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Hi, thanks for watching. Today we're going to work on the trick of having your dog get
you a beer.
To do this trick, we're going to do something called shaping, which is basically teaching
your dog, in very small steps, how to accomplish this feat.
This is a new trick for Betty so, hopefully, you'll get to see some of the early stages
in which she's learning the trick.
To start out, I'm going to place this down on the floor and all I'm really looking for
from her is to go over to it and touch it. When she does, I'm going to click this marker
to tell her she did something right and then I'm going to give her a little treat.
Okay. So as soon as she shows interest in it, I can click. And I'm really trying to
time that click to when she hits it.
Okay. When your dog starts getting that... drop, thank you. When your dog starts getting
that you can try increasing the criteria, which basically means that I'm looking for
her to put her mouth over the ring; so that would be the next part to try to maybe open
her mouth, or even pick it up if I get lucky.
So this time I'm going to place this down, I'm going to hope that she grabs it with her
mouth and, at that point, I'll click and treat.
Okay. So it's in her mouth, I click before she gets too involved in playing with it.
But she has learned that putting her mouth on the beer is now what's going to get her
the reward. Okay.
So I'm going to try one more time putting this down; let's see what we get.
Okay. I'm really trying to watch, she brings it over a little more, great, click and treat.
Drop.
She also thinks this ring is the most fun toy in the world so I'm fighting that a little
bit. And I don't want to let her get engaged in just playing with it.
And now I kind of know that she's going to go for the beer so I'm going to start adding
a cue "beer".
There you go; good girl.
Over time, hopefully that will get smoother and smoother and the reward for her will not
be playing with this but bringing me a nice frosty beverage, as she goes into my treat
bag.
She's a smart dog; she's learned where the treats are.
One tip for this trick, I'm actually using an empty beer can just so that the weight
of this doesn't make it even more fun dragging it around, or too difficult for her to drag
it over.