Never forget that laptime is more for the human than the cavy
It is human nature to display love through pets and cuddles and touch. However, it's not in a guinea pig's nature. Guinea pigs prefer eating treats and running freely to being rubbed on the head and sitting in a lap. The key to getting a guinea pig who truly enjoys laptime with you is to focus on making sure she chooses to go into your lap.
Give your guinea pig the opportunity to choose between hopping into your lap, running on the floor, or hiding. Make sure she knows that all of these choices are available to her. Understand that if she chooses to hide instead of climb on you, then that's okay. That's what her needs are, that day. If she learns that you'll respect her needs, she'll learn to trust you more.
Make sure to train laptime using positive reinforcement
Laptime's shaping plan looks the same as the shaping plan for hopping onto a platform and loading into a carrier. Your cavy should recall these lessons at some point during training for lap time. When she does, she'll offer those familiar behaviors and will seem to learn extremely quickly.
1. Reward her for orienting towards you
Click and treat your guinea pig for orienting towards you. Reward her right in front of her nose. She should already have a rich reinforcement history of paying attention to you to earn treats if you have been following this taming method. Even if your guinea pig starts to offer more advanced behaviors such as approaching you and even putting her front paws on you, make sure that you don't drop the criteria of orienting towards you. Go to step 2 when she's consistently approaching you.
2. Change reward placement
The criteria for the click is now approaching you and it should seem the same as the last step, but now you are going to change the reward placement. Reward her so that she has to reach up to get the treat near your leg. You want her to eventually feel bold enough to take the treat by putting her front paws on you. Some guinea pigs will stretch their neck rather than offer putting two paws up to get the treat. If that's the case, make the treat appear on your leg and then bring it down to her. Move on to step 3 when she's able to come to the treat herself by putting her front paws on your leg.
3. Reward for paws up
Next, reward your piggie for putting her paws on you. Go back to putting the treat right in front of her nose to reward her. And, when she has her paws on your leg, offer a lot of treats in a row. Make her feel like putting her paws on your legs is like making food rain down on her. Keep the sessions short (a minute or two long) and highly rewarding.
4. Click for neck stretches
You will now slow down how quickly you give your treats. Step 3 should have been an almost constant flow of treats. For step 4, you will give a treat like you would for step 3 and then wait. Your guinea pig should go, "Hey, where's my treat?" and offer to stretch her neck out to look for it. Click and reward her doing that, putting the treat right in front of her nose. Move to step 5 when she consciously stretches her neck to earn the click/treat.
5. Click for hopping up
In step 5, you'll want to continue to reinforce neck stretches, but when the guinea pig does feel bold enough to completely hop up on you, reward continuously like you did for step 3. You want your guinea pig to feel like she won the lottery for doing such a leap of faith. Don't touch her or try to pet her. Use luring to teach her how to exit your lap so she never feels trapped on it.
6. Increase duration
You will increase duration of the guinea pig staying on your lap by adding time between treats. Click and treat your guinea pig every half second, and once that is mastered, every second. Build duration a half second at a time between treats. You are clicking your guinea pig for staying on your lap when she could have left! Once you build to five seconds in this fashion, start to randomize the time before she earns her click and treat. Sometimes it's after half a second, sometimes it's after ten seconds, sometimes it's after five seconds... you get the picture. Ask her to hop off of your lap when you are done, lure her off if she'd rather stay on your lap!
7. Building value for your lap
Start the training session by waiting for your guinea pig to hop in your lap. If you'd like, feel free to add the cue when she climbs your lap. Once on, do as you did in step 6. When you ask her to hop off, wait until she decides on her own to hop back into your lap, then reward her with a jackpot (five pieces of treat, for example) and train for duration again. Ask her to hop off of your lap and see if she jumps up on your lap again.