Video Series - Training a Ferret to Shake a Paw

This series of videos show how to begin teaching a ferret how to shake a paw. While these videos don't show the entire process, they are useful in showing the baby steps required to teach a trick or particular behavior. The basic steps involved in training a complex behavior are:

• Decide on a behavior or trick that you want to train your ferret to perform.
• Try to break the behavior down into a series of small steps or increments that can be worked on gradually.
• When teaching these smaller steps, start by rewarding actions that are anywhere close to the desired behavior.
• You can use treats as a lure to increase the chance of the behavior (including the small steps) being performed.
• Gradually, you will require more specific behavior before giving a reward. By rewarding for very general progress, your ferret will be less frustrated and more encouraged by the whole process. If you make it too difficult to get a reward, chances are your ferret will lose interest very rapidly!

The idea in this series of videos is to teach a ferret to "shake a paw" by placing a raised paw on an open hand. The first step is to get the ferret to lift one paw off the ground, so the ferret is rewarded for just lifting a paw in the first video. The lure is a treat that is held in the owners hand, and the ferret lifts its paw to try to get to the treat. Bingo! A reward is given for lifting a paw. Step by step the lure / reward can gradually be moved to make the open hand more of a target, and gradually the ferret is taught that the raised paw is meant to be placed on an open hand.

The Videos: The following videos do a nice job of illustrating some of the steps to training shake a paw. Though the series doesn't show the final product, is should give you a good start and a good feel for the idea of shaping a behavior by using positive reinforcement and breaking the final task into small steps. Click on each of the links to view a video, then use your browser's back button to return to this page to see the other videos in the series.

• Step 1: training the ferret to lift paw and reach out to get to the treat.
• Step 2: introducing the open hand (under hand holding the treat).
• Step 3: moving the treat-holding hand back to make the open hand a better target.
• Step 4: holding the treat in fingertips rather than closed hand.

The last video shows that the ferret isn't quite ready to move on to further steps in the process. When the treat is no longer in a closed hand the ferret seems confused. Though it might seems at this point like this method isn't really working well, there has still been progress made. The trainer just needs to back up and work on step three for a longer period of time. Likely, raising the paw will become somewhat automatic when a treat is held out in any form, and the ferret will lift the paw when the treat is held in the fingertips. Gradually, the treat will be able to be moved away from the open hand, and a cue (e.g. saying "shake") can be added.

Tips

• Treats: Using the ferret's regular diet is a good idea for training as it avoide the problem of overindulging in treat foods. Other ideas are small bits of cooked chicken or other meats. Bits of raisins (cut up into very small pieces) are highly popular with ferrets but should be used but only occasionally (and in tiny amounts); the high sugar nature of these and many other treats make them less healthy for ferrets.
• Treats aren't the only reward: praise, attention and a play session with a favorite toy may also motivate your ferret as well as treats.
• Keep it positive: though training a ferret can be frustrating, keep sessions short and fun. If you or your ferret are getting frustrated, stop and do something else fun, and try again later. If your ferret has a short attention span and wants to play rather than pay attention to your training, take heart. You are not alone, as this video of a less focused ferret training session (different ferret, different trick) shows!