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My Final Thoughts

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  Time well spent.   I had a wonderful time training Pixie Dust the Rat, she was excellent to work with. The more I trained the more I learned that rats are more than what they seem. I was usually the one that held her, spent time holding her, and carrying back and forth from the box to the cage. And I believe it was bonding, she never tried to run away from me, even when she jumped from my arms at one point.  The learning took some time and patience, but it was wel worth it watching her become what we hoped. She is very intelligent and i wanted to continue the process to see if we could reach the highest FR but perhaps one day I’ll get the opportunity again. 
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Fixed Ratio Schedule Graph

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Challenges or Problems in Training

  I would say that the problems my partner and I had with Pixie was her short attention span. She would repeatedly press the lever in a sequence and then stop anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes to groom or check out other areas of the box.  We were really able to train her on the weekends, due to both of our busy schedules, which made it a bit complicated with the beginnings on Mondays, Pixie would have to take time to figure out what to do at the beginning.  We attempted to regain her attention by tapping on the food dispenser or on the glass a bit, and that worked most times.  She made very good progress and we are proud her.
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Extinction Day 1&2

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  Extinction  October 4th - 5th, 2022 Putting Pixie through the Extinction process was interesting, I have never trained an animal to u learn something once taught. Once completed she was put on free feed. Day 1 Pixie was a bit finicky with the lack of rewards, losing interest very easily. We were only able to gather her attention for about 26 minutes, and within in that time she managed to press the lever 307 times, in stop and start spirts. Day 2 Continuing her behavior the second day, she managed to press the lever 202 times.  A major decline in her responses from the FR training, Pixie did very well both days and the whole time training over September. There was no inclination of spontaneous recovery or extinction bursts in both sessions.
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FR 15

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  FR 15 October 3rd, 2022 The final session in training for Pixie. She struggled a little bit with this session, with the heavy increase in lever presses, this was probably the toughest one for her. With lack of focus on the lever, and more on her grooming, Pixie didn’t reach the amount of presses that my partner and I were hoping for. However, she still did very well.  She pressed the lever 642 times, only receiving 42 pellets. She might not have been to inclined since the rewards were low.  Weighing in at 210.2 grams by the end of the session, she fed 8.1 grams of food.  The next session will begin the extinction, and this I believe will be the more interesting part.   
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FR 12

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  FR 12 September 30, 2022 For the increase in Lever presses each session, Pixie has been excelling in her amount of responses. The training session for FR 12 was great, she managed to stay focused and push for the pellets.  At the beginning of each training session we usually starts out rough, and this time was no different. However, when she got started she didn’t stop.  Weighing in at 216.2 grams, we fed her 5.9 grams of food. 
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FR 10

  FR 10 September 29th, 2022 Their wasn’t much change today in the training session, without intervention. Pixie did very well on her training, pressing the lever 771 times, a gradual increase from the last training session, receiving 77 pellets.  We only trained for 27 minutes out of the 30. If we had trained the whole time the average amount of responses she might have gotten averaged out to 856 times.  Weighing in a 214.4 grams, we fed her 8.3 grams of food.
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