Since learning the Look at That game, where Lilly is rewarded for looking at various things (even “scary” ones), she’s tried teaching a version of it to Tom. The results crack me up.
Typically Lilly stays near me all day long while I write. In the evenings, she often turns her focus to Tom. Being a little slower on the up-take than she is, it took us a while to realize she’s trying to get Tom to look at things — toys usually.
She looks at the toy herself, then looks at Tom. Back and forth, she whips her head, trying very hard to entice Tom to look at the toy (and we can only assume engage it and her in play). As an experiment, he purposefully did NOT look one night, and she tried and tried and tried for about 15 minutes before harumphing off in frustration.
Imagine how different our training lives would be if our dogs could use clickers to let US know we’re doing things that make sense to them or that help them cope. Yes, in this fanciful world, some dogs would only reward the BALL or FOOD or TUG. But, imagine how cool it would be to know precisely what’s what.
Click. The moment is marked.
Still … I wonder if we’d catch on as fast as our dogs do to what EXACTLY is being rewarded. Somehow, I think not.
I *love* that concept! Very cool. 🙂