Lizard Training of Two Savana Monitors
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 Lilly

Training begins October 24, 2006

DAY 1, SISTER

This monitor is obviously exceptional. She's as inquisitive as a little ferret and has run the perimeter of the bathroom 7 times with purposeful strides, trying to climb every inside corner. Where the cabinets overhang, she has to reach up to inspect the whole edge, in one go, almost walking on the hind limbs to do it.

She finds a gap between wall and cabinet under the overhang and starts to go in it- I didn't know about that hole!

i shout 'NO!' and grab her back half before she gets all the way in. I slowly pull her out despite resistance and deposit her on the floor right where she was. She looks at me, looks at the gap and goes on her perimeter inspection.

Now she seems interested in my lips moving and my eyes blinking. She's been all over the bathroom now and the most interesting thing left is the moving parts of my face. She pauses a few seconds and cocks her head like a bird, then continues. She turns back and makes a beeline for me. She climbs over my leg, up my shirt and she wants to get at my face.

I was taken by surprise, this happened so quick, so I stand up and she stays on my shoulder as I scrabble a cricket out of a box for her. She sees the crickets on the bathroom counter in the box. She sees us both in the mirror. She's very curious about this and cocks her head.

Now I turn to face her and she looks up her nose at me , all cute and crosseyed and a big blue tongue comes out and almost gets my nose. Here's the cricket. I try to be 4/10 of a second from that nose lick to 'here is the cricket'. She tastes the cricket, takes aim and stabs, getting a fingertip along with cricket. She is tenacious and means to have what she nabbed. After a few good chomps,

she realises it's not a cricket and takes just the cricket, gulping it down and licking both sides of her mouth and smiling.

This is amazing to come so far so fast. She's special. 

Now I make 3 kissing noises and bat my eyelashes 3 times. She's attracted. I repeat it and she stretches her neck out to taste toward my nose. Here's your cricket!

She stabs at the first 3. Then she realises she can just take it. Crickets 4 and 5 she takes with her lips, very gently and unhurriedly. Then she crunches them.

She wants more, but it's been 2 hours at this so I put her in her new cage. She explores the heck out of that, then basks a bit, then begins standing up at the door and pawing frantically. She just has to be let out. I let her out and she climbs up my shirt and goes in my pocket and promptly falls asleep...lol!!  |-)

DAY 2, SISTER

She's just peachy again. She passed by the gap in the cabinet and started to stick her nose in. I yelled 'NO' and she dropped out and continued on her way. She learns so fast!

She took a dump by the toilet. It's on linoleum, so fine.

She climbed the towel that she could reach. Now she is in a wrinkle with her body hidden but her head sticking out watching me as she climbs. She sees the crickets on the counter top...lol. I better get some out and be ready.

While I open the lid and try to scrabble a few crickets into the sink where I can better pick one up, sister descends the towel. She is at my feet and definitely looking up at my face. Up the leg (I can't see her now), over the knee, (now I can see her again)

 over the thigh (now hidden by the shirt tail), here she is over the shirttail and coming up. I turn my head so I can see what i'm doing with the cricket and sister climbs on my shoulder.

I have a cricket now and turn to face her, already there, facing me, neck stretched out for a long lick and she gives a couple licks at my nose and here's her cricket. We repeat this 5 times.

She knows there are crickets up here, for sure!

She knows to ask the face for crickets already!

She's sincerely kissing for each cricket and taking each one gently from the fingertips.

She's brilliant!!

I let her run around the bedroom now as she is not tired of exploring but dinner is over.

She is absolutely frolicking- there is no other way to describe it.

She runs all around the room, then makes a beeline over to me and stops about a foot away, then goes on her explorations. She loves adventures!

She has achieved all the training I had considered essential. She has a way to ask for food that's fun for all and she has a way to be stopped.

DAY 3, SISTER

She definitely knows her stuff. You can see when the idea takes shape for her- she abruptly alters course and makes a beeline for me, climbing whatever part of me is between her and the face. She doesn't need to see the face the whole time, either. once she's decided, she goes to her goal in spite of not being able to see the face the whole route. She knows it's there and gets on the shoulder to be

able to kiss face. She likes egg, too, and wolfed down a couple big chunks. She is probably stuffed for a while and I should let her rest. She likes to climb up the towel and watch from 5 feet above the floor. If this is her natural inclination, then i'll make her something to climb and a high shelf for her to perch and put a hot rock up there for her. Whatever behaviour she exhibits, if it's something I can make sense of and it's good for her living with people, then I'll work with what she offers. One can't force any behaviour but fight or flight. One must observe the creature and shape the existing behaviour to make it suitable for living as a family pet. One must shape one's own behaviour to accommodate what is given by any particular creature if one would train a strongly motivated consistent repertoire.

