"RING THE BELL!"
..or "the statue game"

THE METHOD I'M USING

This is designed to be a crowd-pleaser! ( It's also a llama-pleaser from the amount of off-cue bell-ringing I get in my yard!!)

The method is simply to target on the bell-rope of a suspended bell, working up from rewarding the merest nudge, through mouthing the rope, right up to shaking the rope and..ding-a-ling..they're there! Well, not quite, because I'm aiming to get them to approach the bell starting from me standing at a distance away, ring it, and return to me. The cue is: "Go and ring the bell" with a double thumb gesture.

If you can add anything to my work or have any questions or comments, please e-mail me.

HOW WE'RE DOING

The story so far: Time has permitted to train only Oscar to do this, not that it took very long. I suppose Oscar was ringing within 8 minutes of never having seen the bell. He now readily leaves me, rings the bell and skips back for his reward.

APRIL 17th '08

After a gap of several months, I put this performance on today to amuse a young friend (and no doubt Oscar too). He hadn't forgotten any of it! We set up the bell, took him to the middle of the sand and I gave the cue (thumb jerk and verbal) "Go and ring the bell". He hadn't forgotten one iota! Off he sped, mouthed the rope..and ding-dong! Back to me for the goodies! ( I hate to say it but I then got a lot of off-cue bell-ringing. I must come to terms with this off-cue behaviour!)