How to teach your rabbit to follow a target

By David Lessem

Instructions

Step 1:
Sit near the rabbit.
Step 2:
Hold a target in front of the bunny. A short dowel with a small rubber bouncy ball (the kind you can get out of quarter machines) glued to the end of it works well.
Step 3:
If the rabbit looks at the target, give him a treat and some praise.
Step 4:
If he doesn't look at the target, shake it around a bit until he notices it. Then give him a treat and some praise.
Step 5:
Repeat this several times, teaching him to associate paying attention to the target with receiving a treat.
Step 6:
As you proceed, begin to withhold the treat until the rabbit approaches or touches the object.
Step 7:
Try moving further away, while moving the target around.
Step 8:
Once you train the rabbit, you do not need to give him a treat every time. Remember to reward him sometimes, however, or else the rabbit may stop following the target.

Tips & Warnings

Some rabbits take a lot of repetition to learn a trick. Do this one at least several times a day until yours learns it.

More Puppy Pages

How to teach your rabbit to come when called

Training rabbits to come when called is easy. All it requires is simple positive reinforcement and a lot of patience.

Follow these simple instructions to teach your pet rabbit how to stand up.

From the days of the organ grinders, monkeys have been trained to do tricks. Whatever the species, pet monkeys are intelligent and capable of being good companions if tamed and trained properly. But they are still wild animals, and special care is needed...

You're probably one of the many rabbit owners who thinks that your pet bunny, however cute it may be, is nothing more than a carrot nibbler. The fact is, however, that rabbits can learn a good number of tricks with relatively little amount of work. Even...

How to teach your rabbit to go back to his hutch

Training a rabbit to go back to his hutch is a bit trickier than other forms of training, because there is no way to do it through reinforcement alone. Nonetheless, rabbits are pretty smart. If you can patiently and gently coax your bunny into its hutch...