I taught the dogs to sniff the ground on command last night. That was a super easy trick to teach and I hope to use it to difuse some head on confrontations with Abbie and other dogs.
Lily suprises me constantly. She does not appear to be super smart at first glance but man, she has a rocket scientist hiding in her brain somewhere. She picks up things lightening fast! It's incredible. And she LOVES free shaping/clicker training. This girl could really be a start, I think. All I had to do with her is drop one treat, click and treat for her nose touching the floor to get the first treat and bam, she had it. She was soon moving back in forth in front of me sniffing the floor as she went. I tested her by hand feeding her the treat to see if she would go back to sniffing to earn the next treat and she had it down.
Neiko picked it up pretty quickly too but he still tries to throw other behaviors out from time to time. I don't think he connects the word with the action most of the time.
Abbie - she's the under achiever. She gets stuff but also gets bored really quickly. So while I only need 1 or 2 training sessions with Neiko and Lily, it'll take 5 with Abbie.