Roll Up In A Blanket

southerngirl

southerngirl

Honored Member
How would you go about teaching your dog to roll up in a blanket. I've tried getting my dog Missy a border collie mix to learn this but I don't know how to get her to hold the blanket in her mouth.
 
Does Missy know how to hold at all? That's where I would start: basic holding exercises than expand on that. Hauru has practiced hold with all sorts of objects: dumbbells, balls, flowers, metal items, hot dogs... He'll even gently hold my arm if asked to. I've also taught Hauru to do tricks while holding because I want him to have a good hold for obedience. But it's also useful for all kinds of tricks, like this one, and for funny photographs :D Start with simple movements like walking around, shaking paw or whatever your dog can do easily just so that she learns that she isn't supposed to let go until asked to.
 
This trick is actually two tricks in one. As ambara said, you must get your dog to hold something. To start off, you will need to give her something soft like a toy to hold, and chances are she will drop it before you want her to. If she does hold it for even a second, give her lots of praise. You might be lucky and she'll be fine holding it, so one of the hardest parts is over. I've found that my dog doesn't particularly like the fabric in her mouth, but you just need to keep working at it.

Once you've got her to hold something, she needs to learn to roll over. For some people this is easy and for others it's very hard. The second hard part is to get her holding something and rolling over at the same time, so if you can only get her on her side, reward like crazy.
 
I really need to start working on this trick, Riley isn't great at holding stuff in her mouth, but I think she has the concept down- if you hide under a blanket, she'll grab the blanket and pull it off you to play!!
 
Before teaching Missy to hold it I taught her to pick it up cause I couldn't get her to pick up the toy. Now she's picking it up I'm working on hold it.
 
To expand on the prerequisites of needing #1 rollover and #2 a hold, you also need that hold to be proofed while moving. Basically once I have that hold I find it helpful to teach the dog to do other tricks with an object in his mouth (such as spin, beg...) before I have the dog rollover with an object. Most dogs will immediately spit out the object as soon as they have to do another trick so it's easier to teach the concept of multi tasking before asking them to hold the object upside down!
 
southerngirl said:
How would you go about teaching your dog to roll up in a blanket. I've tried getting my dog Missy a border collie mix to learn this but I don't know how to get her to hold the blanket in her mouth.
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I used a sock to help with teaching to roll in the blanket. Firstly you have to get them interested in playing with the sock - you could initially put a ball inside or even some treats or tease a bit and throw it - reward for them bringing it to you. I also worked on lying on the blanket and rolling over as a seperate stage. Once they are happy to play with the sock and roll over on the blanket separately - you could tie it to the corner of the blanket. This worked for me. I then removed the sock and just folded the cover of the blanket over so he had something to aim for to pick up before rolling...
 
JRT-Smurf said:
I used a sock to help with teaching to roll in the blanket. Firstly you have to get them interested in playing with the sock - you could initially put a ball inside or even some treats or tease a bit and throw it - reward for them bringing it to you. I also worked on lying on the blanket and rolling over as a seperate stage. Once they are happy to play with the sock and roll over on the blanket separately - you could tie it to the corner of the blanket. This worked for me. I then removed the sock and just folded the cover of the blanket over so he had something to aim for to pick up before rolling...
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I like this idea. I am also at some point going to teach my Missy how to do this. I am going to give this idea a go!
 
I like this cause it sounds like it would be easy for my Missy to understand that she's suppose to hold the blanket in her mouth. Hopefully she'll get it cause it's such a cute trick. Thank you for the idea;)
 
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