The female requires no further lessons; just reinforcement of what she's learned in various other situations and times of day to generalise it and integrate it into the family routine.

If she presents any interesting behaviour on her own, that behaviour may be reinforced, shaped and worked into her repertoire also.

The 'basics' have been covered, so now whatever uniqueness develops easily and naturally will be grown from her own behaviour, not imposed from above by any preconception of the trainer.

DAY 3, SISTER

Sister is so overfed she just wants to stay in the cage. She is having a problem with the existence and nature of glass. She can see through it but it restrains her, so she’s rucked up the towels in the cage trying to push her way through the glass and paw it out of her way. She uses her whole body and force of determination to push that glass but she doesn’t want to come out. When I go to see what she’s actively disturbing (and start babbling) she lies down and closes her eyes. If I stop singing she opens an eye. As long as her admiring entourage is present (me) she will nap. She won’t be hungry right away, so no lessons til then.

DAY 4, SISTER

Sister mildly rebuked me for reaching to pick her up this morning. She didn’t cock the tail or inflate, just arched the neck a little bit and made a light ‘puff’, not an angry hiss. So I stopped and sang her for a minute til she let me pick her up.

DAY 5, SISTER

She has generalized face to my wife and climbed up her to get to her face and kiss for food. She now likes egg and also chicken. She doesn’t like the canned crickets.

1 MONTH, SISTER

She has  been reinforced daily in the bathroom. (Oh- she has learned to poop in the water dish.)

Presently a small fraction of her out-of-cage time is prowling. Now she spends most time climbing on me or my wife up to the face for a kiss. She has now only marginally stronger responses to me at this moment than to my wife. If she is hungry, then she will take food. If not hungry, she may go over the shoulder and slide down the back of the shirt. When she's tired of that, she comes for a kiss and hangs there, or finds a hand and lays her chin on it, for she has now learned to enjoy being stroked.

She has learned that I will let her out when she scratches at the middle door of her cage. Yesterday she was lying there, on her side, in the most precocious cheesecake pose waiting for someone to get to the door.

A habit, once firmly entrenched, is so utterly reliable with these animals.

Of course, she is not comfortable in any other room and can't remember her tricks except in the bathroom. It's like remembering a line in the middle of a song- I have to start at the beginning and run through it because each part elicits the memory of the next. So it is with monitors; being surrounded by the stimuli that were there when she learned something makes it easy for her to remember what she did and what she can do.

So predictable is her behavior that I can tell her what to do (she doesn't understand what I say) and then she does it as if on command. That is because I know what she is most likely to do, so I can create the illusion that she understands.

She often refuses to go in her cage now, preferring to sleep in a shirt next to skin or in my wife's bra. It looks like she's locked onto 'people are a good thing'. She is so adorable. Across the room, she will form an intention, then make a bee-line for her goal (kissing somebody, usually). She doesn't dally or get distracted, she just gets a notion and follows it all the way through.

31 DAYS, SISTER

She was brilliant- again. today wife and I sat in the bathroom and let her run around freely. She spent an hour running around. Most of the time she spent climbing me, givning a kiss, then sliding down my back. She finally taught me what she wants- she kissed me on the chin, then found the hand in my lap and lay her head on it for a second, then snuggled beside it, so I covered her with the hand just to warm her. She arranged her hands on either side of her face and took a one minute nap. Then she popped up, looked at the wife sitting on the floor across the room (5 ft away) and decided to go over there, climb up to kiss her, then back down to the wife's hand, which she kissed, and then waited. Wife covered her with her hand and slowly stroked her full length and she got comfortable and took another minute nap. When that was done, she alternated between us half a dozen times each- climbing each of us in turn and taking a bit of stroking before spying the other of us and changing partners. It appears she has understood that approaching close enough to the face to taste it is currency in our economy and we'll give her something she wants for it.

