Penny the dog works on the basket trick

Mitch and Molly said, on my post about kitchen training of the basket trick, that their mum is thinking of teaching them to 'hold'.

I was really glad to get that comment, because I'd been scratching my head about where to go next with the trick. (We got the idea from Ludo.)

So I'm reminding Penny of the 'hold' behaviour, which she hasn't done for months. She used to know how to hold a toy, but has never done it with a basket, so I didn't expect too much of her. She only had to mouth the handle of the basket at this stage. (Apologies for my loud voice. I do get a bit excited when Penny shows me how smart she is!)

kitchen training for dogs

It's been a while since Penny and I have played games in the kitchen, so I thought I'd post this 'warts and all' series of clips from yesterday.

I placed two familiar toys in the doorway of the kitchen...

...after throwing an assortment of toys around the floor. (I have no idea why I did that, seeing it had nothing to do with the training except to add some confusion, but I enjoyed tossing them out of the toy box and seeing Penny dash joyfully around.)

The idea was for me to show a toy to Penny and she would go to find the matching toy.

She was pretty good at it, seeing we haven't played this game for nearly a year. I didn't react to the wrong toy being fetched, except to continue to ask for the correct one. It was funny to see her tail drooping as she realised she wasn't going to be praised for the wrong one.

However, it was lovely to see the wagging tail the rest of the time.

No one watching her could doubt there was some problem-solving going on. Have a look!