From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2005-01-20 19:59:25 UTC
Subject: RE: Update on Kiki (adrenal surgery)
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <4549721.1106251165830.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Author wrote:
>my ferrets each have their own hidey holes and my boy would go to his sisters >hiding place and eat what she had stashed. I caught him doing this by accident so
LOL! Your ferrets did the psycho-ferret trick all by their lonesomes!
Yes, this feeling that the soup-eater is tricking someone really, really works -- and works better and usually than anything else we have encountered in 24 years with ferrets in the family.
Our version uses paper bags but the principal is the same: using ferrets' own natural behavior to shape them toward doing what is desired, in this case the joy they get from tricking someone is the tool which is used.
We even have long had our own word in our household for benign or beneficial sneaking of any sort; we call it "snerching". Since it is such a ferret useful characteristic to utilize when shaping ferret behavior having a word for it was simply essential for our discussions. I can't recall when or how we began using the word, though, because we've used it even since before the ferret lexicon used "dook" for the clucking sort of noise ferrets make.
So, remember that snerching is a useful ferret behavior to play with when shaping behaviors such as weaning off soup.