@neve said in Endless energy:
@eeeefarm I think I would like to expand her vocabulary (and yes, I would love some insight into teaching her to find named toys). And then get her into agility in a few months!
This is how you proceed. First, teach "pick it up" as a generic term. Use a favourite toy. You can clicker train this behaviour easily, moving from clicking proximity to touching to picking up the toy. Perhaps she will offer picking it up without going through all the steps, but you don't want to throw it for her, just have her pick it up from the floor. After she is doing this reliably (and not before!), add your cue words "pick it up" so she understands the meaning. Once she is reliable you can generalize the behaviour with other objects and in other places.
When she is reliably picking up anything you indicate, start again with one object. This time say "pick up the ______" (whatever it is). Get her doing this reliably, change to a different item. Again, use "pick up the ______" but with the new name. Then put both items together. Start with the one you know she prefers, and ask her to pick it up. If she gets it wrong, don't reward, but ask again. A few repetitions until she is getting it correctly, then ask for the other one. Again, don't reward until she gets it right. Practice until she differentiates with the two objects, then add a third and name it.......and so on. Don't go too quickly, give her time to understand.
Once she is reliably managing to pick up the correct item by name, you can gradually move to having her find and bring you the item you desire. I like Charles Eisenmann's methods, so I would start using full sentences and let her find the meaning, e.g. I could say to my boy, "I sure wish I had a red bone right now", and he would go find it and bring it to me. Or "I wonder where the frog is?", and again, he would search for the item requested. Makes for great games, especially when you hide the items around the house! 🙂