Sound-training chins to return to cage?

[kenko]

After reading about people who've trained their chins to return to their cage at the sound of an alarm or a voice command, I've started setting an alarm to let Mips know it's the end of his 20 minutes, after it goes off I put out his dust bath/chin capture device. However, my husband pointed out that it might just train him to know to avoid his bath after the alarm goes off so he can stay outside longer--which sort of makes a lot of sense, haha.

Right now I leave a cage door open when he's out to play and put a tall sloped reading pillow in front of it so he can run back into his cage when he wants, but when he goes back in, he watches me like a hawk and zooms out immediately if I even twitch. People who've sound-command trained their chins to willingly return to their cages, I'd love to hear how you went about doing it!

 

[Aridan]

I guess we've been lucky, as Luna has pretty much trained herself. For some reason, when I tap on the floor of her cage while she's out playing, she immediately runs into the cage. I've reinforced this behavior by giving her a healthy treat before I close the cage door. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is look to leverage any natural behavior they already exhibit.

 

[chocochin]

I believe most people use treats, at least at first. They need some kind of incentive to be trained. If she really likes sticks or anything in particular that should work as well. The important part is to make sure you're not giving really unhealthy treats for the sake of training everyday of course.

 

[tcraighenry]

Ours respond to a couple different things. The sound of rustling plastic makes them run because they think it might be a treat. Tapping on the dust bowl gets their attention and shaking their stick bowl. They're smart enough to associate sounds on their own so the alarm should work