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Location: Shadowland, Australia
Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 7,358
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Originally Posted by Jenny
how do u teach them to distinguish between toys and objects? and how do u teach em to ring bells when they want out?
When you are playing with your dog always name the toy you are playing with. For example, if your dog brings her Kong to you for a game you say something like "Kong! Good girl. Kong! Fetch Kong" Keep putting an identifier on the toy. Use the same principle for each toy - ball, ragga, squeaker, ring, etc. Actually it doesn't matter what you call each thing as long as you are always consistent. You can call a Kong a sausage & if you always use this name your dog will associate the Kong with the word sausage
Not quite sure what you mean by "objects"? If you mean how does she find something of mine in a pile of random objects then that is simply scent discrimination. If, for example, I threw a glove that I had been wearing in among other gloves that I had never touched & told her to "find" she would correctly identify my glove by its scent and bring it to me.
Bells. I cannot see my backdoor from the kitchen or living room so needed to teach them to signal that they needed to be let out. I got a string of small brass bells & hung them on the door. As puppies every time that I took them out for toilets I would shake the bells. They learned that the sound of the bells = the door opening. They were very quick to catch on to the fact that if they nosed the bells someone would come running to open the door. One warning if you use this method. Do not use a food reward to teach them to ring, otherwise you will have bells going all day