Tricky T-day Helpful hound edition

Ludo's theme for this month's Tricky T-days is to learn a helpful trick. At the moment Moose has 2 helpful tricks, 1. 'get your collar' and 2. 'get your Kong'. Of course both are good things for him but when it is time for walkies it helps me get him dressed and when it is time for me to leave and I want to stuff his Kong or Jug it is helpful that he will go and get it for me! Both of these were 'taught' just by saying it as I went to get the things myself and he eventually figured it out and the only reinforcement I needed was to take him on a walk or fill the toy which is what was going to happen anyway, so it was easy! I do think my boy is pretty smart though (not collie smart but still!).
So, what to do, what to do, what to do? As you saw in Monday's post I did not want to teach him anything to do with opening cabinets or fetching from the kitchen! I had considered that he could fetch my shoes when it was time for walkies but given his shoe fetish and tendency to leave teeth marks and slobber I did not want to encourage that either. I have a few ideas I came up with but settled on 'pick up your toys'! He has LOTS of toys and when his girl friends come over it can get a little crazy!
So I read how to do this and you are supposed to put your hand over the toy basket and ask him to drop it and eventually move your hand away then move the basket further away so he has to walk over to it and drop it. Well... lots of issues there! He knows 'drop it' and he knows 'bring it' and he knows 'toy' but he was tending to only choose his Kong to bring and once it was already in the basket he would take it out and drop it on the floor... sort of not what we are after! So really this trick involves getting him to 1. find a toy on the floor, 2. pick it up and 3. bring it over and 4. drop it in the basket.
So I started by clicking and treating interest in toys on the floor (esp toys other than his favorites), then getting him to pick it up, then walk with it. When he got to the point where he would do that I would quickly slide the basket under his beak so that when he dropped it, it would fall into the basket. At first I would click it even when he missed the basket. When he did manage to get one in the basket he got a 'jackpot' and lots of happy 'good boy' so he would get the idea that this is what we want.

I am pretty sure this is not the best way to do it and in retrospect I think I could have started using 1 toy in an empty basket. This would be less distracting to start with though you would still have to expand to the idea of going and finding toys that are not already in the basket and that is probably the hardest part! So far though, inspite of being kinda indecisive on the command and what I was clicking for, it seems to be working! As of this evening (training session #4!) as he has figured out he can take things to the basket and drop it directly in to score some cookies (as in the video)! Still a ways to go but my Moose seems to learn in fits and starts so I am hoping we will have some progress to report next week!