French Bulldog Halfway across the dog park, a squat little tank named Otis plants one front paw on a skateboard deck and shoves off with the other.
He rolls about eight feet. Ears up, tongue sideways, absolutely no regard for physics or dignity.
A toddler screams with delight and drops her juice box. Otis does not care. Otis is busy.
Here is what nobody tells you about this breed: everyone assumes the flat face and the bowling ball body mean the brain inside is mostly dedicated to naps, snacks, and stealing the warm spot on the couch. Fair enough. A lot of the time, that is exactly what is happening in there.
But a Frenchie who figures out that a specific weird behavior reliably produces cheese? That is a completely different dog.
They are not stubborn so much as extremely opinionated about the exchange rate. Make the deal good enough and they will do things that genuinely stop strangers on the sidewalk.
Five of them, coming right up.
1. The Skateboard Push Off
Yes, really. And no, your dog does not need to be athletic, because this trick is built entirely on being heavy and low to the ground, which happens to be the two things your Frenchie was born to do.
Their center of gravity sits so low that a moving board barely rattles them. Tall, leggy dogs panic. Frenchies just plant and ride.
Getting the first roll
Start with the board completely still, wedged against a wall or with a rolled towel jammed under each end so it cannot move at all.
Reward any interaction. A sniff. A paw. A long suspicious stare.
Once your dog will stand on the stationary deck without hesitating, free the wheels and give the board the tiniest nudge yourself while they are on it. One inch. That is the whole session.
The moment they connect "paw pushes ground" with "board goes forward and human loses their mind with excitement," you are basically done, and the rest is just repetition.
Keep it short and cool
Two or three minutes, max. Concrete gets hot, Frenchies overheat fast, and a dog who is panting hard is a dog who is finished learning for the day.
A Frenchie does not learn a trick because you asked nicely. A Frenchie learns a trick because at some point the math started working out in their favor.
2. Ringing a Bell to Ask for the Door
This one is not flashy at parties. It will, however, quietly improve your entire life.
Hang a strand of bells on the door handle at nose height. Every single time you take your dog out, tap the bells with their paw or nose first, then open the door.
That is the whole setup. Repetition does the heavy lifting.
The part where they take advantage
Your dog will absolutely learn this, and then your dog will absolutely start abusing it.
Frenchies are gremlins. Within a week you will have a dog who rings the bell, gets taken outside, stands in the grass smugly doing nothing, and comes back in feeling powerful.
Handle it by making bell rings boring. Leash on, straight to the potty spot, no talking, no games, back inside. Fun stuff happens on walks you initiate, never on bell walks.
Why this trick sticks so well
Dogs learn fastest when a behavior gets them something they already desperately want, and access to the outdoors sits near the top of that list.
You are not really teaching a trick here. You are handing your dog a working vocabulary word, and most of them grab it with both paws.
3. Putting Their Own Toys Away
Picture the scene at your next family gathering: someone says the dog is spoiled, and you calmly point at a basket and say "clean up."
Then your dog does it. One toy at a time, all the way to empty floor.
Build it backward
The trap here is starting with the toy on the floor across the room. Way too many steps at once.
Begin instead by holding the toy directly over the basket, letting your dog take it, then saying "drop" so it falls in. Reward hard. Ridiculously hard.
Next, hand them the toy standing a foot from the basket. Then two feet. Then set it on the ground beside the basket instead of handing it over.
Each stage should look almost identical to the one before it, which is the secret nobody mentions: good training is boring on purpose.
When they get creative
Frenchies love finding loopholes. Some will drop the toy next to the basket and look at you like the job is done.
Do not reward the near miss, even once. Just wait, keep your hands still, and let them try again.
The dog is always training you back. Every time you accept sloppy work, you have taught them that sloppy work pays.
4. Talking on Cue
Your dog already does this. That is the beautiful part.
The breed makes noises no other dog makes: the low grumble when you stop petting, the outraged yodel when the mail carrier exists, the full monologue delivered from the top of the couch about nothing at all.
You are not creating a behavior. You are putting a name on something that happens forty times a day anyway.
Catch it first, cue it second
Keep treats handy and wait for a naturally chatty moment. The second the noise starts, say "speak" and pay them.
Do this for a few days and something clicks. Your dog begins offering the sound to see if the deal is still live.
Only then does the word start to mean anything. Say "speak," wait, pay the noise, ignore silence.
Teach the off switch immediately
This matters more than the trick itself. Reward a few seconds of quiet with a separate cue ("enough" works fine) before your Frenchie decides that noise is now the universal currency of the household.
Skip this step and you will have created a dog who screams at you while you are on work calls, forever, and you will have nobody to blame.
5. Finding Hidden Things by Scent
Here is the trick that surprises people most, because it looks like magic and it is genuinely the easiest one on this list.
Those crowded little sinus passages do not cancel out a dog’s nose. Frenchies can absolutely track scent, and the mental workout involved tires them out harder than a long walk ever will.
Start embarrassingly easy
Take three cardboard boxes and put a smelly treat under one while your dog watches. Release them. Let them win.
Do it ten times. The goal at this stage is confidence, not challenge.
Then start hiding the treat while they are behind a door, so their nose has to do the work instead of their eyes.
Where it goes from there
Once boxes get boring, hide a favorite toy in another room and send them with a "find it."
From there, you can graduate to searching for specific items: your keys, the TV remote, one particular squeaky carrot among a pile of six other toys.
Play this indoors on hot days and you have solved the biggest problem with owning a flat faced dog in summer, which is that the good long walks are off the table from June through September.
A quick note on snacks
Every trick on this list runs on food, and a Frenchie who gains three pounds gets noticeably worse at breathing.
Measure the day’s kibble into a jar each morning and train out of that jar, saving the real treats for the hard stuff. Your dog will work just as enthusiastically for their own dinner, mostly because they have no idea it was ever going in a bowl.