Tinkerbell has done wonderfully generalizing to the new wooden rat box which we constructed.  I started habituating Tink to the new box on Thursday, and I began conditioning her to hop up onto a wooden platform and ”ring the bell” in her new environment on Friday and Saturday.  On Friday, Tinkerbell had difficulty staying on the platform.  She would jump right up onto the platform on my verbal cue, but as she rang the bell by hitting it with her nose, she would fall over the side of the platform.  I was worried that this may become a problem.  I considered extending the platform by adding a wider piece of plywood over the existing platform.  I was worried that if Tink became fearful of the platform, it would be much more difficult to condition her to do the two part trick. 

After much thought, I decided to try again without adding the additional piece of plywood to extend the platform.  I let Tink “play” in the box and jump up onto the platform for about 20 muinutes  before I added the bell to the appartus. We worked together over numerous trials and I’m happy to say that Tinkerbell mastered her two part trick.  She is conditioned to jumping onto the narrow platform and she rings the bell without falling over the side about 95% of the time.  We are well on our way to the most interesting part of our experiment.  I think I’ll give Tink a couple more days of conditioning trials before we add Rat #2, Rooth, into the mix. 

 (Food weight – 20.5 grams – Body weight – 225 grams)