Marina and Luke, 1.5 old papillon, USA

Welcome back! Looking forward to meeting your newest addition. 🙂 We always work with what we’ve got, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work on improving his food drive a little. It is much easier when you can use both. Toy will always have bigger value, but you don’t always need the most valuable rewards. 🙂

That is quite a good start for a picky eater! To increase his interest we can try bringing in some real action. Combine food throws with hide and seek. Use the whole house for it – even if you don’t get it on the camera. Give him a couple of throws, than once he is chasing after the last treat, run in a different room and hide. When he finds you you can switch between two alternatives. You can start running away as soon as he starts to move towards you – as if you don’t want to get caught and throw the next one when he is chasing after you. Other times you can just wait there and see if he does anything at all to “wake you up”. You can sit on the ground so perhaps he will want to jump on you or something like that. At that point you “come alive” and escape/throw. In case he starts to follow your movement and ignores the thrown treat, slow things down a bit and just focus on throwing/rolling treats so the food is more active than you are. When his focus on food is back, try to add some handler movement again, but slower and less intense.
With poke me you can also try moving the hand as if it were a toy first… create some interest and drive before you put it down for him to poke.

Good. If you see he is getting bored with the poke me game (he started quite enthusiastically but gradually his interest lowered), spice it up with some throws across the room. Moving the hand is fine for him, but make sure he doesn’t feel like he has no control over it. Don’t change direction too many times with the hand. If he is following well in one direction, reward that by giving him access to the treat. You can just uncover it as he comes closer/sniffs or you can flick it away at the same moment, to make it even more interesting.
With hide and seek you can try randomly asking for a simple behaviour (anything he knows at this point). The reward is a treat throw and you escaping to a different location.
You can experiment a little with treats to see if he will take less time eating a different kind – if you use his regular kibble try to soak it in water for some time – not long enough for it to loose consistency completely, but just enough that they turn a bit softer. If you soak it in meat soup or you dissolve a spoon of canned food in the water previously, it might also add value to the kibble.

“1. I think we got more hand chasing combined with treat tosses:)”
Yes, nice!

“2. Hide trick. He doesn’t know any specific ‘behaviors’ well – we are working on bow trick which he started to understand. When he finds me – I ask for bow and help with luring. I also let him chase hands and toss treats. He really loves finding me:)))”
Bow is a neat trick, but I would try to start with some you can do with more dynamic luring/quicker. The first actual behaviors I would teach are maybe spin (left&right), nose touch and sit. They are all fairly easy to teach. You can do the basics with some extra delicious food in a normal shaping/luring session and than as soon as he has a vague idea about things, include it in hide and seek game.

“3. Threat tosses with running worked great in the house! (I also tried outside, but the grass is too smelly and he switches to sniffing). So we keep this game inside for now:)”
Maybe find some asphalt or gravel first, before doing it on grass. It is extra difficult for tiny dogs, because treats can’t be really big and visible.

“4. I know it will come in the next topic… but this is overexciting for Luke and we do it anyway.. – toy chase and tug:) Just short snippet of toy chase/play outside. Hide also works – he finds me with the toy. I am trying to teach him the puppy tunnel with the toy.. Not much progress – I have to throw the toy in the tunnel. He is crazy with restrains to the toy, running to the static toy and releasing the toy when I hold it still… Can I start teaching this short tunnel with the toy?”
Yes. Given that he shows no fear or hesitation going in the tunnel if you throw the toy in there, you can try a restrain and throw either through or over the tunnel so the toy is on the other side of the tunnel but visible and the direct shortcut there is through the tunnel.

Outdoor food throwing session went pretty good if you ask me. Not that much sniffing. You can avoid throwing much and more or less place the treat down for him to see. If you can see it and he doesn’t you can also point to it when it is already on the ground. If he sniffs after eating the treat, you can run away and hide.
I think you could try some shaping with food – going on a platform or nose touch, and also some luring (spins left and right). To keep him from loosing interest, you break into running and/or hide and seek after 3 or so more passive rewards. But you can always toss a treat for him rather than giving it from the hand when you first start to do shaping. Teaching him to learn using food as a reward is quite important as you won’t be able to build everything with toy – I mean at least not well and throughly enough and also – when training challenges gets more difficult it is a limitation if you have already used your best reward for the small things. The dog might not want to try harder for the same thing he used to get easier. So start with very easy things, just so he gets the concept. And still make many sessions of just playing with food.

Tunnel – yes, that is pretty much it. You don’t have to throw it through the tunnel exactly, so you avoid having repetitions where the toy ends up in the tunnel. He doesn’t need that anymore. So you can throw over the tunnel and gradually it should become less important if the toy is directly in the straight line from the tunnel exit. I would also start changing his starting position little by little – more and more to the side.
Wraps – what you are doing is what you can do with the toy in this moment. I prefer to keep the toy on the ground, not in the air, as I don’t want to encourage wrapping with head high.

Yes, good job with shaping! Yes, it usually takes a bit longer with older dogs. You did just fine. In the future if he gets to one point and is not doing anything more after that, just send him away again and again so he gets to do what he already knows how to do a couple of time (for example when he was able to put front feet in a box – rather than waiting for him to do more (which is unlikely to happen), you can send him away with a throw and wait for him to offer it again,… a couple of times. That way you keep him moving so he is less likely to “fall asleeap” or “disconnect” when not being rewarded very often. Sometimes it is ok to wait and ask for more, but if you see it is not working, better keep him moving and it is more likely that you will get something more out of that.
I would now do the same shaping again, than turn the box around and shape him to go on it. Than nose touch… and after that a cone. Shaping with get easier for him with every new trick.

Good boy. One thing I would like to remind you off is to have some variation in how excited you get when he does something. If you are always hyped about every little thing he does, you won’t be able to use that for more complex training situations or whenever he needs “his spirits lifted” as it will only be a background noise by than. So now that he has got a hang of things I suggest you have some quiet clicks (only clicker, without your excitement) and use excitement only for breakthroughs/jackpots.
Also now that we are trying to encourage him to actively propose behaviours, I would immediately start with shaping an interaction with an object, reward with mixture of throws and giving it directly to the dog and only do some personal interactions/poke me at the end of the session. If you start with it, you make it a bit harder for the dog to switch their attention away from you – even if Luke did it well!
You can definitely try with cik&cap – every exercise is ok at this point, you just have to keep an eye so it doesn’t become too difficult or overwhelming. If he will struggle with free shaping, you can restrain him with one hand while you place treats all around the cone as he watches. Than release him and him moving from treat to treat will give you options to click and give more treats. Also – doing it a couple of times will make him more interested in a cone as he will figure that is where he can find the treats.