Learning through games

One of the things I enjoy greatly about Susan Garrett's work is that the puppies learn behaviors via fun games.   I've seen this work so well in my own children that I couldn't wait to apply it to dog training.  Her Puppy Peaks program has taught me a lot, now its time to apply it myself!  :)

Last night, Fizz had her first session of IYC - Its Yer Choice, in which a puppy who shows self-control then earns exactly what it is that they are restraining themselves from.  This is most easily taught with food at meal time when the puppy is really hungry.   Fizz worked for her dinner last night, and I was really impressed with how little time it took her to figure out the game.

Today at lunch, we played again.   My original hope was to work with food bits on the floor, and work her control that way.   However, that wasn't going to well, and since I was trying to stay in a 5 minute time frame for our training, I switched gears, and worked with the food in my open palm (ignoring it earns it).

Below is a video I shot of our session.  We started with food in the bowl on the floor, and she remembered last night's session.  Ignoring the bowl was not very difficult for her today, though it did require a few hand covers.   I then tried a play break, but had a lesser favored toy (I haven't figured out all the toys' rankings yet....she'd only been here 36hrs at the time of this video).  For my ignorance, I paid pennance with a pretty good "Dont Wanna, Don't Hafta" moment (aka DWDH).   Finally found something else to play with, and she turned right on to it.   We had far better switching from food to toy to food to toy earlier in the morning with "better" toys.

After the DWDH, I started working on the open palm with food.  She caught on to that pretty quickly and gave me beautiful eye contact when she wanted the piece.   Very happy with this!!!   Hoping to work it again tomorrow with food on the floor, may try that for breakfast time when hunger is even greater.  :)