[yorkietalkjilly]

Tibbe plays dead. You can call it what you want if you teach it but it is just another dog trick to us. I use it all the time when grooming him. Just tell him to "play dead" and he lies right down on his side and is far more patient than he would be when I'm trimming the hair on his feet - because he thinks doing his tricks are fun. And it is so cute seeing him lie down and then remember this trick is different from just lying down on his tummy and so he flips over onto his side and stays there until I say "release". At first I trained him to shut his eyes but found he didn't like to keep his eyes shut much so I just let that part of the trick go. Now he does the play dead trick with those little eyes just looking all around. It's sooooo cute.

After teaching the play dead, I taught him to roll on over onto his back and stay there. That is just about my favorite trick of his as he looks so darn cute doing it. I call it the "roll-back-stay" and use a hand gesture and he will just lie down, flip over and stay there on his back. It is darling! He learned that one really quickly.

The hardest trick to teach Tibbe was the sit up and beg. His noodle body just couldn't hold him upright for long or he didn't have good balance or both. I didn't work much with him on it and after about a year, with only once a month or so training for a minute or two (we hardly ever practiced it because he just couldn't stay up), he just did it. Now he even will put his paws together and pump them in the begging fashion and can sit up for well over 2 minutes or longer. It is cuter than anything!

I don't feel much like training him since had bad hip, surgery, am in PT again so he has never learned many really sophisticated tricks but he knows lots of easy ones and he'd rather train doing tricks and actually perform them than anything else. He loves to play and fetch and do tugowar but he loves doing tricks and training more than playing!