Thursday, May 2, 2013

Isaac and the Elevator

Just for fun, I've been teaching Isaac to push the button that calls the elevator in my new apartment building.  I am perfectly capable of pushing the button myself, but it's fun to teach Isaac new things and he likes learning new things, too.  I think he gets bored sometimes if he isn't learning.

Getting him to touch the button with his nose was easy.  I held a yummy treat in my hand, held it up to the button, and told Isaac, "Button!"  Of course, he went for the treat, touching the button with his nose in the process.  I let him have the treat and told him he was a good boy.

We did that for two days.  We practiced it every time we took the elevator, so several times each day.  Then I started pointing to the button, giving him the command, "Button!" and he would nose the button, then look at me expectantly for his treat.  He learns so fast.  He's such a smart boy.

The only thing is that he doesn't always push hard enough to actually call the elevator.  I'm not sure how to get him to push harder.  Now that he's been nosing the button consistently on command, I think I'm going to start only giving him a treat when he actually does it hard enough to call the elevator.  That's pretty much the same thing I did with him turning on lights.  He would touch the light switch with his nose but didn't always actually flip the switch up so the light would come on.  He finally figured it out when he started only getting treats when the light actually came on.

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