After 3 such one-hour sessions, today, I put her in my shirt for a nap, so she can breathe my odor. When she moved around in there I felt a rivulet of sweat trickle down my armpit from a strong coffee. She found my armpit and her tongue went wild- at maybe 60 flicks a minute, she actually imbibed my sweat. It tickled a bit, but I let her do it. Perhaps she liked the salt. In any case, once she came out again, she appeared to be in love with me...lol.

By that, I mean that she wouldn't let go of a death-grip on my hand when I tried to put her in the cage and insisted on being out. She didn't want to play for she was tired. She indicated pure contentment being cradled in the hand. Upside down or sideways didn't matter a bit. I could do anything with her and she just allowed it. She's too adorable, but that's how it is when a guy thinks a girl likes him- her IQ rises by 20 points, too!! LOL!

32 DAYS, SISTER (having grown from 11 to 12 1/2 inches in the past month)

She  spent most of the day in the cage. The hiding box was in there today (it isn't always). She retreated to it whenever I approached the cage. Finally I took the box out so she had no hiding place. After a few minutes, she remembered her old sociable self and wanted out for a romp. She wasn't hungry, but did her visiting and climbing numerous times until she found my shirtsleeve and slipped in. She bulldozed her way to the armpit and tried to shovel her head in as hard as she could, then fell asleep. She has been clinging to my shirt on the inside, with her nose buried in my armpit, for the past hour, sleeping.

35 DAYS, SISTER (NOV 28 )

She doesnt kiss for petting all the time, now. She climbs up and perches under the chin and flops and stares expectantly at the face. She knows what she wants...lol!

She also has discovred how to get into my shirt between the buttons. She loves to visit the armpit, but her little claws are getting a bit much. When she means to go somewhere, she is unstoppable.

She loves to prowl and climb the towel hanging by the shower, but is incessantly visiting me and the wife, climbing each in turn, taking a petting break on the wife (wife has softer hands and probably a technique she prefers). She doesn't like my petting so well. She has become a people-lizard, completely.

I think her next trick might be to lay on her back and get her belly rubbed. She already is ok with being on her back from having spent so much time next to the wife's body in her cloth sling, so I think her next trick might be to lay on her back and get her belly rubbed.

36 DAYS, SISTER

As always, she's in top form. She saw a had a piece of something in my fingers and stood up against the tub on her hind legs and tip of the tail trying to get to the hand. When that failed, she turned around and climbed straight up my chest to kiss the nose with no hesitation whatever. 3 perfect kisses and she was full of omelette and chicken wingtip. Then she climbed up and sprawled on my shoulder.

Returning her to her cage, she sprawled on the rock for just a minute, then decided she had to get out again, nosing and clawing at the opening. The wife opened the door and she stuck half her body out and lay there looking at the wife's face. We know what she wants. The wife picker her up and put the girl on her chest and stroked her. She sprawled out and enjoyed her massage and dozed.

37 DAYS, SISTER

She slept all day. It is common for them to take a day off after a feeding.

38 DAYS, SISTER (DEC 1)

She slept all day. She whipped at me 3 times - the same way she does when brother climbs on her head- not aggressive, just a way to tell me 'I vant to be alone'- mere flicks.

I listen when she speaks. She can do what she likes in her cage.

39 DAYS, SISTER

Lilly looked a bit ill today. She turned away from us when we sang to her. Buzzy pooped the cage, so Lilly had to come out and have a bath in the sink, also. She likes her bath but was still acting abnormally passive. After a bit of a bask on the heater she got off and took a poop and apparently felt much better, walking around and climbing me again, but not so energetically as usual. She didn't want any food, though. When she tried to nose her way into the heater where the really hot part is, I told her NO and she withdrew very nicely.

Later, after a small liquid poop (probably a fart?) she wanted out (she hates the stink). She always has a bit of a bad attitude when she has had to live with poo stink. Bad attitude, for her, is she makes ugly looks. She doesn't threaten or get defensive, but she will turn her head away and not look at you if she's annoyed.

So she got another bath and lay on her side in the water, super comfortable. Then she got a little bask on the heater. She looks better now- she's attentive to things instead of withdrawn as this morning.

She took 3 small chunks of egg from my lips when I put my face down to her. She takes it carefully and slowly- no threat at all. I had a piece of raw steak for her but she didn't know about steak and wouldn't take it after a kiss so I held it out for her to tongue it easily and she did take it. Seems she really liked it. Then I picked her up and showed her an opening in my shirt and she slithered on in for a nap.

