How do I teach Eddie how to forage?

[cosmothebirb]

Hi! I need some foraging tips.

I started target training, and some tricks like spin and wave and those are still a work in progress, but he is a really fast learner. He is still very young so I thought I'd teach him some tricks and recall training first, and then move on to foraging.
But I still wanted to try today and i got a piece of paper, a seed and I sat down with him. He gets SUPER excited when he sees seeds and I think all of his logic flies out the window. So first I wrapped the seed in paper but he thought I just took it away. Then I tried something as simple as just showing him the seed on the table and then covering it with paper. After multiple tries he still didnt understand and kept going for my hand, and even got angry at me so I went back to the tricks and simpler things. Are there any easier ways to start with this?


-I

 

[chris-md]

Start easier than completely hiding it. He still needs to be able to see it before you graduate to hiding it completely. Object permanence is earned, somewhat (a lie, but demonstrative).

Here’s how I did it. This was my first time with teaching foraging.

 

[wrench13]

SO what you were teaching is called permanence, the ability to imagine the treat is still under the whatever. Its a sign of superior intelligence, like in dolphins, apes and corvids. Parrots have this ability too. Keep trying its good trick! I hide the treat under a small piece of towel, and Salty always knows it under there, somewhere. We'll roll a few pine nuts into tissue paper and thread it thru the bars of his cage, as a foraging treat.