I bought my first ferret several weeks ago, and would like to ask for some
advice about training her.  The problem is, Belka likes to bite.  She is about
six months old, and I understand that some biting is normal for young ferrets,
but I would really like to train her to control her bites.  Is there a way to
teach a ferret that biting with more than a certain amount of force is a bad
thing?  I don't want to train Belka to fear me or give up on the nipping
entirely, but only to bite with less enthusiasm.  There's also a question of
targets.  Belka likes to latch onto my toes, which is OK, and chew on my ears
whenever she gets a chance, which is not.  I've been administering nose-taps
after attacks to my face, but don't know if they're working; I expect that an
animal with such a short attention-span should train quickly, but what do I
know?
 
Looking over the last paragraph, it almost seems as if I'm in the "ferrets is
waa'ld, rabbid aminals" camp.  Not so.  Belka is a lot of fun to have around
and pretty entertaining to watch.  I just want to keep the major features of my
face where they belong.
 
On a sorta'-related note, how can I teach Belka that raisins are yummy?  So far
she hasn't associated the smell with food, and even when I placed a raisin near
Ferretone so she'd be sure to lick it, she didn't see anything worth bothering
about in it.  I understand that Ferretone is bad in large doses, and would like
to find something which I can distribute a bit more freely as a reward.
 
Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
-- Sergej Roytman, working on his second consecutive all-nighterrzzzzzzzzz
 
[Posted in FML issue 0546]