How To Get Your Dog To Play Dead

My name is Stan Rawlinson, I'm an obedience trainer and behaviourist, and this is Charlie one of my rescue dogs, and today I'm going to teach you how to get your dog to play dead. First of all, I need to get him into a position and tell him he's done something right. That's called operant conditioning and for that, I'm going to use either a target wood, which should be good, or a clicker.

That's a clicker, that's the sound it makes. That tells a dog it's actually done something right. I'm going to lure him into a position and tell him that's what I want him to do and after a while, I am hoping he's then going to realize what I want him to do, which is play dead when I say so.

I'm just going to say the word dead when it happens. So Charlie, shall we see what you can do on this? Come on then. Charlie's a short dog, so I'm going to get down here.

He already knows what's going to happen and he's laid down and played dead. So I'm going go click and treat him for that. But how did I get him to do that? Charlie? Dead.

Good. The click rewards the actual movement. But how I initially got him into this situation is when he was stood up, I took a treat and I went and took his head down and then clicked.

Like that. Then I kept repeating that to this part here and clicked it each time he did it. Until in the end, I could then get him into a situation, lure him in, either by using a visual cue, or by using a verbal cue, in this case, it's dead, and click and treat.

Remember to click and treat, the clicker is the cue that tells it it's done something right. We're now just going to give it the verbal cue, I am going to move back slightly and I'm going to go dead. Click and treat.

It's as simple as that. Just to recap. Lure him into the position, if you need to hold him in there with the treat.

And down. Dead. Then click and treat.

Then just give the verbal cue afterwards. It's as simple as that.