101 Things To Do With a Box

Playing this game was a huge aha moment for me regarding the difference between a completely clicker-trained dog and one who had been at one time traditionally trained. I'd already been clicker-training for many months with Marlowe, who came to me with no prior training that I could discern. He was really a blank slate in that regard. But with Conrad I hadn't done much more than prime the clicker with him and introduce him to the concept of the marker and reinforcement. Conrad I had trained pretty traditionally with collar corrections and the occasional alpha-roll and scruff. So I thought I'd try this game with both dogs (seperately) to see if there was a difference.

And boy was there ever. I just wanted to cry after Conrad's session. I felt extreme guilt, which I know is silly because I didn't know any better when I trained him originally, but I still felt guilty. Faced with the situation of the box, me, the clicker and a bowl of treats, he pretty much instantly shut down and gave up. The farthest I could get with him was a very tentative touch of his nose to the box but it was like pulling teeth. He waited and waited for me to tell him what to do and when I didn't, he just defaulted to a down-stay and wouldn't move a muscle. I danced around, tried to get him up and interested, tossed a treat into the box and still he just stared, getting more and more stressed out. I ended the session because he was getting really freaked out by the whole thing.

When I brought Marlowe in it was like night and day. I'd never free-shaped with Marlowe before so he didn't have an advantage in that regard. All our previous clicker work had been with luring. But I had him pushing the box around the room with his nose in about a minute and a half, then getting into and out of the box, then putting one foot in the box.

To me that cemented my commitment to a new way of training with both dogs. I made a much bigger effort to get Conrad "caught up" and completely crossed over to the clicker. It took several months of very patient, gentle work with him to get him to see the clicker as fun and interesting rather than stressful and scary. I'm happy to report that Conrad is now pretty much over the hump and I am now able to shape with him easily.

I started when Russell was young-adolescent aged. He was quite a timid dog, especially of unfamiliar objects, which is part of why I wanted him to play this game. So I started with a small box - a shoebox. He was very nervous about it and wanted to just bark and circle it, but I waited him out. Eventually he dared to stretch his nose toward it and I started c/ting him... his first few sessions were all just him barking and growling and touching his nose to the box tentatively and jumping back like he was being burned. But he loved the c/t aspect of the game so he was eager to play, even though he was wary of the box at first. \
 
Over time it really helped him with his nervousness. After a few months he would enthusiastically touch, paw, bite, and roll the box (though if it moved he still would flinch a bit). Now about a year later the sight of the clicker spurs him to interact with any 'new' object in the room - so if I have my knitting bag out he'll touch that with his nose for example. He has retained the habit of keeping up a growly grumbly play-by-play commentary on his game, though. []

I put my vote in for the clicker training section.

I hope others do also.

I LOVE the 101 Things game, play it quite often just to keep their minds going. If I don't have something in mind to teach, or if it's a rainy day and they need to burn off some mental energy, I play this game. It has drastically helped me in learning shaping and how to break things down into teensy increments to get a behaviour I wanted.

A fun video we did one day of "101 Things to do With a Pop Can". Started out just rewarding novel experiences and ended up shaping a too-funny game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwx8o0NMgno

Kim MacMillan

I love this game too - although the first time I tried it, I didn't have a box so I used a chair instead!  It was an amazing experience because Dodger went right to work. He never got stuck on offering the same behaviour or giving up...In fact, he started offering behaviours that even I hadn't thought of...  Up until then, I had only used the clicker to mark 1 behaviour (to spin) so I was amazed that he knew the clicker wasn't just about the spin.  He started off by touching, pawing, resting his head on the chair...all the way to standing, sitting, jumping over and crawling under the chair.  When I thought he had exhausted everything, he started running through all of his other learned behaviours while touching the chair...He'd bow with his paw touching the chair, then roll over with his head under the chair. 
I love watching dogs free shape - it reveals a lot about them and is truly amazing to see what limits (if any) they put on themselves!

Thank for the replies.....  I plan to do this with our youngest dog this week sometime, so I'll come back and tell you how she did.... she is actually DH's dog not mine and he wouldn't know what a clicker was if  I danced around naked waving it under his nose, so this will be another "crossover" for me.  I want to use the it to start teaching bhvrs that will be useful when the baby is here and I think it will be a great way to introduce her to it.

I had never really heard of this before, but I saw similar results while shaping Scout to put her toys into a basket. It was so fun watching her go "how about this" and "how about this".... and so funny when she thought she had got it, but not quite... when I rewarded her hugely for dropping a toy in the basket, she thought the behavior I wanted was just 'dropping toys'. So I watched in amusement while she walked around the living room, picking up and dropping her toy and looking at me expectantly. []

I tried this with my dog using a shoebox. I couldn't get her to do much. [] She doesn't offer a whole lot of behaviors to begin with; I always have to help through luring. She especially does not manipulate things by picking them up or otherwise doing stuff with her mouth. So far, I have gotten her to touch the box with her nose, nudge it and paw at it. 

Several years ago, my husband and I owned a Siberian Husky. This dog was so aloof she wouldn't respond to her own name, much less any commands. I always said she was a cat in a dog's body!I did some research about clicker training and how it's used on animals that don't respond to the human voice and decided to give it a try. A little book came with my clicker and I believe it was the one you mentioned.I found a box big enough for the dog to sit in, cut off the flaps and got a handful of bits of cheese. I sat on the floor and the dog, being curious, came over to me. I let her smell my closed hand, tossed a piece of cheese in the box and as soon as she jumped inside, I clicked. I did this until I ran out of cheese and just started using the clicker. The dog continued to climb in the box and just sat there!! My husband and I got a kick of watching the dog do this because like I said, this dog wouldn't respond to anything!

A fun video we did one day of "101 Things to do With a Pop Can". Started out just rewarding novel experiences and ended up shaping a too-funny game

 Thanks for sharing that video. That was really fun to watch. All the while I was watching it I was saying to myself, "you can do it, you can do it, alllllmost, come on, then YEA! You did it!!"Amazing how some dogs learn so quickly.

I started out with free-shaping using a purple plastic sled.  I couldn't get Tasha to even touch it hardly.  Very similar to houndlove's Conrad.  She shut down and laid on the floor, waiting for me to tell her what to do.  She's a softer dog than any of the others and has taken the longest to progress. 

HOWEVER, we began c/t to teach a retrieve.  Tasha will not fetch anything.  She will barely chase a toy if you toss it but she would never pick it up unless she plans to destuff it.  After perhaps 10 sessions of placing a toy on something other than the ground (chair, couch, hearth, stool, etc) and clicking for when she picked it up, I would throw it near an object so she couldn't just lay down and begin chewing.  Last night, she actually picked up a tossed toy and carried it about 3 feet towards me!!!!  Amazing!!!!  No compulsion just a clicker, treats and lots of praise.  It was quite comical to watch her attempt to carry the toy though.  She grabs it so delicately by its tail and prances over to me as it swings in her mouth.  I'll try to get it on video soon.  []  I am amazed!  Hopefully we can make this a real retrieve some day.

As for the other dogs, they are pros now at free-shaping, though they seem to think it means just touching stuff.  I will have to find more creative things to play with.  When using a soccer ball, 3 of the 4 would put their front paws on it.  Shadow finally began to use her nose to move it around after I strategically placed a treat under it.  shhh... it's not cheating is it?!!  lol...