I started Brito’s scent work a few days ago.

I chose not to use the Altoids Tin method that I used with Lyra (you can see that method here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj8ownH511o).

Brito doesn’t like to make mistakes so I wanted to avoid having him hand me “wrong” things.

So I started with Canning Jar Lids – they’re hard to pick up so my hope was that he’d be more likely to leave them on the ground.  So far it’s working reasonably well most of the time.

I also opted against shaping this exercise  from the start.  He’s not “doing” anything to get a cookie. I’m simply having him learn to associate the lid that I held with the smell of cookies – the only lid that I place cookies on happens to smell like me.

That’s about it.  I went from one lid to several over a few days.  The reason I raised the number of lids quickly (rather than waiting for him to figure out the game), was to avoid teaching him to go back and forth between a few – I’m not trying to teach him to alternate lids; I want him to realize that many are “wrong” and only one is “right”.

Next step will be to wait until he shows clear “I found it!” behavior over the correct lid before placing food on it.

From there….I have to decide when I get there.  I’ll try to tape him again in a week or so to see where we’re at.