As what I have promise everyone earlier on on my previous posting to share the video posting on Kiki doing her Ring Tossing Trick. I personally think it’s quite a hard trick for Kiki. Throughout her learning path, she did vent her frustration on me. With patience and repeating and summarize the basic steps over and over again. Finally She masters and understands the whole concept within a week. I guess the crucial part is to build and select the right size of prop for them. The Ring is the important part in the game, have to light and small. Have to thank Mum for helping me source for the suitable plastic rings.

How do I teach?
After building my stem prop and sourcing the rings, I started introducing the props to Kiki. This is to ensure she’s not afraid of the props and willing to mingle and play with them. I’ve took a 10-15mins session just to introduce to her. There are time where Kiki showed signs of fear of the props, but after a couple of times of coaxing she totally comfortable with the items. As soon as she’s totally not afraid of the props, I started my formal training in the next session.

First Objective, I had to teach Kiki to pick up the ring. Trust me, It’s one tedious task. Why? You have let Kiki know the correct way of pick up the ring, this step is extremely important and it affect your next progression of putting the rings into the stem prop. I try holding Kiki’s “candy” under the ring where I want Kiki to touch. Everytime successful touch of the ring, I treat and praised her. Now without the presence of the “candy” under the ring, I placed the ring and let Kiki touched. The moment she touch the ring, I treat and praise her. Once she’s comfortable, I moved on by holding the treat longer, until she picked up and hold the ring correctly. When she do that correctly I will treat and praise her. This part you have to be patient, for Kiki, she failed couple of time picking the ring correctly and couple time she showed little bit of frustration, which leads me to terminate the session immediately. After letting Kiki to calm down around 30mins I continued, repeating the whole cycle of picking the ring up. I continue to treat and praise her when she done it correctly.

Finally Objective, to bring ring to the stem prop. It’s extremely hard for this, because it’s hard to let her know she have to drop the ring onto the stem prop and not anything outside or off target. Basically when I trained Kiki on this, I have a day which is totally no progress at all. But have to be determined, patience again. Beginning of each session, I demo how I play by putting the ring onto the stem in front of Kiki (I think she understand, because she’s staring and observing using one side of the eye). First I try putting the stem near Kiki and place the ring beside her. Everytime she pick up the ring in her beak, I will hold the ring from the other side of the ring and force it into the stem prop. Every successful try I treat and praise her. This is let her understand better that she has to place the ring onto the stem prop. I repeated that a couple of times. Then after I left her to place ring to stem prop herself. I can guaranteed the success rate of her doing it herself is 0.1%. If she fails = no treats. Whenever she fails I’ve to go the initial method of guiding the ring to the prop. After a few session, she’s able to do it correctly.

Then after, I try to bring the ring further and add a few more rings to make it more challenging. Every successful tries, I will treat her and praise her. After day of days of practise, the success rate is nearly 95%. 5% are those silly mistakes where she didn’t place the ring properly to the stem prop.

Good luck for those who want to try this trick.

Previous Related Posting about Ring Tossing:
Kiki learning in frustration
Changing to new lessons?
New trick learned but need more practice