Thinking about the box

Is a learning game for your dog. You can read about it in Jane Killions book "When Pigs Fly". While this sounds like a strange title for a dog training book it holds amazing foresight into dog training.
Bailey and I walked our way through the exercise, clicker in one hand and book in the other. To my delight Bailey showed many moments of greatness as she was clicked through sniffing, touching and eventually picking up the box to earn her treat. This form of training is called free shaping and it requires the dog to offer behaviors until they get the clicker to go off. In a five minute training session Bailey learned what was going to get her a treat. The idea is training becomes a game as your dog offers behaviors to make the clicker go off. When you can be 100% sure that your dog will sit at the click you can start using the command "sit" once their butt has touched the ground and eventually discontinue the click and use the word. Voila your dog is offering a sit.