Day of Shaping Puzzles

Today, we tried a little something different with shaping. Well, it's not shaping, per se, but more a test of how much he remembers from tasks we've gone through via shaping - and maybe a little shaping type responses from me (i.e. no direct commands)

First, I put the scale out to him. I didn't do anything else. He had to get on the scale and sit-stay on it. After that, I would act as though I'm checking his weight and he had to stay until I told him it was okay to get off.

When I put the scale out, he kinda looked at it strange, but then must have remembered something because he stood on it with his front paws and the back paws were on the floor.

I didn't say anything of course, just stood there looking at him. He saw no reward forthcoming, and tried something else. After a few tries, he got it and sat on the scale. I then did the rest and had him stay on for a little longer. Once finished, I rewarded him and let him off.

Next was his soccer ball. Since this is probably easy for him, I made him do a couple different behaviors. He could paw it, pick it up, poke it, or push it. Any of those, but he had to do at least two.

He did the poke almost immediately. Not surprising since that's one we've worked on quite a bit. I rewarded the poke and waited for something else. He kept wanting to give me pokes, but I wasn't paying any attention to those any longer. He tried some other stuff like sitting near me, but the picked up the ball. That was good enough.

Lastly, I had a towel laid out. This was for him to lie down on as if doing the "mat" training. This one he got pretty quick. At first he sat on it, but then he lied down and solved it quickly.

Not to bad, considering it's the first time I had him switch like this and had him basically to remember the whole thing from scratch and on his own.