Dog Training: Roll Over

Teaching Freya Roll Over was the hardest so far.  She still only does it when she feels very inspired.  It probably would help if we reinforced this trick more.

Freya was a very frightened puppy when we first adopted her.  I believe she was 3-4 months, and she was very timid.  She is slow to trust, but then extremely loyal.  Because of her fear she did not submit easily to me in some ways.  Teaching her to lie down was a struggle.  Rolling her onto her side from this position was even harder.  So I gave up for some months.  When she turned 1 I tried again, and she had become confident enough to begin to proceed.

Steps to teach Roll Over:
1. Train to "Lie Down" on command
2. Train to "Play Dead"- my command word is Bang! with a gun hand gesture
3. Train to "Roll Over"- command "Play Dead" and then gently help them roll over while saying roll over repeatedly.  You can also use a treat to turn their head around and encourage the body to follow to other side.  This will help reinforce a circling finger motion later.

I based my simple training off of this website.

Don't forget reinforcement!  Go through learned tricks at least once a day to ensure they are kept up.  Freya does her tricks just for extreme praise (a lot cheaper than some dog treats).  Show her an actual treat and she will do all of her tricks as quickly as possible in whatever order is most efficient.