How to Teach a Dog to Roll Over

Dogs are really smart animals and it's great fun teaching them new tricks everyday. Not only do they enjoy doing something like that or trying out something new, but even we enjoy while teaching them these tricks. However dog training requires patience and time. The number of days that your best friend takes to learn these tricks depends on the intelligence of the dogs as well as the difficulty level of the tricks. Some tricks such as the 'stand', 'sit' and so on are pretty simple and usually the dogs picks it up very easily, but some like 'roll over', can be a bit of a problem. There are several owners who quite often ask 'how to teach a dog to roll over?' Well, here are some simple steps or methods which you can follow in order to train a dog to roll over.

Training a Dog to Roll Over

Teaching your dog to roll over can be simple when you know how. This trick can be taught once you as well as your dog have mastered the other tricks such as 'sit', 'stand', 'play dead', and so on. This is a complicated trick that you are going to teach your dog, hence for that you need certain things:

• Patience
• Time
• Your dog's favorite treat

With these things in hand, let us now see how to make your dog roll over. Given below are two simple steps of teaching a dog to roll over. Follow these steps.

Step 1

• The first thing that you have to get your dog to do is 'play dead'. Make it lie down on its side, absolutely still.
• Now grab hold of its lower front leg and lower back leg and then very slowly roll it to the other side.
• While doing this make sure that you say the word 'roll over' so that next time you say roll over, it will know what to do.
• Sometimes, it might happen that while you turn the dog over holding it's legs, it might try to do it himself. When it does that, let it. It will learn faster this way.
• Praises and treats are a must when it completes its first roll over. These encourages the dog to do it again.

This was one simple method of how to get a dog to roll over. But sometimes it might happen that the dog might refuse to perform without first giving it some kind of an incentive.

Step 2

• First ask your dog to 'lie down' and let it remain still. If it tries to get up then very gently push it back.
• Next hold a treat over it's head and then ask it to roll over and at the same time, very slowly move your hand holding the treat towards the direction you want your dog to roll over.
• Your dog will move it's head towards the direction of the treat and again if it tries to get up and grab the treat, push it back gently.
• Once it rolls over, pat it and praise it and give it the treat. Show it that you are pleased with what it has done.

This whole process might take a lot of time as it is a difficult trick. Besides rolling over, there are several more tricks to teach your dog. While training your dog, make sure that you keep certain points in mind; first, DO NOT force your dog to learn something which it does not want to learn. They will not love that and will behave in a stubborn manner. Second, treat them kindly and do not scold them or hit them if they cannot perform the tricks properly. Also praise them when they have completed the trick. Be firm but at the same time gentle. You can also teach dogs more cool tricks if you want to. You have no idea how much a dog loves to learn new tricks. This is an opportunity for them not only to learn new things but also an opportunity to spend more time with you, the person they love the most.