Luring Tips & Tricks
Luring is an amazing training method that can be used to teach rats many tricks with ease. But despite that, many trainers often encounter some resistance with new rats when it comes to following a food lure. My advise to those people is to always treat the lure as its own separate behavior - basically, you want to treat luring as its own trick to be mastered.
So how exactly do you go about teaching a difficult rat to follow a lure? Well, the easiest way is to start with liquid treats. Take something like meat baby food and slather it on your fingers. Present your hand to your rat and let them begin to lick up the baby food. Once they are licking your fingers start to slowly lead them forward, making sure to let them continue to lick up the baby food as they walk. Once your rat is happily walking with your hand while licking the baby food, its time to ramp things up.
This time, show your rat the baby food and lead them one step forward - and during this one step, do not allow them to lick the baby food! As soon as they take one step, stop and let them lick up the baby food. Repeat this several times, then start to lure your rat 2 steps forward before rewarding. Then increase the number of steps to 3 steps, 4 steps, 5 steps, and so on until your rat is walking several steps without hesistation after the lure before being rewarded.
Once your rat will walk several steps behind a lure before you reward them, they're ready to start training! Put that new luring skill to the test by training some easy lure-taught tricks like spin, paw, and come - all fun tricks which can be found under the "easy tricks" tab on this website.
This time, show your rat the baby food and lead them one step forward - and during this one step, do not allow them to lick the baby food! As soon as they take one step, stop and let them lick up the baby food. Repeat this several times, then start to lure your rat 2 steps forward before rewarding. Then increase the number of steps to 3 steps, 4 steps, 5 steps, and so on until your rat is walking several steps without hesistation after the lure before being rewarded.
Once your rat will walk several steps behind a lure before you reward them, they're ready to start training! Put that new luring skill to the test by training some easy lure-taught tricks like spin, paw, and come - all fun tricks which can be found under the "easy tricks" tab on this website.
Disclosure: Esther (and her site rattrix.weebly.com) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com