my dog whisperer

I love when dogs can do the 'roll over' trick. Wrigley learned to 'sit' and 'lay down' fairly easily as a young pup. Over time she's learned to 'stay' and wait until we say 'ok' before eating a treat or running outside when we open the door. Ryan also taught her to play dead with 'bang-bang.' Although it's still a slow death of laying down on her side, she's gotten a lot better at it. The next trick on my list was always to teach her to 'roll over'.

My attempt at this probably started last fall. From the playing dead position, I would have a treat in my hand while helping her to physically roll over. Dog books say to use a treat to help them with the motion. Rolling over provides a unique challenge to give your dog a treat in motion, as they're on their back. Needless to say, after a couple of coughing fits from Wrigley (from choking on a treat), she still didn't have coordination to make her body roll over.

Sometime in early March, I let Wrigley out of her crate when I got home. She has a bad habit of jumping to lick my hand when she's really excited to see me. We're working on breaking the bad habit by making her 'sit and stay' until we say 'ok' and chase her into the other room.

Her ears are back, she's fidgeting like crazy as I tell her to 'sit, stayyyy, lay downnn....' AND THEN SHE ROLLED OVER. I could NOT believe it! I responded, "Wrigley, what WAS that??" We went crazy, running around, jumping on the couch, I was so excited! I couldn't get her to do it again, but I had hope that I could teach her!

Later I found out that my dog whisperer, Ryan, had been working with her earlier that morning to learn 'roll over'. I guess since she'd been practicing it earlier, she knew the sequence 'stay and lay down' should naturally progress to 'roll over'!!

She can do ALL of these tricks and my dog whisperer taught her all of them! I'm good at reinforcing, but I can only take credit for a small percentage of actually teaching Wrigley tricks. Below is a list of all the tricks, commands and terms she knows:
-sit
-lay down
-bang bang
-roll over
-shake and other paw
-stay
-ok
-bring it/find it
-come (she knows this command, but doesn't like to come... so instead I say 'want some?' ...and then she comes)
-bed
-crate
-up
-go potty
-outside/walk

I thought I would upload an iphone video of some of Wrigley's new tricks..