I put kibble in one container and nothing in a second one. Syn sits and I hold both containers together above her head. I slowly lower them down in front of her nose. Yep, she thinks it's a Zen exercise. She sits back and carefully doesn't get close to either container. I encourage her with "where is it? Get it!" and she dives in to the kibble. I let her have one good nibble and duck it out from under her (this is a lot like clicker training chickens and I can hear Bob Bailey pronouncing "One peck, and one peck only!"). Once she understands that the kibble is free for the taking, I hold the two containers above her head but 2" apart and lower them slowly on either side of her nose. She raises her nose as they descend, and then she can smell the kibble before she sees it. She usually smells it firmly and stays on it, but occasionally she swings her muzzle to the wrong one first and then comes immediately back to stick with the correct one. Much better. I think we'll get the indicator (duration of muzzle on container) out of this without any further indicator-training. Once I lower it far enough, she's free to dive in and get a bite of kibble.
Much better session. No frustration for either of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment