Four boxes was placed in the bush dog enclosure. Food was pseudorandomly placed in two of the boxes. Two boxes was not allowed to contain food twice in a row, but one box was allowed this. One box was not allowed to contain food three times in a row, though, in order to prevent the bush dogs to associate one specific box with food. This design with two empty boxes and two food containing boxes were to test two things. First, to test the motivation; how much the bush dogs were willing to work to obtain food. Second, to test if the bush dogs randomly entered any box after learning that a box meant food.

To investigate further potential as environmental enrichment, the duration of every test was recorded.
The doors to enter the boxes got increasingly heavier every 10th test. The weight steps used was 0 kg, 1 kg, 2 kg and 4.8 kg. To exit the box, the animals simply pushed open a hatch in the back of the box. The bush dogs also used this backdoor opportunistically to enter the boxes.

The bush dogs were observed how many times they entered a box. It was also observed which way into the boxes that was used.