Bang! Trick

awesome!! a friend of mine taught her aussies too and she said it didnt take more than 15 minutes...u just need to keep doing it over and over again..practice makes perfect! way to go!

That is my dog's favorite trick. He's a boxer mix and picked it up in under 15 minutes, as well. At first he would slowly play dead, but now I can "bang" at him from across the room and he quickly drops down and gets real stiff. He has a flair for the dramatic, so he often adds a whine as he flops over. []

Good job!! [sm=clapping%20hands%20smiley.gif]

That's so cool!  I wonder if I could teach her the whine, too?  I'm always trying to come up with new things for her to learn.  She knows my boys by name and plays hide-n-seek with them in the house.  It's hilarious. Any ideas on other fun things for her to learn? 

I'm not sure if she's big enough to reach the switches, but you could teach her to turn out the lights, if you don't care about the paint on your walls, or if you have a wall she could do it on that isn't painted. I taught one of my dogs to do it pretty quickly using a clicker, and people are pretty impressed by it. First I taught him to touch a yogurt lid with his paw. Then I pinned the lid to the wall (not all the way up at the switch yet) and had him touch it there. Then I moved it up above the switch. He'd hit the switch on the way down by accident, so I clicked when he hit it, and didn't if he missed the switch. The next step was just taking the lid off the wall. By then he was making good deliberate swipes at the switch, and I added in the command. It didn't take long to teach at all, and if I could think of something else to teach with the touch as the first step, it's already done, so it would be even less time to teach something else. If she's too small for that, maybe you could get a bell and have her ring it, or she could do one of those tap lights. Another idea, since you said she knows your boys by name, would be to teach her the names of objects.
About getting her to drop faster for the bang trick, it would probably be best if you used a clicker, but basically, you would want to reward faster responses, and ignore slow ones.

After reading this thread ... I started working with my lab-x on this one.  He caught on fairly quickly! I was surprised.  (We want to do therapy work eventually - and I figured a whole roster of tricks would be fun!  So far he can shake, rollover, sort-of-bow and now we're working on play dead.)
 
I tried the lightswitch one - but my DH caught one look at the paint on the wall and had a fit! *laughing*
 
What are some other good tricks to teach?

ORIGINAL: silver_wlf

After reading this thread ... I started working with my lab-x on this one.  He caught on fairly quickly! I was surprised.  (We want to do therapy work eventually - and I figured a whole roster of tricks would be fun!  So far he can shake, rollover, sort-of-bow and now we're working on play dead.)

I tried the lightswitch one - but my DH caught one look at the paint on the wall and had a fit! *laughing*

What are some other good tricks to teach?

I had the same problem with the paint when I tried to have Max start doing it to other light switches. The first wall we did it on has textured paint,and for some reason it didn't get all scratched up. Then I took him in my room and tried to have him do it there, since I thought it would be cool to have him turn out the lights at night and then get in bed with me... my mom isn't going to be happy when she sees the wall. So, it's not really practical, at least not in my house, because all the lightswitches we use often that he can reach are on painted walls.

this may be a stupid question but whats a DH?

"Dear Husband"  []

Cool trick, good job teaching it.  I recently spent some time with a dog trainer extraordinaire who's a clicker training expert.  The dog she had with her does the "bang your dead" trick, but it takes 3 bullets.  First she shoots the dog, who goes down with it's head up off the ground a bit and she says "sometimes it takes two bullets" and shoots it again, and the dog's head goes to the ground and it relaxes,  and she says "I think he's still breathing" and she shoots it again and it lies on its back, "dead" with all four legs straight up in the air.  Too cute.  

How do you teach a dog to play dead??????

How did you go about teaching to play dead?  Did you lure your pup down into position repeatedly??  Any advice appreciated![]

Update:  It's been a few weeks now and she's much, much faster.  She does this trick with the boys all the time now and their friends just love it.  Some days, if she's suffering from puppy ADD, it may take two or three bullets to "kill" her.  My little guy who's five, uses a sort of machine gun sound to get her to go down.   I taught her to do it from the standing position so it looks more "natural."  I'd cock my "gun" and say "BANG!" and gently move her down and over.  I didn't want to say the down command, which she already knew, because I didn't want her rolling over and playing dead every time I say "down."  I'd say "BANG!" several times while moving her and then treat her when she was in the final position.  It took a lot of repetition and treats but she picked it up fairly quickly.  I've been working on the whine but she's not particularly vocal so it's been hard to capture.  I get the sound effects from the boys usually anyway.  For some reason she always sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth when she does this trick, too.

Haha!  Thats funny, sounds like a great actor[]  I've never really tried teaching the 'play dead' trick. 
 
Another cool trick is teaching them how to close, and sometimes, open doors.  Maggie used to be able to open doors on comand, but her hearing is gone so she doesn't do it anymore.  She only does it if she's snooping around the house and needs to get somewhere. 
 
My neighbors dog (young lab) can open and shut doors on command, very neat trick.

I tried to teach my dog Tanker to play dead once.  I felt so bad!  When I pointed my finger at him and said "bang" he ran and hid in the cellar.  Poor dog- probably not the best trick to try and teach a dog that spent seven years with homeless people on the streets of New York City...