Play Clicker Training Guinea Pigs!

[ClicknCavy]

Hi guys! Some of you saw some of my guinea pig videos in my introduction. I have a hobby of training animals, especially using clicker training.

And I will update this thread whenever I get some videos up on Youtube because I want to show off my sweet girls and I am so proud of them.

[video]https://youtu.be/VIT50xBsZtU[/video]

[video]https://youtu.be/lin-nlo8dp8[/video]

Those two videos above are of Fiona. Right now, I'm trying to teach her to shake her fur off (as if wet) on cue, so that's why she keeps shaking her head like that. I'm attaching it a cue currently, but I'm waiting for uncued responses to extinguish the same as I did for uncued spins.

The next video is of Toora learning how to jump onto the platform in a new place. Because Toora has fragile confidence, I always start the trick as if it's our first time working on it when we're in a new place. She then knows that she's a good girl right away and is willing and able to do the trick in the new place (really a different section of the room). I quickly increase criteria because I know she can do it. It's really good to video-record this process because it shows, very quickly, the different steps she went through to learn her trick.

[video]https://youtu.be/RujE8sPLZ40[/video]

Feel free to ask any questions about clicker training!

 

[pinky]

Love it! I taught my females to spin when I say, "do your trick." I reward them with a bite of lettuce or carrot. They do it whenever they want a snack now, even when I don't give them the command. It's funny how food is an incentive. Just curious, what kind of snacks are you feeding her as a reward?

 

[ClicknCavy]

Usually, I cut up carrots, bell peppers, or lettuce really small. I gave Fiona bigger treats in the go-around video because I was adding distance to the behavior and was giving her bigger pieces for her good effort.

Their other veggies I don't use because it's harder to cut them small or they don't value them highly enough as treats, like tomato or cucumber.

 

[mufasa]

Adorable! The only trick my girls can do is to sit up for their treats. However, they're managed to train me in quite a few behaviors!

 

[ClicknCavy]

The trick to training guinea pigs is to make them believe they are training you to give them treats!

Toora still needs to have her big lightbulb moment that her behavior is truly what is making the treats happen. She's following the laws of learning but isn't aware of them as much as Fiona is...yet. But I feel she's gonna figure it out soon. Here is a video showing Fiona a day after she discovered that her behaviors make clicks happen:

[video]https://youtu.be/ab5I9YiTZ9Y[/video]

While her spins aren't as polished as the ones in the original post's video are, they are speedy and she understands how to make the clicks happen--they aren't as excitable as the moment she first figured it out, but I feel the enthusiasm is still there.

Ever since her lightbulb moment, her confidence allows her to learn new behaviors extremely rapidly. While it appears she is doing the behavior on cue, she is actually "throwing" the behavior (doing it over and over again to try to earn reinforcement) and I'm simply saying "spin" between each repetition and giving her a click & treat for doing the cued behavior. I stop clicking uncued spins. This is the stage she is at with her shake-off trick. I am calling it "Shake it."

I'll try to film a session of Toora learning to spin and hopefully capture the moment she figures this training game out completely! My dog, when he figured out clicker training, wagged his tail so hard and fast, he sprained it. He also has celebration zoomies after he figures out difficult tricks.

 

[animalmadlover]

Thats so cool! I love clicker training. Though currently, Sparkles thinks that the sound of the clicker is another guinea pig and talks back to it! :-D Then he runs away!

 

[prettynyguen]

Thank you so much for sharing ClicknCavy. I love to see other people do tricks with their guinea pigs, because it's so much fun. Here's my youtube channel, where i'm teaching my guinea pigs to do all sorts of tricks. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1PPV50xGYpoU-ZL4pqxgfw

 

[ClicknCavy]

That's awesome! I've only had my girls for two and a half months, but I can't wait until we start to do awesome tricks like your guinea pigs!!!

 

[ClicknCavy]

[video]https://youtu.be/tH1yomWdRd8[/video]

Toora Loora has the prettiest spin and this video is around the time (two days ago) she figured out the clicker game the whole way through. Since this session, she's an insanely quick study. It's as if all those clicker games we've been doing suddenly make sense and now she's picking them up so quickly. She pretty much instantly learned the foundation for hoop jumping, which took Fiona a few days.

She celebrated tonight during floortime with full-out sprints and is now tuckered out in her cage, haha. She's usually super active in it and a punk to Fi, but now, she's really low-key and calm now, cuddling with Fiona. Now, she's an incredibly quick study like Fi!!!

Fiona is working on leg weaves and rolling her ball into a goal now. Toora's still playing catch up, but I suspect she's gonna figure all of Fi's tricks out really soon!

 

[joys_cavies]

I taught my blind piggy a trick without a clicker if yall would like to know what it is (I'm ordering a clicker soon)

 

[kirt15]

I think what u do @ClicknCavy is awesome. I would love to teach my boys. Do you think age matters when learning these type of tricks or even sex e.g. are girls smarter than boys or vice versa? 2 of my boys r nearly 4 and my other 2 aren't quite 1 yet. Also how long do u try and teach them for each session?

 

[ClicknCavy]

Age doesn't matter when it comes to ability to learn. Clicker training is effective for all species and for all ages. My dog started clicker training at 4 years old and he learned over 50 tricks!

