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Bungee & Her Food Bowl

Absolutely freezing cold outside today, (28C. last Monday, 2C + wind today!) so, I decided it was a great day to teach Bungee to pick up her bowl, inside!

A few years ago, as I was crawling into dog crates to gather up the empty food bowls one day, it dawned on me: "why am I doing this?" From that day forward, the dogs started learning to pick up their own bowls out of their crates and bring them to me when released, and have done so ever since. It struck me as really good practice for holding metal articles someday too.

Now for Bungee, this could have been an especially confusing task, as she has thus far spent her young life, putting all four feet in empty bowls, to balance and learn the whereabouts of her feet.

And so it went, quite a few attempts to put feet into the bowl with the 1st session, but also plenty of head drops and sniffing. I clicked/fed her for mouth to rim each time we had a rewarded response. 2nd session, just to speed things along, I set the bowl on it's side and rested it between my two feet to keep it upright. ZING went the strings of success! That's all it took! She was picking up the bowl in literally, a few clicks!

3 more sessions, 1 minute each, the last one she did so well, it was about 20 seconds. So basically in 5 sessions, and well under 5 minutes, the brilliant Princesse was delivering her bowl to hand from flat off the floor.

Now I can go back to not crawling into her crate for a bowl. But, if only I could put either the sandals or snow boots away from the door - only in Canada! (please let it be snow boots!!!!! :-))