This post is part of our 2012 Training Challenges series. Each month we'll tackle learning a new trick, command, behavior. You name it, we'll train it. Seriously...if you have an idea, let us know in the comments below!
For January, we tackled "Back Up" with moderate success. 1 out of 3 ain't bad?
Since it's leap year and we've got an extra day in February, I'm not at all freaking out about not really having started for reals our February Training Challenge. If you caught one of my posts on January's challenge, you might have caught the sneak peek at our next challenge, which is....drumroll please...Roll Over!
While this is a fairly basic one, it has been heretofore absent from our modest arsenal of tricks. And it's been tried though not in a while. See, last I tried, Maggie was probably about a year old and, at that point in her life, extremely averse to rolling onto her back. Girl hated belly rubs. Luckily, she's relaxed as she's grown up and it might be a good time to try again. I hope.
The Hubster has had some previous success with Sadie but it hasn't stuck. Which is more to do with our effort than her ability to get it.
And as you saw a couple weeks ago, Hurley is already getting pretty comfortable with rolling over; now it's just fading the lure. Which will be 100% about my ability more than his. He's pretty patient with me and knows I need time to figure it out so I'm confident we'll get there.
What I'm really saying is....holy crap, we're already a week into February and I haven't even started working on shaping the rollover with the girls!
we had some trouble with teaching desmond to roll over, because it's uncomfortable for him. he hated doing it, no matter what the surface was. now we've got him doing "roll" or "belly rubs" (he seems to respond to both), where he'll roll to his side and twist his upper body around to expose his belly for rubbing, but his bottom legs will stay flat on the floor. you could always try that if all else fails!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip! I may have to try that with Maggie, who's ever suspicious when I try to get her to roll on her back.
DeleteI think rolling over was one the more difficult things for my dogs to learn, because they are not very submissive. But now that they've learned it, they do it without me even saying it!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
I love roll over! At the end of each puppy class I run, we teach the puppies to either roll over or give paw. Puppies pick up on rolling a lot faster than adult dogs, but I know your girls can do it!
ReplyDelete