a dog learns from another dog's blog

I've been having an interesting conversation with Johann's mum. She has two great video clips of how she trained Johann to succeed with the wooden Nina Ottosson Dog Casino.

First she taught him to focus on the little pegs that close off the drawers.



Then they moved on to pulling the pegs out of the holes.



So far we've practised Penny touching the peg for a reward from my hand. We moved on to clicking when she knocks the peg off the game, because I thought that might be closer to what we need finally, when she'll have to pull up the peg and throw it off the Casino so she can pull out the drawer to get the treats.



Johann's mum has mentioned the command 'pick it up' and Penny knows that well, so we experimented with that.



(I just can't seem to co-ordinate using the clicker and stopping myself from saying 'Yes!'. Luckily Penny's used to my muddled training methods, lol.)

trying the Nina Ottosson wooden Dog Casino

When I was having a clean-out of all our dog 'stuff' I noticed the wooden Dog Casino puzzle I bought ages ago. The puzzle is by Nina Ottosson, and we've tried out the plastic version with mixed success. (Here's a long - really, rather boring - clip of our try-out of the plastic one.) It's been sixteen months since we used that puzzle, so in our first try I simply allowed Penny to look at it.



Then I put treats in two drawers and Penny had a go. (Wasn't she a good girl to wait so patiently?)



Next Penny waited again




while I placed treats in every drawer



and closed the drawers.

After which her patience was rewarded and she successfully conquered all the drawers.

She had the rest of her evening meal from the toy. Next time, I'll put one a 'stopper' in one of those top holes and see if she can figure out how to pull it out so the drawer can move.

I prefer the wooden version, even though the plastic version can be cleaned and this one can't.

trying out the Nina Ottosson Dog Casino

Boredom warning!!

This is a long video of Penny trying out our new Nina Ottosson Dog Casino toy. I'm only posting it because I think people thinking of buying the puzzle might like to see this warts-and-all tryout of it, with no footage cut out.

It's six minutes long, and seems a bit like watching grass grow, lol.

(And the title is stupid, because the last word, 'Casino', is missing in the title. But it took so long to upload that I'm not willing to do it again.)