Went to the dollar store this morning and bought 6 plastic containers. Brought them home and put a nail through the lid of one. The lid split. I tried two more, and they all split. OK, wrong containers, BUT that's what we've got so... I put a little screw through the split of each lid to hold the lid open a bit.
Put some kibble (very stinky, 6-fish kibble, humans can smell us when we walk in a training room) in one container and started asking Syn to touch it with her muzzle. No big deal. Rewarded that x10. Gave her the kibble out of my hand as I wanted to get 10 reps in quickly.
Went for some duration of the touch. That went fine except she wants to nibble the screw, so had to be careful to reward only the duration touches and not the nibbles. x10 out of my hand.
Next I did another 10 opening the container each time and giving her one kibble, then closing it again.
I got the second container and presented both. She appeared to understand and targeted the kibble container x10, with me opening the container and giving her one kibble each time.
Then she lost it, randomly targeting lids.
I went back to targeting only the kibble container x10, but this time I let her take a mouthful of kibble out of the container herself.
Then I added the empty one again and let her eat from the correct container when she chose it, and opened the wrong one when she chose it to show her that she had gotten nothing for her efforts.
She appeared to "get it" and we finished with about 30, 98% successful. Next time I have to put a bit of gravel in the wrong container to be sure she isn't going for the noisy one.
I'd bet that the crack in the container lid would be sufficient for Syn to detect the 6-fish kibble scent, even without the screw! Especially since she began focusing on the screw and it became an unnecessary distraction.
ReplyDeleteThe gravel will have a scent of its own.