F3007 Thing in a Thing and Beyond!
3 WEEK CLASS - In this fun 3-week class, you’ll learn how to teach your dog the skill known as “Thing in a Thing”: put one object into another object. This versatile behavior is the foundation for many advanced tricks, practical skills and dog sports behaviors.
Course Details
Using clear communication and shaping, we’ll break the skill down into easy to follow steps so dogs of all experience levels can succeed. You’ll learn how to build reliable object pickup, targeting, and accurate placement into containers such as boxes, bowls, baskets, or other props.
This class is a great foundation for teaching skills such as a formal obedience retrieve, a reliable deliver to hand with toy play and fun tricks such as Putting Toys Away, Basketball, Ring Stacking, Bowl in Bowl and more.
We will be using food as a reinforcement, no prior experience or behaviors needed for this class.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to introduce and shape the “Thing in a Thing” behavior
- Techniques for improving accuracy and consistency
- How to add distance, different objects, and new containers
- Troubleshooting common challenges
- Fun variations like toy cleanup, sorting games, and trick routines
Teaching Approach:
Syllabus
Week one
- Thing in a Thing - What? Why?
- Teaching TIAT core behavior
- Seeing TIAT in the wild (variations)
Week Two
- Generalization
- Variations
- Toys away
- Basketball
- Increasing arousal for toy play
Week Three
- New environments
- Variations
- Toy deliver to hand
- Ring stacking/bowl stacking
- Handler’s Choice
Instructor
Sara Brueske
Faculty
Sara Brueske (she/her) has been training dogs for over 15 years, and has experienced a large variety of breeds and sports during that time. Having graduated as a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner ...