Shayna retrieving toys with flash cards
Some time ago I heard about Rico the Border Collie in Germany, whose parents taught him to discern the names of 200 toys and retrieve them by name:
I also heard (somewhere) that once they ran out of names for toys, they took pictures of some of them, and used them as flash cards.
So, as Shayna has now memorized the names of more than 20 toys (albeit not as perfectly as Rico), I figured, why not at least try to create flash cards for her, and see how she does?
As you can see from the our video above, Shayna does pretty well — but after years of using verbal cues, it turns out that I’m the one who needs some training to stop doing that, and to just show her the cards alone.
Stay tuned for more improvements on this!