Hearing Dog Training

Hearing Dog Training: Our two new dogs, Pilar and Janie: Shih Tzu x Poodle 1 year old sisters, expertly fostered for 3 months before donating to HDP. They are not overly attached to each other anymore (thank you foster!!!) and do not compete for food (ditto!) so I could start sound training with both together. Most of the time they are separated so as to build a relationship with me. I've had them for 2 days.
Lesson 1:
-dogs outside with me.
-I'm holding a bowl of their days meal of kibble (they have high food drive, so I don't need tasty treats).
-I'm holding a timer, set to 1 second so it rings when I press start.
-I ring timer and at the same time, toss 4 or 5 kibbles on ground.
-I toss the kibbles from my side or from behind me so they do not get too focused on a hand motion. I want them to think the food appears on the ground. If they watch my hand too much I actually don't care, because soon they will realize they must watch the ground for kibbles.
-I say and sign "goood" at the moment they are eating the food (or at that moment I could have clicked, but I'd prefer to charge clicker separately. My goal is to have the timer sound reinforced right now when they are eating.)
-Repeated about 50 times, till all their food is eaten.
-They did not get full or bored, so I was able to continue training till they ate their whole meals.
Results:
-They stopped jumping up on me and running around the yard.
-They ended up by sticking near me, waiting for food to fall.
-Pilar looked at my hands less, Janie looked at my hands and up at me more.
- No visible association to timer sound yet. That takes several lessons usually, so that is OK.
Goals:
-they will associate the timer sound with food becoming available.
-they will associate "good" or sign "good" with getting a treat.