For guinea pigs, you want, absolutely, to have short and highly reinforcing sessions--ESPECIALLY if they are just starting out. Mine are usually 1 minute or less. We also train outside of training sessions. These ones don't have time because they are so informal and 100% guinea pig's choice to interact. In the beginning when the guinea pigs, for example, choose to come up to us during floortime, we would click/treat. We don't bring out the clickers for floortime any more, though, as both girls enjoy climbing on us now. We take them back out when we have guests that want to interact with them.

 

[ClicknCavy]

Yay! More videos!

[video]https://youtu.be/S32qooCLBU4[/video]
Fiona displaying the trained behavior to load up into a carrier (in this case, an upside down hidey).

[video]https://youtu.be/Rtxqc3UdKbg[/video]
Here is a video of my boyfriend training Toora Loora while I film. She's an extremely eager pupil and has grown SO much more confident in herself due to clicker training.

[video]https://youtu.be/-PspAtPXzko[/video]
And, of course, we have fun with floor time too. I think it's really cute that Toora jumps at the chairs legs ever since she learned hoop jumping. She didn't offer it before as a play behavior, but now she does.

 

[ClicknCavy]

Hey guys! Here's some updates on Fiona!

[video]https://youtu.be/c2E9rDxVdvo[/video]
I have added a lot more distance in Fiona's Go Around trick. Because she understands what she's supposed to do, she has added speed on her own. I usually don't train for speedy response specifically and just use the animal's own pace, whatever it may be. They typically build speed when they understand the trick and enjoy training.

[video]https://youtu.be/Sue_HjTe0C0[/video]
This is Fiona's Tunnel trick. It's one of her favorites. I want to combine some of her agility tricks into a course, but first I need to make and train a bar jump. Maybe I'll also do a broad jump!

Toora is working on pushing a ball, but because she has fragile confidence, she doesn't offer many behaviors around the ball. I've started shaping the push using a toilet paper roll, which is a prop she's VERY familiar with (I use TP rolls as toys for them in the cage). I wanted to teach her fetch, but I really need to work on her confidence to offer new behaviors. She's not as feisty as Fi, but when she figures something out, she is all enthusiasm and pizzazz and is really an eager pupil.

 

[ClicknCavy]

Yesterday, I mentioned that Toora was having trouble piecing together how to push a ball. Well! Tonight she got it! And she also shows off the enthusiasm and pizzazz I was talking about while doing it, too!

[video]https://youtu.be/FiZjJqG6mAw[/video]
I love seeing how much she has blossomed from the timid little guinea pig I got two months ago.

[video]https://youtu.be/rfTp0GP3oOI[/video]
This is also one of the few sessions where we had to cue her to enter the hidey instead of having her initiate coming into it on her own. It means she was having a blast!

 

[ClicknCavy]

[video]https://youtu.be/BIppH-plUOI[/video]

Hi guys! Another Toora Video. This time of me training her. She is an incredibly smart piggie. This is her first training session for Go-Around trick, which is Fiona's favorite right now, lol.

This is also my first video with editing! Joshy downloaded some editing software for me! Also, I put notes in it to show what I'm doing in training and why.

 

[Piggly12]

That’t a great video!

I love the way it shows when to click, I understand clicker training now!

 

[Piggly12]

In floor time, how would you reward the pigs? If they run around or approach me?

How would I reward my 3 separately? How, for example, would I teach my Maple that it was her sister being rewarded for approaching me, not Maple being rewarded for chasing her other sister?

 

[ClicknCavy]

In floor time, how would you reward the pigs? If they run around or approach me?

How would I reward my 3 separately? How, for example, would I teach my Maple that it was her sister being rewarded for approaching me, not Maple being rewarded for chasing her other sister?

I trained my girls separately before I trained them together during floor time. When they were learning to approach and jump in my lap, I had one in the cage and one out for floor time. Guinea pigs understand the context of the click. If you aren't near them when they hear the click, they know that the click wasn't for them. However, if they haven't yet learned the meaning of the click, then I recommend against training during floor time until they do. There are actually two parts to a guinea pig (or any animal) learning the meaning of the click:

1) "Okay, when I hear a click, that means a treat appears!"
2) "I can make clicks happen through my behavior!"

Most animals understand (broken link removed) in a session or two of pairing the click and treat. (broken link removed) is a eureka moment that takes different animals different times to reach. Fi understood (broken link removed) almost instantly--a few sessions. It took Toora a few weeks. The time it takes an animal to learn (broken link removed) doesn't mean an animal is more or less intelligent than another. It just related to different levels of confidence and differences in thinking processes or temperament.

Usually, I don't use the clicker when I have them out together during floor time, but when I do, I simply click the guinea pig that is offering good behaviors and give her a treat. If the other one guinea girl is near me and is being a good girl, I also give her a treat as well. It's fine to click the guinea pigs whenever they are doing something that isn't a bad behavior because you can build on the clicked behaviors later for tricks. Since floor time is done in a cavy-proofed area... the chance of them doing something bad is almost nil. Lol.

Also, I usually separate training time from floor time. They get one individualized training session a day between 1 min to 5 min long and they get multiple floor times. Sometimes we ask for cued behaviors during floor time, but usually, we hang up the clicker and let the girls do what they want to do. Typically, they offer their trained behaviors and get attention in return.

I'll do more edited videos to explain clicker training since I now have the ability to!!!

 

[Piggly12]

Is there a specific way to get them to associate, for example, the word ‘circle’ with them turning a circle? Do you have to start saying it at the beginning, as they learn it, or after they have learned the trick?