Teaching Ruby To Pack Up Her Toys

[kchogan]

hi,

i want to teach ruby to pack up her own toys. i have a cardboard box that i intend on using for now but i need some help. i can throw the toy and she picks it up and brings it to me or i can just look at it and she will do the same however looking at it does take some time as we have not done much shapeing in the past.

my question is how do i get her to put it in the box? i usually don't talk to her when training ( except for good girl ) until she does what i am after then i will put a word to it in this instance i was thinking

RUBY. PACK UP

thanks in advance for the help

[piper]

hi,

i want to teach ruby to pack up her own toys. i have a cardboard box that i intend on using for now but i need some help. i can throw the toy and she picks it up and brings it to me or i can just look at it and she will do the same however looking at it does take some time as we have not done much shapeing in the past.

my question is how do i get her to put it in the box? i usually don't talk to her when training ( except for good girl ) until she does what i am after then i will put a word to it in this instance i was thinking

RUBY. PACK UP

thanks in advance for the help

I trained Piper to retrieve using this method http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/retrieve.html and I later trained her to put the item in a container.

Ther are bound to be easier ways to teach the put in a container but what I did was get a large very open container (clam sheel in fact) and teach her to go to that. I did that without the retreive item. I actually taught her to stand 2 feet in it initially. I then added getting her to do that while carrying something and when her feet were in the clam shell asked her to give which she knew as a release and would click the item as it landed in the clam shell. Piper was very clicker savy and quickly worked out that it was the item landing in the clam shell getting clicked so started offering that without putting her feet in there. I then used a small container, all the way down to a rubbish bin to put rubbish in the bin (a foot pedal 1 to open which came with it's own set of complications but was a very cute party trick once we solved them).

[kchogan]

thanks for the reply.

the kids have half a clam shell out the back that they use for playing in the water in summer but now it is just sitting there so i will give it a go. i guese with something big to start with it would almost be fool proof.

[piper]

thanks for the reply.

the kids have half a clam shell out the back that they use for playing in the water in summer but now it is just sitting there so i will give it a go. i guese with something big to start with it would almost be fool proof.

Yep - I basically wanted a reall easy target. Also I wanted something low and shallow so it was easy to just drop it and have it land in. The 2 things I eventually wanted her to release items into (a toy wagon and a bin) were both a lot higher and she has to be quite precise to get things in there. The clam shell quickly gave her the idea of put it in something.

[Vehs]

I taught D with a similar method, but didn't go big, just used his (already large) toy basket

I did plan to teach him to pick up 'rubbish'.. and have a spare pedal bin, might have to drag it out for winter