After viewing the YouTube video that I posted yesterday, someone had written me to ask if I knew how to teach their ferrets tricks. I'm not the most dedicated or patient person in the world ... and you do need those qualities to teach your ferrets most tricks ... but even someone like me can manage to get their little fur balls to be the life of the party. I have only seen ferrets trained as well as what you saw in that video once before. A lady taught her ferret to actually run through a tiny agility course using clicker training. That must have been tough and I'm not familiar with clicker training enough to say whether you could transfer conventional training to a ferret for such a complex task or not. I don't know the details of how she did it. The lady on the movie that you saw yesterday, said that she trains her dogs to do things such as the dancing that is so popular now. She said she did absolutely nothing different with her two ferrets. She did add that it took a lot longer for them to learn the tricks though. She says all ferrets can learn the tricks that she showed in the video, it's just that when a typical owner goes to teach them they usually quit early, and they assume ferrets aren't teachable because it can take so much longer than a dog. I can tell you that the rolling over trick is easy. It's a good one to start with. You can teach your ferret to roll over on command in just a few days or less! Use a treat that your ferret goes nuts over. His favorite. Hold it in your hand while having the ferret stand facing you. Take the treat, and hold it by the ferrets face (to the side). As soon as the ferret turns towards the treat (which is almost instantly), pull the treat towards his tail/back a little. Then as the ferret follows your hand holding the treat, draw it across their back behind their head. The ferret should at this point, fall over on its side to follow the treat and to try to eat it ... hence rolling over. You just continue on with your hand in a sort of circle for him to follow. Then you reward him. Does that make sense? The lady in the video does it, but it's so quick it's hard to see unless you look for it. The only problem with this is that on occasion you'll actually get a ferret that is too smart for this! Seriously. No matter what you do, they'll sneer at you, refuse to play the game, and keep turning their heads to the other side to try to meet your hand or find some other manner to outsmart you. Other ferrets are slower, so you might have to keep stopping before completing the little circle to give them a little reward for going as far as they have until they learn the entire trick in one swift move. Just remember to always reward them. If you watch in that video, the lady is constantly giving them a lick or bite of its treat. End result is that you command your ferret to roll over with a circling motion with your hand and he'll roll over. Here's a real simply trick: Using a treat as a reward, you can teach your ferret to balance and sit on it's hind hanches for you. Hold the treat just out of reach from your ferret above his head. Give him a sniff or lick first so he knows he'll get a reward if he does what you tell him. Say a command (if he is not deaf), and give a visual using a hand signal (maybe alternating making a fist and then flattening your hand above his head) and raise the treat up very slowly as he follows it. At first his balance very wobbly. Some ferrets learn to do this very, very well with practice. Others are a bit more spazy. lol. Pretty soon, he'll balance on his haunches for you with just a verbal command and/or with a hand signal (usually above his head). Remember, always reward. As far as the walking between your legs, I've never done that, but it strikes as a rather easy trick to perform. Simply use a treat in your hand, let the ferret taste it, give a secession of verbal commands and a hand signal as you step out and dangle the treat just out of reach of the ferret. Lead the ferret by your side, then perhaps swing a circle and teach him to give a spin. Later you can lead him to weave between your legs as you walk. Eventually, with all tricks, you won't have to hold a treat every single time, but you will have to consistently give your ferret a reward treat. Unlike doggies, they won't do tricks for giggles sakes after they learn them. Not all of the time. lol. There has to be a reward. A trick we've taught a few but not all ferrets is to jump from the arm of a couch into our arms for a favorite treat. Put the ferret on top of the arm of the couch (it has to be grippy where the ferret stands, that's why not a table). Hold the treat right in front of his nose ... tease him with it letting him give it a lick. Then hold your other hand flat out several inches from him, at the level of the couch arm. Pull the treat away slowly. Start getting your ferrets trust in that you won't let him fall if he steps off the couch onto your hand for the treat or even jumps on your hand/arm. The first time he begins to step off, give him the treat. Then take it step by step rewarding him each time that he goes further after that. Some ferrets learn it in a couple days. Others might never do it. Most of ours do. Ours eventually are able to jump from slick surfaces as well after they have become quite skilled at it. We had one ferret that we did not even have to put up on a prop. We only used a specific treat for that specific trick. Upon showing him the treat and pointing to the couch and things, he'd trot up to place himself and wait to jump. The trick that I absolutely cannot figure out ... is the trick where the lady makes the ferret stand still on a specific spot. That is soooooooo unnatural and unlike a ferret to remain perfectly still like that for so long. I can't figure out how she did it! I can't figure out how that one lady trained her ferret to run a course either. That was amazing. A new thing being done, that has already been done with dolphins, birds, and dogs is target training. They say that even the most unintelligent animal can learn target training. Target training teaches an animal to touch something at the end of a stick with their nose (for a reward). Then you use that stick with the target on the end (like a colored round thing or something) to guide the animal through tricks. I'm not familiar with that training much at all. You could google target training though as it is extremely popular now. And you could just transfer those instructions over to ferrets. Like I said, start with the rolling over. Try the holding the treat up for the ferret to stand up for the treat too. Those two tricks will get you started. And if they are the only tricks that you have time to teach your ferret, they are quite the crowd pleasers. [Posted in FML 5499]