How cool would it be...

[Magnolia618]

... if I could teach my dogs to put their toys back in the toy box? When Trey comes out of his crate, the first thing he does is scatter his toys. Yesterday, I was trying to sweep the floor and every time I put his deflated football away, he took it out again. It happend like ten times. Dork.

Has any body taught this? How would I do it??

[Marinepits]

I wish I could teach them to pick up their own poo!

[Magnolia618]

Teach them to eat it

[Marinepits]

EEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

[cheekymunkee]

I don't know Chea but ALL of my dogs are like Trey, they cannot grasp the concept that their stuff does not need to be all over the house.

[SpiritFngrz]

toys...and toy stuffing all over the house. My house looks like there is snow cover on the floor

[lellis34]

LOL - this is too funny. My house is like the fabreeze commercial where the lady puts all the toys in the toybox while she fabreezes the carpet - then turns around and all of the stuffed animals are face down on the carpet. Yep, that's my house. My kids are all old now (17 & 19) and with the pups I feel like I have 2 year olds again. Everytime I turn around there's toys all over the place.

[Purple]

I pick up all the toys, put them in the basket, and Hopscotch follows me until I'm done. Then she proceeds to empty the basket, not to play with anything, but just to put the toys outside of the basket.

[Hoyden]

We have this ONE BOOKSHELF, that Petey decided the bottom shelf belongs to him.

Anything that I put on it got peed on or eaten. He put HIS TOYS on that lower shelf and destroyed anything that wasn't his. He used to pout and wing the Gremlin's toys off of HIS shelf. He'd whine this horrific pitious whine when the Gremlin touched anything on HIS SHELF.

Needless to say, that damned bookcase is in the basement. The furniture belongs to me, not the dog.

We had stuff stored on that shelf down stairs. And you guessed it, he pulled it all off the shelf.

Brat.

[katiek0417]

Actually, you CAN teach a dog to put the toys away. Sacha used to do it reliably...she's not allowed toys anymore...so I'm not sure if she'd still do it, but she'd probably re-learn it fairly quickly.

Sacha is INCREDIBLY food motivated...so I did it using food (though you'd probably be able to use clicker for it). First step is giving all the toys a name....Sacha had lambie, football, monkey, rib-it (a frog), moo-man (cow), etc. When it was time to clean up, I would tell her to "get lambie," then have her "bring" it to me. I would be standing next to the toy box. When she "brought" it to me, I'd hold a treat OVER the toy box, when she dropped the toy, I said "Yes, good clean up." Because I held the food over the box, she'd drop the toy IN the box to get the food.

Eventually she learned that "clean up" meant to drop her toys over the toy box. At first I had to tell her to "clean up" individual toys ("clean up lambie"), but eventually she figured out that "clean up" means all her toys being put back!!!!

To KEEP my house clear of toys, I just used the "bring" command ("bring lambie") - she learned that she was only allowed to play with toys if I told her to "bring". She'd get that out of the box, and that would be her toy.

[mnp13]

Holy crap Katrina, that's cool!

It's not hard to keep my house free of dog toys - neither of my dogs play with toys. (not because I don't have them, they don't want them.)

[katiek0417]

Holy crap Katrina, that's cool!

My ex-friend Rachel (a dog trainer) and I were losers, so we used to hang out on Friday and Saturday nights and teach Sacha stupid pet tricks....she can "clean up," and "get the lights."

[prinpoms]

Baby Girl has a whole bucket of toys that she plays with, usually she only takes a couple of them out or if me of my bf ask her to get us a toy she will bring it to us. BUT if she wants attention and I'm not able to give her the attention right then and there she will start emptying her toy box. Yep one by one she will take out her toys and drop them strategically around the house near where I am until I pay attention to her. I have tried using food to get her to pick up the toys but she would bring me the toy by her basket, drop it in the basket, take the treat then pick the toy back out and drag it out again. She's an attention hound and will do anything to get your attention!