitzy during shaping to figure out exactly when or what to reinforce, and I appreciated being able to watch her progress on her own for the rest of training. After shaping, I just sat back with a notepad and a pencil and let the magic happen! :)
Love,
Lindsey and Mitzy
PS: In case bar pressing gets a little bit old, here's some inspiration for the next training project:
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