I'm going to have to let them get hungry for a while so they will be more motivated, the little piggies. They can have all they want, because it's their main job to grow right now, but they need a bit of hunger so they are more active and climb up to my face instead of me going to her as I did this time (because I was concerned with her health).

DAY 40, SISTER   begin to teach kissing in another room

Lilly is still not herself. She had a massive poo, missed the water dish and hid herself with expression of displeasure, having to smell it. Ater her bath I took her in the bedroom and she climbed a towel onto a shelf in the closet where I tried her out on kissing in a new place. She took one bit of egg from my lips but then withdrew.

41 DAYS, BROTHER (DEC 4 )

Lilly missed the water dish again. I think she's a bit ill, but she's still active, just not exuberant.

She found out how to climb a towel to the bathroom counter and get in the sink for a bath. She did this twice today. She loves her bath.

Training begins October 24, 2006

 DAY 1, Buzzy

This monitor is either sleepy or shy. I lay on the floor with him and waited for 20 minutes while babbling and making up nonsense songs about how i'm going to get him a muscle shirt and a tattoo that says 'MoM', etc, til he finally got up and walked around half the bathroom. As he approached me on the other side he drew up along side my face, about six inches away, dropped to the floor, coiled up his tail like a clockspring (which means ‘please do not disturb’), splayed his hind legs palms up and put his head on his hands. He means to nap. So be it.

DAY 2, Buzzy

Fifteen minutes of babble before he started walking. Then he pooped.

After that he lay down in a corner. He still seems intimidated, though he doesn't coil up or puff or anything. He just doesn't take off on explorations. Maybe a cricket. Hopping around will get him responding?

This was a most cooperative cricket that crawled around right in front of him til he could stand it no longer and he nabbed it like lightning! A second cricket let loose and he chases it down really fast. He's quick at this!

Now he wants to prowl all over the bathroom. He does a couple turns around it then finds that gap in the cabinet and tries to go in.

I shout (not real loud) 'NO!' and repeat it as I pull him out and set him back where he was. He hisses at me when I set him down.

Why do I put him right back in front of the gap? So he can learn the NO command. There needs to be something to teach him NO over.

I'd have to invent something if it weren't already there.

He stands up again to go for the gap but a cautionary NO makes him decide to just lay down. I'm afraid I hurt his feelings, so I fetch a cricket and hold it close enough for him to taste. He nabs it and gulps it down and feaks only one side of his beak. Then he scrubs the side of his head very hard on the rug and dislodges some shed scales from around his tympanum. I have another cricket ready. I get my face close, make 3 kisses and 3 blinks and present the cricket, which he takes without urgency. Four more times we repeat this. The fourth time he is looking at my eyes, so 2 more crickets when he looks at my eyes. He has still to learn to approach the face in order to make crickets appear, but he's advancing.

Now he seems to want to nap, but when I take him in the room where his cage is, he decides he wants to explore more, so I shut the door and let him and his sister, who just woke up, loose in the room.

They truck around until Buzzy finds a warm spot on top of the router's power supply and falls asleep. Sis finds a hole in the heater's junction box and I have to go get a screwdriver.  :-/

DAY 3, Buzzy

Buzzy isn't motivated today. I sang him for 15 minutes til he started walking around. He isn't seriously prowling as his sister does.  He's just not hungry enough yet, I guess.

I slowly got my face within a couple inches of his and babbled him until he stuck out a tongue, to which the hand responded by delivering a (canned, precooked) cricket. He wasn't thrilled over it, but he very gently picked it from my fingers. Must wait for another day when he's hungry enough to be more motivated, active and concentrated as is indicated by intense prowling. One can not make a creature do anything; one must outsmart him. Do not reward him for lazy- wait him out!

DAY 4, Buzzy

Buzzy lashed at the hand this morning, unexpectedly. He needs more acclimatization to the hand before training. He isn’t prowling yet, either. Now is not the time.

