Teaching an old dog a new trick (or not)

Our dogs are getting too old to easily bound up the steps into the camper van, so John bought a step stool for them. He didn’t realize we were going to have to teach Kai to use it.

Awww, poor guy. I’m not going to bore you with all the videos, but Kai did that over and over. So John decided to use the van door to block Kai’s usual route, pushing him over to the step stool. Human Engineering (or dog engineering) at it’s finest.

Yay, it worked, John’s brilliant!

Or, er, John may be smart, but obviously Kai isn’t. He didn’t learn from his success and still can’t figure out how to get into the van. Here John is luring him with a kibble. Normally Kai would do anything for a bit of food.

He did it! But it seemed accidental. Did he learn anything? No. In this video he gives up and tries to go around to the back of the van. At least he’s starting to think outside the box, but unfortunately he can’t get up the back steps either.

Kai can do it if he eventually accidentally ends up with his front paws on the stool.

Another success! Has he finally learned?

Nope.

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