mrs tornsocks Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 I could not see another thread on this so forgive me if repeated. We are trying to teach 14 wk old pup to play dead. he's SUCH a clever fellow (yes, biased) - he sits, drops, rollover, stays (on sit or dropped), barks on command. He's going pretty well with the 'serious' stuff like walking on the lead, increasing distractions and distances on his basic stuff as well. At the moment we want to teach him to play dead but he's confusing it with roll over. Any tips ? When he lies down on one side but DOESN't rollover he gets praise, should we just keep working on this ? He also ocassionally gets confused with 'speak' and will bark instead of going down on one side. Our signal for play dead is finger /hand held like a pistol and a verbal 'bang'. And .. this could be a ridiculous question for a 14 week old lab but how do we get him to lie still to make the 'play dead' trick authentic ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gayle. Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 We use the same command, we taught Benson by having him drop, then gently pushed him onto his side and held his head down at the same time giving the command "Bang!" It didn't take long for him to figure it out. It sounds like you've taught your boy to drop, then rollover as an extension of the drop, so now he thinks that's what he's supposed to do. Try going back to a basic drop, and just have him do that for a while. Then introduce the play dead as a definite seperate exercise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beny Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 We use the same hand signal and word bang with Iz. We just did the action and said 'bang' everytime we would catch her laying on her side. After a while we started saying it when she was in a lie position, and once that was 100% started saying it at any time. We've managed to teach her a few cool little tricks just by putting a command to a natural action Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teebs Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 Kaos was taught this in one day. she knew how to drop and loved tummy rubs, so i would drop her, and roll her and give a little rub, she soon worked out i was offering tummy rubs, once she was doing the action, i added the word Bang. She now hits the floor so hard when i say bang! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrs tornsocks Posted July 7, 2009 Author Share Posted July 7, 2009 We use the same hand signal and word bang with Iz.We just did the action and said 'bang' everytime we would catch her laying on her side. After a while we started saying it when she was in a lie position, and once that was 100% started saying it at any time. We've managed to teach her a few cool little tricks just by putting a command to a natural action Good luck! thanks - this could be a better option for us to reinforce the message. I taught him to 'speak' like this (after doing little barks in his face a few times ) - better to have him 'naturally' in this position. ps. your pups are soooo cute, not sure if they're still babies but very sweet faces Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrs tornsocks Posted July 12, 2009 Author Share Posted July 12, 2009 (edited) We are getting there ..... he doesn't do it every time but more and more regularly .. to stop him wriggling while he was lying down, I told him to stay and that helped him lie still (although his tail still wags which makes me ) not sure if this link works .... http://i732.photobucket.com/albums/ww323/b...h_MVI_17031.jpg Edited July 12, 2009 by mrs tornsocks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beny Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 (edited) We are getting there ..... he doesn't do it every time but more and more regularly .. to stop him wriggling while he was lying down, I told him to stay and that helped him lie still (although his tail still wags which makes me ) not sure if this link works .... http://i732.photobucket.com/albums/ww323/b...h_MVI_17031.jpg Edit: the vid worked for me... love the quick hand bite on the way down. Mine do that too sometimes!! Glad to hear it's going well and maybe he's just doing an extra dramatic version including the post-death twitching you see in bad horror movies Edited July 16, 2009 by Beny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jed Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 I 've only taught this once - when I was a teenager. Standard long dacs. He was obedient in "down", "over" "stay". I pointed my finger like a gun, said "down, bang". over stay - one command at a time. He got it fairly quickly and would soon reliably fall "dead from a run - he simply folded up and lie with his eyes closed, until he heard "live now" Great trick!! He was my show dog. He was elibigle for group at one show, and looking lilke the winner, and my mother showed him - during the out and back for group, there was a "bang" fom the crowd, and from a trot, he folded to the ground and lay there. Everyone thought he had a heart attack - everyone rushed over. My mother did too at first, but then realised what had happened, but didn't know how to get him up. Great consternation in the ring. Judge rushed over. Mother finally remembered how to get him up, finished the workout He got nowhere. My mother blamed me for going "bang". I didn't. The trip home was VERY icy. I never taught another to do it, but on reflection, he was very obedient, and he loved doing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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