Clicker training worked for us! (video)

[mustlovdoggs]

Horace's Mum Thanks for the link for your videos, watched a few, going back to watch more of them. I'll stop rushing him.Thanks to you and Noobs, I know we will get it.

[Fundog]

Hey, that's very impressive, Noobs! (sorry, I had to wait until my night off to view the video; that's why it took me so long to reply). I need to try and get Annie to learn to do that-- then I can have her put her toys AWAY after she dumps them out!

[Noobs]

Thanks, Fundog! I'm quite a ways away from having him pick up after himself, but I'm glad the box thing finally "clicked" for me. I had tried it a while back and couldn't get him to put anything in the box, I had to shove the box under the toy when he dropped it. But when I tried it again last week I broke the steps down to the smallest possible behaviors (looking at the box, looking at the toy, etc.) instead of trying to get him to pick the toy up right away. I'm quite proud of him!

[Horace's Mum]

Did you start with the toy in the box, and just ask him to touch the toy, then mouth the toy, then pick up and drop the toy? Or did you go down the route of letting him pick up the toy and then try and persuade him to come to the box?

[Noobs]

The first thing I did was work with the box for a few days. Click for a glance, then for a look held longer. Very quickly he was putting his whole head in to the box, then pawing it, then he stuck one foot in, then stuck the foot in and touched bottom. On the second day he was putting one foot in and pawing with the other foot, by the third day he was standing in the box with both front feet in. (You'll see in the video that he tried to stand in the box a couple of times before going back to the toy.)

When I knew he was comfortable working with the box I put the box away and brought out the toy. I clicked for looking at the toy, and very quickly he was touching the toy with his nose so we worked on that for a few minutes, with him touching the toy with his nose while I held it and just changing where I held the toy - to his left, to his right, lower, higher, etc. Then I put the toy on the floor and clicked for every time he nosed it, and eventually he was picking it up, so I clicked for him picking up the toy, so of course he would then let go to get his treat.

By the end of the session I had re-introduced the box and placed the toy inside the box. I clicked every time he reached in and picked up the toy, so of course, again he would drop the toy, and since it was already in the box, that's where he dropped it. I tried placing the toy outside the box, on the floor very close to the box. He picked up the toy and dropped it, but I didn't click, so he picked it up again and placed it in the box. I was surprised he understood that that's why I was withholding the click! And the rest is on the video - you can see he missed the box a lot in the beginning but you could also see he was deliberately placing the toy inside.

That was really fun, I must say, and he seemed to enjoy it as well. So this week I'm using a ball. I'm using the same principles - click for looking, click for touching. At our last session he was nosing the ball pretty consistently so tonight I'm going to introduce the word "ball" whenever I show it to him, and building from that maybe he'll be able to start knowing objects by name eventually.

[Horace's Mum]

Ah, you see I did it differently I started with the toy in the box, and waited for interest in the toy to click. Once I had a solid nose touch to the toy, I waited for him to mouth the toy (not pick it up, literally just open his mouth as if he would pick it up). Then waited for him to take the toy in his mouth but not let him pick it up. Then allow him to start to pick it up but click before it got too high or he moved away. Then let him pick it up but click when he dropped it back in the box - not if he dropped it outside the box. Once he was really reliable picking up and putting down in the box, I moved it just outside the box, then gradually further and further away, until I could throw it and he would fetch it back to the box.

So the box was fairly irrelevant to Horus until he had to bring the toy back to it, but by then the idea that the toy belonged in the box was so ingrained there was really no other option for him to think about other than put it back in the box!