DAY 7, Buzzy

Buzzy was finally prowling today after a poop. After his bath, he had to get on the hand to get out of the water, which he did by following the face. Now, when he freezes, it only takes a minute to sing him out of it instead of 20 minutes. He prowled about and climbed on things and recognized but wasn’t inhibited by the face watching him all the time. He only coiled his tail like a watchspring when I removed a box he got behind but that lasted just a minute til he was roaming again. He approached the blinking eyelids but wouldn’t take a piece of chicken so he ate nothing today.

1 MONTH,  Buzzy

We had to leave food in front of him on day 10 because he simply refused to do anything for it and he was getting too skinny. OK, so we let him stuff himself with pinkies to make a food addict out of him, but there was no training involved. It was a medical issue, really. It was necessary for his health.

Since the pinkie feed, he began taking food from the hand again. He has had a problem with hands. He cringes, does the Immobility Response and has hissed and lashed.

He has learned to come up to a sitting person and get his front half up on the leg and point his head up and lick the air- it looks like a puppy begging. Then he gets food from the hand and is happy to wolf it down. Two days ago he seemed to have an epiphany when the hand gave him 1/2 a chicken tail. He managed to get himself around the outside of it and stared at the face the entire time, riveted. Then he asked for and took the other half of the tail. What a piggie! Yay!

Today he came to the door and, even though he cringed slightly when the hand came to pick him up, it was plain that he was there to get picked up and go to the bathroom for a feed.  In the bathroom, he followe sister around quite a bit until he got close to a leg, when he remembered that climbing on a leg gets food. He was not hungry and ate very little, but he enjoyed a great game- taking 20 or more pieces of egg from the hand and shaking most of them out of his mouth onto the floor. He ignored the bits on the floor, which he is usually fastidious about picking up. He wanted to catch the food by standing up and begging hand rather than actually eat it. This is another breakthrough for him. He will still be cringy about hand for a while, but the fear responses are finally going extinct. To prove it, he visited the wife and sat on her while she stroked him. He didn't flatten, arch his neck or coil his tail. He did gulp occasionally, but he definitely had no serious fear, was alert until he fell asleep, and gave every indication of enjoying the petting.

********

32 DAYS, Buzzy

After most of the day  retreating to the hiding box whenever I approached, I removed the box. After a few minutes I got him from the cage and took him in the bathroom with his sister for a romp. He is stimulated when he sees her prowl and follows her, in fits and spurts, tonguing rapidly.

When he came to his begging spot, next to my leg, he remembered where he was and started looking up in the sky for the hand to appear with a morsel.

I was able to entice him onto my lap with a cricket held in my fingers. He ate 5 of them there but was still cringey when the hand approached or retreated (to get crickets out of a jar). He was the most active i've seen him, prowling very rapidly and intensely. He took a nap on the radiator after knocking his sister off her perch there, then did another tour of the bathroom, including climbing up onto my shoulder. I had the cricket ready when he got close to my face but he ignored it. He didn't eat any more . I thnk the hiding box needs to be permanently absent. His whole attitude changes when he can't hide but has to watch human activity in the room. If he has the hide he hides. If it's gone, he wants to prowl around, climbing on people. He is presently in my shirt and has been napping. As I type this *giggle* he's just discovered my other armpit and is giving it a taste. He's tongue flicking like crazy. Will type more later so as not to disturb him at the moment...

33 DAYS, Buzzy

Taken for a romp in the bathroom with his sister, he approached the leg and got half a chicken tail when he pointed his head up.

Later in the day, a second romp,without his sister, he was frantic! He was running to and fro actively tonguing. On the notion that he had tasted his sister's spoor and was searching for her, I brought sister in, but when I returned he had lay down on the heater and was basking.

That night, I reached in the cage to move him from the far corner  to place him on his hot rock. He became enraged. He stood up high, arched back and neck, lashed and offered to bite! There was no obvious trigger for this. He made a dash to the other end of the cage where he backed against the wall and took his challenging pose, as before, but without mouth open, hissing and hissing. I removed myself so he could not see me, rather than make ME a part of his chain of associations that include rage. In order not to endanger lilly, who shared the cage, I got a small box, put in air holes. When I returned a minute or so later, he was down, but still tense and huffy, and upon noticing activity outside the cage he tensed up more and arched his back and hissed. I only peeked around with one eye (so he would not see a full face) and used a towel (so he would not see a hand or smelll me) and captured him and placed him in the confining, dark box. He hissed in there for five long loud hisses. There he spent the night, isolated.

