Right now Bing is target trained. That took about two weeks. But now it is fairly reliable. When I stick out my hand with my palm facing him he touches his nose to it. We have even gotten to the point where he will follow my hand, and stay there until I click. Not like I ask him to stay there for very long.
The next thing I am going to teach him is to go into the crate on cue. This will be especially useful during play time to transport him to and from his cage without the stressful capture of trying to chase him around the bathroom. Which I suspect is neither fun for me nor him.
After that I hope to teach him to open his mouth when asked. I think capturing would be the best way to go about doing this. I want to teach this behavior so I can check to see how his teeth look without needing to be forceful on him. It is very important for chinchillas teeth to wear down, if they do not it can cause serious medical problems.
I am excited to see how well this is actually turning out to be because I was afraid that the stort attention span would be very detrimental, and even though it has created some drawback, Bing has showed me that what I am doing really will work. I hope that this turns into a great bonding experience for me and my chins as well as an easier and better way to take care of them. As they can live 20+ I hope to have them live a long, happy, stressfree life as much as possible, and I think this is a wonderful start.
