In a previous blog you saw Blondie the lumpfish learn how to do a spin. This time I have trained her to swim through a hoop! When you watch the video, see how I lead her through with food in the beginning. She seems a little hesitant, but with quick reinforcement she becomes very comfortable fast.





Then, I introduce the signal for her to come through--motioning "come here" with my finger, but with her reinforcement still visible in my other fingers. She catches on so fast, she even swims back through the hoop to the starting point! In the end, I don't have any food in my fingers and she swims through with the signal alone. I promptly reinforce her with a "jackpot" (LOTS of those tiny shrimp), to tell her what a fantastic job she did. Stay tuned for more fish training...