34 DAYS, Buzzy  (having grown from 11 to 12 1/2 inches in the past month)

He has started the day with the same rage. Touching his box elicited much hissing from within. With all that adrenaline going and nobody to fight and nowhere to flee, we decided to let him out in the bathtub with water deeper than usual to lower his traction so he could not hurt himself.and then be the good humans who get him out, as usual, since he can't do it himself....yet!

We did this all while being very mindful to not show face, hands or let him smelll us. We did not sing or speak, either.

 He didn't paddle actively- he was unusually calm in the water. Usually he paddles like mad till he can get to the hand. We watched with one eye around the shower curtain, which was drawn.

He just sat there for 5 minutes or so, then he turned his tail in a circle and flipped on his back, head underwater, and remained still, for a second. The wife immediately snatched him up He had not inhaled any water and seemed OK, but all fight was gone. He was doing a hard-core 'freeze'. Wife put him inside her bathrobe where it was warm, dark and smelled familiar.

We are upset over this inexplicable defensive behaviour, first a prolonged fight, then a sudden freeze, because savs i've had before were sweet natured, so it not only violated our expectations, but also is not behaviour that is compatible with living as a pet and he would have to be kept as a breeding specimen if he is prone to unpredictable aggression. Because the sister is so utterly wonderful, the contrast makes him seem all the more inexplicable because after a month he has still not come as far as she did on the very first day. Maybe he will hate people all his life. We speculate on anything we may have done wrong or if he had some previous bad experience with people about which we don't have any way to know.

I took over, later, putting the boy in my shirt, where he slept for hours. When he went back in his cage, he seemed to have returned to his previous self as if nothing had happened.

Later, in the bathroom, he prowled around until he got next to the wife's leg, where he edged himself against her warm thigh and accepted strokes. Sister was hanging on the wife's arm getting her pats, so the wife had to alternate strokes with her one free hand.

Both animals are sleeping in my shirt atm. Being warmed and comfortable and smelling my body odor conditions them to accept a human as OK.

35 DAYS, Buzzy (NOV, 28 )

He was very active and has locked on to the idea of the face, finally. When he is hungry, and he almost always is, he will steadily approach me when I am seated on the floor, both eyes on my rapidly blinking eyes, head up and tongue flicking, and climb as far as my lap. He struggled with a big chunk of chicken neck today and when I put my finger out he used as a backstop to ram himself around the very large chunk. He still has a bit of approach/avoidance about hands, but it can be measured in inches now. if movements aren't sudden, he can maintain calm and tolerates stroking. He will soon learn to love it, because it has been a regular daily occurrence. they come expect whatever is established as the norm and are uncomfortable when deprived of a usual thing. When his sister is missing he sometimes gets frantic looking for her. He follows her whenever she is prowling.

After his chicken neck he was put in his cage. Within a minute he was pacing like crazy and nosing all over the glass. When wife attended him, he lay down pressed against the glass, so she took him out again and promptly went to sleep in her arms as she stroked him. It looks like he is becoming more people oriented. This is a very positive development.

36 DAYS, Buzzy

Finally! He was laying on the heater in the bathroom and saw me sitting across the room and trucked on over, climbed up and tried to take my thumb. It didn't work. He went back to the heater.

I blinked my eyes and made 3 smooches and he trucked right back, climbed on my lap and stretched up to give me a perfect kiss on the nose. Voila chunk of hard boiled egg. That wasn't enough for him. I sat up a bit straighter and he climbed a bit higher for another perfect kiss on the nose. Voila second chunk of egg. (within 1/2 second of a kiss he gets it presented)

I made him climb a little higher for a 3rd perfect kiss and he got a chunk of chicken neck as big as his head. Trying to wolf it, he slid himself off my lap, so he took it against a wall to shove himself around it. Then he went to get warm and nap on the heater.

Returning him to his cage, he sprawled on his hot rock and arranged himself with his nose against the glass to keep an eye on us. I do believe he's got it!

37 DAYS, Buzzy

He slept all day, the little piggie. He ate so much in the past 2 days.

