in this video you will learn how to teach your dog to place objects into a
container this is a fun and impressive party trick but also a helpful behavior
because you can use it to get your dogs help in cleaning up their toys or
dropping an item off at a specified location. Training this behavior can be a
lot easier if your dog first understands how to fetch if your dog does not know
how to do this check out our tutorial on this skill before teaching this behavior
before beginning any training session it's helpful to clarify what the
criteria is for the dog to earn a reward what precise behaviors are we clicking
for so for this session we will click for looking at the container moving
towards it sniffing it and eventually work our way up to a higher criteria
which will be holding a nose target with duration
spend a few moments practicing the hold behavior that your dog should already
know the purpose of this step is to prime this behavior and help your dog
connect this with the behavior that they just learned. Once the dog is
consistently offering a nose target we can introduce an object that will be
dropped into the container. Use the same object that you previously used to train
fetch as this will serve as a cue to the dog that you were asking for a hold
behavior. The new criteria or click point is when the dog places the object inside
the container. With enough practice most dogs will offer this on their own but if
your dog struggles with this step work on the two behaviors back-to-back during
training sessions and eventually your dog will be able to put them together
you can point and guide the dog initially but it is best to let them
figure it out on their own while keeping the rate of reinforcement as high as
possible
if your dog accidentally misses the container do not click and reward
instead take the object and re-present it to redo the whole trial. Once the dog is
consistently placing the object inside the container across multiple sessions
start to introduce other objects. Help the dog generalize this behavior by
offering the object from different angles and if your dog starts to make
mistakes go back to the earlier steps and work your way back up. Eventually
increase the reward criteria once again so that your dog is placing multiple
objects inside the container before getting a click and a reward
Once you are confident that the dog will perform the behavior correctly every
single time you can now introduce the verbal cue which you can use to tell the
dog to do this behavior.