Challenges

One challenge that Nala and I had was keeping her focused during a training session. As stated in previous posts, Nala was over excited in the operant box and did not want to eat the pellets or go near the bar. She would explore the box for the majority of the training time and pellets would pile up because she was not interested in eating them. After training with Dr. Trench, she said that I was training correctly. Nala was just an easily distracted rat who was a little skittish in the box. I tried to remedy this issue by putting the cover on the operant box to block out potential distractors. Looking back I wish I would have noticed her nervous behavior earlier. If I had gone to Dr. Trench sooner, I would have used the door to the operant box sooner. This extra time may have been what Nala needed to learn to press the bar. Nala seemed much more at ease after she got used to the cover being on the front of the box.