Hi everyone,
Just thought I'd give you an update on how I'm getting on with Frank, we'll the answer is very well and I believe I've made excellent progress with him in the past week. I completely changed my strategy though, as just letting him out to roam and crawl on me and me stroking him when he came to me seemed to be turning sower, as things didn't seem to be getting better if anything they seemed to be getting a bit worse and it didn't feel like it was the right thing to be doing. I though I'd go back to basics and start in the viv with him, I mentioned before about him whipping his tail every time I would open the viv door, especially when he was in his hide. Well I was going to deal with this later on but when I thought about it it seemed like a better idea to start with that first, as he is obviously feeling tense, scared and just plain angry when I opened the door and it was directed at me, so that's obviously not good, as you want an animal to trust you and at least tolerate your presence. I also felt this behaviour could be part of why he can be a bit jumpy when he's out as if he doesn't feel comfortable with me in his own environment were he has places to hide then perhaps he's bound to feel similar when he's out with me. Any way, I wrote a diary so that you can see how things went on a day to day basis, as I though this might be of interest to people as I have been looking on the net for stuff like this and people say do this that and the other but it isn't described in depth and it's also nice to see how it plays out so you no roughly what to expect, it should be especially interesting to people who are trying to correct certain behaviours in their reptiles. Here is what I would do, in the morning I would take a flower and show it to frank through the glass and keep his attention on it to destract him from his normal behaviour (distracting from the bad behaviour is a key part of it) then I would open the door and give him the flower, and whilst he was munching on it I would slide the door back and forth and say good boy a few times to reinforce the fact that he didn't tail whip and also to associate the noise of the door with a positive experience, I would repeat this a few times and then throughout the day I would sit in front of his viv and some times I would open the door and talk to him for a few minutes, then I'd go away for a bit, and then open the door and give him a treat (providing he didn't tail whip). That’s the basics of what I did, but on a night when he was in his hide I had to use a different strategy as I wasn't able to get his attention with a treat, so whenever he whipped his tail I'd imediatley open the door again and keep doing so until the time I opened the door and he didn't do it, at that point I would shut the door and back off and leave him alone. This was to show him that the more he tail whipped the more I opened the door and when he stopped I stopped, so this made it so that tail whipping did the exact opposite of what it normally did. Any how it's the eighth day of doing this today and I can now go in the viv and take the food dish out and put it in with no fuss and he simply doesn't do it any more. I'm hoping this calmer attitude towards me in the viv will go a long way with helping him get used to being out with me without tail whipping, it certainly can't hurt. I did the diary for 6 days as by then he seemed to get the point and hasn't whippedd since, there were some other interesting changeses in his behaviour that seemed to confirmirm that what I was doing was making himer calmer in general, things such as coming out early and staying out longer on a night and so on, these are mentioned in the diary. I'm not saying this is a one size fits all solution as you will have to modify it depending on what your lizards is like, as frank is already fairly good with some areas of his behaviour but there are gaps of bad behaviour, but if you are starting with an animal that isn't used to people at all then I'm sure this will still do the trick but it might take longer and it will also depend on the species you are working with too as some tame easier than others, but I hope this inspires you and even if you have a lizard who has done anything like this for years and you'd still like to change it then give it a good go as remember my Egyptian is 2 years old and 16” long and he has most likely done this all his life so far but hasn't been shown a different way to be and I've turned this around in a week, and you have to remember that if your lizard gets worked up all the time when you do a certain thing then this can't be a nice way for them to be on a daily basis, as I've noticed Frank seems less stressed now that I've shown him that it's nothing to get stressed about and he looks more relaxed more of the time, so I think it's positive for reducing long term stress levels too. I hope if anyone trys this or something similar that you have the same fantastic results I have had.

I hope this has been interesting and not just boringlol, if so take a look at the diary I wrote on the next post. Thanks for reading.

Martin

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