Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Cricket picking up her toys

We have not posted a trick in a long time....geneally around here we have been doing a lot of foundation and getting ready for a lot more AGILITY training now that Cricket is a year old. I wanted to post a video of one of our favorite games to do while we are watching tv. I had the BEST video all ready to go and I am still learning the new editing program and it erased my video, and I had erased the footage off the camera, boo hooo!!! Soooo we had to rerecord this and Cricket was a little more tired. I could have waited to do it another day...but that would have been too easy, LOL!



I trained this by back chaining--so I...
1. Shaped Cricket to look at the bucket-which took ten seconds...maybe..
2. put a toy in the bottom of the bucket and shaped her to touch the ball with her mouth in any way. TREATS WENT IN THE BUCKET.
3. Click and Treat for mouthing and then picking up the toy.
4. As she picked up the toy I click and treated which actually made the ball fall back into the bucket....exactly what I was looking for. This was the first step I took a little more time with, I wanted her to really practice the ball falling into the bucket.
5. I held the toy at the edge of the bucket and she would grab it and let it fall into the bucket.
6. Now there was a lot of reinforcement for the toy falling into the bucket. I had delivered all the treats at the bottom of the bucket, just dropped them in so she would really get used to dipping her head in the bucket....so when I put the toy on the ground right next to the bucket she quickly figured out how to get that toy dropping back into the bucket.
7. Pretty quickly add in a second toy, start right from the start but it should go really fast.
8. I think it is pretty important to add in at least a couple of toys right away so the trick gets generalized.

13 comments:

Sagira said...

Very cute! I need to teach Sagira that trick, she is the opposite, when I try to put all her toys away she is busy pulling them back out!

Sara said...

Great job! Cricket's very determined and systematical about the whole process. Obviously you are rubbing off on her :)

She's such a cutie.

Chris and Ricky said...

I just left a comment on YouTube because I saw your video there first but I wanted to say again how great that trick is and how well Cricket does it! We may try it tonight!

Jules said...

Very cool! And thank you for the how-to. That would be a fun thing to shape with Bug. You can imagine what my house looks like with a dog who doesn't know how to pick up his toys and loves them all dearly! ;P

kiwichick said...

Kathy you look great in the video. I can tell you have lost weight :-) Cricket looks awesome as well. I will have to teach this trick in the winter thanks for the how-to :-)

AC said...

Love that that's a tired Cricket! Can't wait to see her at full speed on the agility field one day! Really liked how you broke down the steps. I'm coming back to this post as a reference for future training.

Sam said...

Teaching that with back chaining is a great idea! I taught it just by shaping, but back chaining makes SO much more sense!

What an awesomely smart dog Cricket it!

Diana said...

Great trick. Love it!! Diana

Lori Vicari said...

Cricket is a super smart girl!!!! Moe gives her a thumbs up on the trick :-)

Danielle said...

That is soo cute! Great job!

Patti and DeBoys said...

Were hiding the instruction from MOM! WOL

But, for you Cricket, "WAY TO GO".

Morganne said...

What a smart girlie!
She's looking very pretty too.

Unknown said...

A very neat trick!!! Cricket did a very good job.

Thanks for sharing your secret recipe!!! I'm thinking of teaching Eva when she's ready, so she can help put all her toys away : ).