38 DAYS, Buzzy (DEC 1 )

Unfortunately he doesn't care if he poops in the water. He just lets it go wherever. So he had to take a bath in the sink while I cleaned the cage. He paddled like crazy in his bath but did not instantly use the hand to get out. When stressed he still avoids the hand- until he is tired- then he forgets to be leery of the hand and climbs right up.Afterwards he was active and prowling like a madlizard. He could see I had something in my fingers and when I made the 3 smooches and blinked my eyelids he  knew what was up. He came right over onto my lap to see the hand, expecting food. I had to blink like crazy to get his attention on my face so he would lick my nose, but he gave me 3 good kisses, almost with his forefeet in the air, and got his first bellyful of sardine. He went crazy, racing all over and he played 'climb up- slide down' on me 3 times. I guess he liked it.  He was great today!

39 DAYS, Buzzy

Another poop in the cage got the kids into the bathroom for a bath in the sink and a bask on the heater. I smooched and blinked while he was on the heater and he stretched up to taste my nose but when I presented a piece of raw beef he remained focussed in my eyes and lunged. He almost got my nose and fell off the heater. The second time he kissed he did shift his attention to the hand with the steak and took it nicely. Same for another piece of steak. Then he decided to race around the room a couple times before climbing back on the heater for a bask. He needs a little practice to discriminate. Using the blinking eyelids to attract him has the risk of this happening. Once he discriminates that faces are for kissing to summon the hand, he'll be perfect on kissing.

40 DAYS, Buzzy begin to teach kissing in another room

Tried getting a kiss from him in the cage today. First I held a piece of egg in my lips and made the smooching sounds 3 times and blinked my eyes 3 times. Several repetitions of that roused his curiosity and he took a piece of omelette from my lips. I had to maneuver to prevent getting a bite because he is not very clear on where egg changes to lip. The second time he was. The third time I had nothing in my lips and got a kiss and produced a piece of steak. So begins the task of generalising the response in different rooms.

41 DAYS, Buzzy (DEC 4 )

Buzzy hit the water dish with his poo for the first time today! I swear he was smiling about it!

41 DAYS, Buzzy (DEC 5 )

I borrowed a camera and got enough vid of Buzzy learning to kiss to put together 2 little movies, now on youtube. He's a star!

44 DAYS, Buzzy (DEC 7 )

Buzzy's basic training is now complete. More than this is possible, but this is the end of what is taught in the manual.

Buzzy has the kissing down solid now. He talks to the face even though he sees a hand with food. He knows kissing the face makes the hand arrive. He's such a gut bucket pig!

He now just needs reinforcement in various different places.

Buzzy still needs practice to get the habit of pooping in the water.

He still gets grumpy when awakened from deep sleep and may lash.

FEBRUARY 11, 2007    110 DAYS  

Buzzy is 26 1/2 inches.  Lilly is now 21 1/2 inches. Each has grown 1 inch in the past 4 days. Buzzy has got massive but Lilly remains delicate. She scampers sinously and Buzzy does the crocodile walk with elvis like exaggeration.

UPDATE on further training. (With respect to lilly- she's a genius. She's brilliant and perfect and an angel of savs. I think she read the manual before class...lol!  Buzzy is behind her, and this is how he learned what he knows.)

Release of the training vid that showed buzzy doing the trial and error an animal does, as his behaviour is shaped, created such a public outcry against the idea of such training I decided to make some vids of the results of the sav training- i would have, anyway cuz they are fun. These can be found on youtube from director kaffir2 and they show results of the savs training so far.

I guess, since I now know these logs have a certain notoriety, I should explain the procedures used..

Perhaps it will be good to define the term 'kiss' . A proper kiss requires that the animal stretches his neck upwards such that his nose is pointing at the trainer's nose and the animal's head is aligned such that both his eyes equally look at the trainer's face. In this position, the animal then flicks his tongue.

Reducing aggressive feeding to mil was accomplished by a strategy of lengthening the time from kissing to the time of actually biting the morsel.

Every satisfying swallow was accompanied by petting and  'Good Boy, Buzzy.' crooned softly.

Stretching out buzzy's 'hang time' on a kiss was easy.  I would charge him 2 tongue flicks when i was sure i was likely to get it before rewarding him with his morsel. If I needed an extra split second, I was able to blink my eyes to hold his attention a bit longer.  Once he was reliably paying me 2, I began to charge 3.

He began to learn that it was not the number of flicks but the time he remained interested and holding the pose. Once I got him up to 5 seconds hang time, I introduced distractions like noises and lip movements to desensitise him to those.

