i think jake was easy (except recall, which was a nightmare!) especially at toilet training, which was a lot easier than expected. jake knows the basic commands, but i have had no luck with the more difficult ones... he gets bored to easily and so will frantically go through all his commands to get the treat/toy. he does have the brains though

Hector....(Leonberger) has been the most frustrating dog i've ever trained .
Purely by the fact that they are slow learners and will do things in their own good time, and still do after 6yrs

but i wouldnt change anything about him

Bonnie....(Beardie X) easy... except for 'Heel' she cant and wont get it.

she's great at fetch and will fetch Hector when his nose gets stuck in a nice smell.

Cain sort of lives up to his breed. He's smart like a GSD, has a little stubborn streak (Akita), but I can train him to do almost anything inside but outside he is very easily distracted. And heel....... Forget it! 6 months we've been trying to crack heel. He can do it when he chooses to but mostly he'll just pull and pull

Toilet training - both were good. Lola took longer than Marius if memory serves, but not as long as I had feared (bulldog breeds tend to be difficult to house-train sometimes they say!).

Both Marius & Lola are very bright. Lola has that very typical stubborness that lots of Bully-breeds have, but in the main she is very obedient to be fair. Once she has that stubborn head on though, whoa, is she a devil!! Marius also can have a stubborn-streak, but he rarely shows it.

I read once that once a Rott has learned something, they never forget it, even if it years later that you ask them to do it again. I do think that's probably true, he does seem to remember literally everything I've taught him.

I got Pepper, my Miniature Schnauzer, because I thought that that would be a good breed for a novice owner, I had no clue the amount of work I was taking on!

She's bright as a button, has a high prey drive and a great deal of confidence and independence. Consequently she learns pretty quickly and easily but often chooses to ignore me. Recall has been a nightmare, she was on a long line, off and on, until she was 3 and although much, much better still isn't completely reliable.

We did the KC GC scheme and she got her silver but really couldn't transfer the skills outside the Scout hut. We've been doing agility and when she wants to be she is fantastic, knows just what I need her to do and she's fast, but 9 times out of 10 she'll run off to sniff in the middle of a course. She is immensely frustrating!

Does that make her an untypical Mini Schnauzer? I don't really know, she's been very hard work and I'm sure she's contributed to my gray hair but if I'm honest I still love her to bits!

J.

Now that sounds familiar!

Two bright setters here which is unusual but Chester's recall is practically non-existent which is fairly typical. They both pick things up very quickly but whilst Chester does it once and retains it Griffin needs a few times before it sinks in properly. Chester is a typical Irish in that he's quite scatty and can be overly excitable whereas Griffin's gordon side seems to keep this in line with him and so he's a bit more staid and doesn't get so hyper, he's also a lot more vocal which is a typical gordon trait, he's a chatterbox. Don't know about Griffin yet but Chester will do something when you ask even if he hasn't done it for months, he does has a stubborn streak though so if he doesn't want to do something you really have to make it worth his while, and even then he may well refuse , they both completely switch off when they're tired or feel they've done a single thing too much too so training sessions need to timed correctly!

I have heard it said that the "brighter" the dog the more innovative and adaptive the training has to be. So called "bright" or "clever" dogs can be a nightmare

Dan is very trainable for an Estrela. He likes his food, which is a bonus and enjoys obedience. I can't teach him tricks though, he finds a lot of tricks difficult and, well, pointless! His recall is OK at best and he does need a long line on most of the time. Rio is a nightmare. She is super bright but convinced I'm an idiot so why should she listen to me? Her recall is pretty good for her breed though so she's off lead a lot. Rogue the JRT is fab, so easy to train. It's actually funny how easy it is after Estrelas and an Elkhound!

Worked that way for me. My border collie mix learned extremely quickly and was an absolute nightmare at times. My rottie mix on the other hand was rather dim. Took him a while to learn things but once he knew them it never seemed to occur to him to not do them when asked.

I'm still trying to work out whether Rupert is bright or not, sometimes he seems it but other times he seems even dimmer than Wolf was. This is a dog who figured out how to open bolted gates yet given the chance will purposely get his head stuck in the park railings.