School time for our puppies! Here is your first to-do list. The first task might sound a little silly for those with adult dogs, but in fact, it's never silly to make a recall even better!
1. call your dog at least 10 times a day to do something fun together: to play, to go out, to get a treat, something to chew on or a new exciting toy
2. put a plate (or another object, but I like to start with a plate as puppies can't chew on those too easily) on a floor and shape a puppy to touch it with a front paw: you can first click for head movement in the right direction, then one/two/three steps, then stepping over it or close to it and finally for stepping on it
3. sit on a floor and put a fist full of treats or dog's favourite toy right in front of their nose, wait till they stop sniffing and click for anything they try other than getting directly to the food/toy or staring at it. It's very important the dog understands staring at food/toy doesn't get him anywhere as it will later on allow you to work with food/toys in your hand without distracting the dog's focus from the job at hand.
4. find a box or a drawer that is as long as your dog and not too high and shape a dog to put 1-2-3-4 legs into it. Then try with smaller&smaller objects, final goal is the dog can stand in a small bowl.
5. observe your puppy and see if he sometimes stretches his legs out when in down position, puppies often do that when relaxed or playing. Name it (I call it "frog":) and reward. It's a nice stretching exercise and very easy to get it on cue if the dog does it naturally (some dogs do it as adults too, but mine didn't and it was much harder to train it as with puppy Le who was doing that naturally). If not, put a dog in a down position and reward from the floor and so far ahead that the dog needs to stretch out to get it - but not so far that he would crawl ahead. Watch the hind legs and click for moving them back OR out, but NOT for crawling step forward.
Looking forward to see your videos!
Last call for 
Here is our lesson 1 video. Warden is doing very well with all of the tricks. I love the idea of shaping him to not be pushy when I offer a handful of treats. He looks heartbroken when he turns his head away. I’ve started adding a cue of “shameful” to this one -- he looks very cute doing it!
Sorry about the background squealing… his big brother would prefer I play with him instead 🙂
We had started using the heeling video so the “plate” was a taller container. We did the first steps of this a few weeks ago so the video starts off with him already used to offering two feet on it.
Getting all four of his clunky feet into a box has been challenging but he’s there. We’ve started moving on to different and smaller boxes (you’ll see one of them in the “out takes” at the end of the video.) I hope I am doing the right thing in just waiting him out if he sits in the box instead of standing in it, waiting for him to stand before clicking again. He often tries to sit once he is rewarded for standing in it.
I have not spent the time to click/reward his frog legs yet. He does this after a long car ride when getting out of his puppy crate. I’m going to pay attention to click/reward it this week. I’ll post it to kick-off lesson 2’s video.
Thanks for the lesson plan on this one -- it’s all fun stuff!
That was too funny! Sure very interesting ideas on what to do with the box! 🙂 And his shameful trick is sure very cute! Great idea to put it on name! Great plate work too, boxes are going well too. I don’t really mind if they choose to sit at first: at one point, the box gets to small to sit anyway 🙂
I’m a little bit late…time flies sometimes. This is how far me and my Pep has gotten :). We should have been working a bit more but Pep and I have spent a lot of time trying to understand herding… 😕
Loved that jump up for ignoring food! 🙂 She sure thought that bowl is a cool toy. My Bi has an obsession with those bowls, she thinks it’s the greatest toy ever -- the only problem is that it’s a very loud one when you’re inside… That box was somewhat small for now yes, I think you need a little bigger one first, it will make things easier. In general, try to make things easy enough for her to succeed, so that you can click more. I know it’s hard outdoor, but do try to sometimes throw her treats around, to get more action out of her.
second try at posting the video..
now it’snot private anymore?
The problem is in YouTube, when you click “share”, it’s giving you a wrong link lately. We fixed your link, so it works now, but for future videos, the correct form goes like this: httpv://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vxH-IsSntWc?hd=1 (without the gap in between, I put it in just so that you can see the correct form. The second part, in itallics, you got right, the first part, you need to use what I put in bold, not the youtu.be thing YouTube gives you.
What a smart little puppy! I think you’ve done A LOT already, for that age! Very good rate of reinforcement. Why do you prefer yes over a click? Loved how well she is offering behaviours! To get her out of the box, together with a thrown treat, I like to use a verbal release already, to get used to it. No problems with those exercises, definitely time for second lesson!
She doesn’t like the clicker because it has too many moving parts… 😉 i have tried to use click now but allways too late and not constant enough with it.
we’ll start next tasks now.. 🙂