#just this smiling little staffie rolling around like a rotisserie chicken for a cat who could not have been less interested if she'd tried

[obstinatecondolement]

My sister's dog has this sort of mental hierarchy of her tricks and she has decided that "roll over" is the best and most impressive one. Sometimes you'll ask her to lie down or sit and she'll be like "I'll do you one better" and roll over. Often she doesn't manage it at all for a few tries and does things like turn in a circle chasing her tail (because she's pretty sure rotation is involved), and when she remembers how it goes she doesn't make it all the way around and just sort of rolls onto her side or her back and smiles up at you. I'm not sure if it is actually really hard, or if she's pretending it's super hard so it remains very impressive when she does it right.

She occasionally busts out a flawless "roll over" unprompted when she's really trying to impress someone, as she doesn't know that they won't necessarily realise how big of a deal it is to get a perfectly executed roll over lacking context. She's most often done this for visitors and for my youngest sibling, who she is completely obsessed with, but recently she did it for the unrequited love of her life: my cat Leo. Leo was not remotely impressed, I am sad to report.