Category: Getting Started, Puppy Stuff, Fun Stuff ¤
  Author: Shirley Chong ¤
   Title: 101 Things to Do With a Box ¤

101 Things to Do with a Box is an exercise in creativity for dog and
handler. You provide the box and treats and click for ANY interaction
the dog has with the box. Doesn't have to be a box, of course--it can be
any object that the dog is allowed to touch, turn, stand on, etc.
   Sounds so simple, you just know there's got to be a catch, right?
Well, yes and no. The temptation (especially strong with crossover
trainers) is to direct the dog into doing things with the box via
luring. The other problem some trainers have is in seeing only great big
bites of behaviour and missing the little nibbles. They stand there,
frustrated because the dog "isn't doing anything" while the dog glances
at the box, takes a step to one side of the box, moves toward the box,
sniffs the box from a distance of six inches, pulls back away from the
box, stares at handler then glances at the box again...
   Some dogs (again, usually but not always crossover dogs) tend to
either try to ignore the box or just fix their stare on the handler.
Sometimes the dog will be clicked for one behaviour involving the box
and think they have the problem solved--they repeat that same behaviour
over and over (usually while their handler doesn't catch any of the
natural variations!).
   I've tried this as a seminar exercise with mixed results. There were
a few really creative dogs--including a rough coated Jack Russell whose
handler had thought he was rather a dim bulb! 
   And then, during the break, I was trying to get Bidge on a
teeter-totter via free shaping (just to see if I could do it)--he
started 101 Things to Do With a Teeter-Totter, which made me laugh
heartily. He'd never seen one (or a dog walk) before, so he jumped it,
he perched it, he went under it, he circled it, he jumped up and sat on
it, he footed it like a bank jump, he tried various combinations of feet
in various places on it... I was enchanted with how creative he was
(yes, yet another training session where I started out on one path and
ended up somewhere completely different!). Interesting to me, an
onlooker offered to block off his options by standing on one side of the
teeter. So perhaps one way to get creative with a dog and a box would be
to have the handler set out to try to get the dog to do some specific
thing but then click for anything.

M. Shirley Chong 
The Well Mannered Dog