I also varied the distance between us, face being tilted one way or the other, rotated one way or another, further or closer, to dissociate the face from the food. When training started, i used eyeblinks and lip movements to get him to do the eye contact in the first place, which is mentioned as the risky part in the training manual. The hand simply appeared suddenly with the food.

This can be done with safety in a tub of warm water. Put the water just deep enough so he can float. He will have the ability to stand and walk around slowly, but not enough traction  for sudden movements to be effective. Since your face overhangs the side of the tub, his neck is naturally stretched upward in the kiss position and he learns it promptly. See the Savvage Manners vid.

If you settle for a less perfect pose outside the tub, he will bargain you down if you let him.

The hand made its final approach at ever slower pace to stretch out his time knowing where it was but waiting for it to come before moving. Now he'll outlast my patience, so I guess he's good to go on that!

Discrimination of food is important as well. Dissociating fingers/hands from food was accomplished by waiting till he was comfortable and sleepy after a meal and stroking his lips. By judging the gulping it was easy to determine the point of desensitisation to be attempted at any trial. He is now able to fully relax, but hasn't yet fallen asleep during a trial. When he falls asleep on you while you are doing anything is the goal that is set for all the desensitisation.

Besides the lip stroking, I began to make his morsel an ever smaller target by putting a mouse in my fist and letting progressively less of it hang out accessible. This reduced his lunging as the first benefit, but that's to be expected; the primary goal is to stretch the time from tasting his morsel to the time he can actually get his teeth on it.

By getting his nose burrowed into my hand he had to discriminate the morsel, but there is yet another consideration, which is to dissociate fingers from food, so it is necessary to focus on smelll. First I would feed him a mouse held in my fingers surrounding it like petals, with all the fingernails facing forward, as a wall with the mouse coming out a hole. After he took his mouse, i let him lick my fingers. At the point where he indicated actual interest in the fingers themselves, I gave him the kissy signal to distract him and took my hand away. Then he'd do another kiss and the hand reappear.

He now reliably refuses fingers - as long as he can see them well enough, If he's done the kiss and the hand is presented he still wants to bite something. It probably shouldn't be called a bite, but since they don't have fingers to pick things up, they have to use their mouths. As long as there is no crunching! As a result of the training, it is easy for me to take away anything he shouldn't have in his mouth. See the Buzzy Brekky vid.

I also keep them reliably familiar with our smell, using freshly dirty shirts for their bedding over the hot rock.

Buzzy is only beginning to seek petting. He won't travel far and he won't stay long, but he's starting to do it several times in a session. He's making daily progress, though, and it is expected that he will be equally fine as a pet as lilly is. A cuddly leather creature nuzzling in your arms is as satisfying as a hairy one.

As far as Lilly goes, it is hard to call it training when she does everything perfectly from the start. She won't eat food off the ground; it has to be served by the hand.  She has always given perfect kisses, taken food daintily, can't be tempted with fingers no matter how mouse smelly, demands stroking and cuddling. She's awesome! See the Lilly Brekky vid and the Savvaged by Lilly vid.

The best vid is Vancouver Savannah, parts 1 and 2 showing poo thru feeding time on a normal evening in the bathroom. It's not too graphic, don't worry...lol

OTHER NOTES

We put life size baby dolls in their closet to desensitise them to 'the predator stare'. Twice i saw buzzy giving perfect kisses for 15 seconds to a baby doll, until I went and got him brekky. Maybe I'm the one who's trained there. The dolls are set beside the poop dish very similar to a bathtub scenario.

One time Buzzy came to me and tried kissing up at me but i wouldn't give the signal. kisses don't count if i don't give the signal, but they tell me it's time to go get breakfast. At the time Lilly was on my lap for some petting. This is NEVER refused or interrupted, so i refused to give buzzy the kissing signal. He'd just have to wait a bit till the princess was done with her morning massage.

He tried on the left side and i turned my face away. He tried from the right and was ignored. He walked down to my feet and came up between my legs (me sitting on the floor) and tried it from the center, but i wouldn't make the smooching noises for him. So he went dowt to his usual napping site by my foot, waited half a minute and came back and nipped my hand, as if to nudge my prompt attention. On the Buzzy Brekky vid it shows him shoving my meaty juicy fingers out of the way and demanding some real food. He definitely communicative.

Flavio Morrissiey
ReptileTraining.Com