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I read this on another forum and got permission to use it. I thought I would post it being alot of people either have monitors or have posted about possibly getting one. I think this perfectly explains how "taming" a monitor should be handled.
"This has always been a hotly debated issue in the varanid keeping community and I figured id express my point of view....................If you want to have a monitor that is fairly easy to deal with and not the typical H3LL on wheels horror story we normally hear about, LEAVE THEM THE HECK ALONE! Here's my variation on an analogy I once read on the subject: Lets say you want to "tame" a wild squirrel or a wolf or a feral cat in the wild. You wouldn't grab the squirrel / wolf / feral cat and force handle it until it gives in and likes you. You try to get it use to you by just being around it first , getting it to tolerate your visual presence and act normally when you are within eye sight before anything else. Then eventually one day you start by tempting it closer to you with food by tossing it over to it. It probably wont happen at first (the animal will most likely just run away at first, but then at some point it will start to grab the food first and then run away to eat) but, with time, patience, and never touching it (just offering food) it will then start to eat in your presence. Eventually overtime, that wild animal might even sit on you or next to you and take food right from your tongs, again only if you are patient and if you NEVER, EVER TOUCH IT! It is the same thing with monitors. By constantly handling a monitor in the hopes that it will "tame" you're actually teaching it that you're a NEGATIVE experience and it will hate you! But by associating positive behavior with a positive reward, like food, the animal starts seeing you in a positive light. That is how you begin the "taming" process and "tame" a monitor. Remember a "tame" monitor will still not let you just pick it up out of no where (for the most part) and handling just for the fun of it is still bad, but it will not be scared of you and will actually come to you to see what’s up (food??) And nothing is cooler then having your pet varanid beg for food or beg to be let out.
P.S. Cut out the bathtub time, it's highly stressful at best, torture at worst."
Hope this clears up some things, and of course if you feel force handling works, by all means go for it, this is just my take on it.
"This has always been a hotly debated issue in the varanid keeping community and I figured id express my point of view....................If you want to have a monitor that is fairly easy to deal with and not the typical H3LL on wheels horror story we normally hear about, LEAVE THEM THE HECK ALONE! Here's my variation on an analogy I once read on the subject: Lets say you want to "tame" a wild squirrel or a wolf or a feral cat in the wild. You wouldn't grab the squirrel / wolf / feral cat and force handle it until it gives in and likes you. You try to get it use to you by just being around it first , getting it to tolerate your visual presence and act normally when you are within eye sight before anything else. Then eventually one day you start by tempting it closer to you with food by tossing it over to it. It probably wont happen at first (the animal will most likely just run away at first, but then at some point it will start to grab the food first and then run away to eat) but, with time, patience, and never touching it (just offering food) it will then start to eat in your presence. Eventually overtime, that wild animal might even sit on you or next to you and take food right from your tongs, again only if you are patient and if you NEVER, EVER TOUCH IT! It is the same thing with monitors. By constantly handling a monitor in the hopes that it will "tame" you're actually teaching it that you're a NEGATIVE experience and it will hate you! But by associating positive behavior with a positive reward, like food, the animal starts seeing you in a positive light. That is how you begin the "taming" process and "tame" a monitor. Remember a "tame" monitor will still not let you just pick it up out of no where (for the most part) and handling just for the fun of it is still bad, but it will not be scared of you and will actually come to you to see what’s up (food??) And nothing is cooler then having your pet varanid beg for food or beg to be let out.
P.S. Cut out the bathtub time, it's highly stressful at best, torture at worst."
Hope this clears up some things, and of course if you feel force handling works, by all means go for it, this is just my take on it.
