Is Your Breed Easy To Train?

Winston (Doberman) is about low-average for trainability. He lives to please, but doesn't grasp new concepts overly quick. He tries his hardest though!

 Keira (Doberman) is pretty hard to train at the moment, but incredibly intelligent. She's 8 months old and doesn't focus very long on anything - very easily distracted, and doesn't have a huge desire to please anyone but herself. I suspect that'll change though, as both her parents are very quick to pick up on things.

 Dance (Duck Toller) is very easy to train. She'll do anything for her favourite toy, and she loves to simply make me happy, too. Apparently this isn't common of the breed though. Most others are more "what's in it for me".

 Flat Coated Retrievers are 'easy' to train if you can somehow make yourself THE MOST EXCITING THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD (scratch that make it the entire universe!)!  Plus, you need to have the flexibility to mix it up, don't focus on one thing for two long and keep it FUN FUN FUN!  Seriously, it has to be fun!  Plus, as her breeder put it, they are known for "Flat Coat Moments"....where your perfectly trained dog decides "well I know you said 'come' but wouldn't it be so much more FUN if I first jumped over this log, ran around the tree, circled around you a couple of times and THEN sit in front of you...yeah much more FUN". 

Otherwise, yes they love to please, but if your method of style is to repeat a 'drill' or command a gazzilion times they will tune you out and go find something more fun to do.  They do tend to be food motivated, so this helps, and we find Ari will do just about anything for a cookie and LOVES the clicker.  

They are highly intelligent, can become easily bored, but training sessions with Ari have been fabulous.  Though for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get across down (which is lay down for us) to her.  She is VERY exacting, and we realized our first method she thought down was to follow the hand leading her into a down position, regardless that we only used the command word once she was in the down position!  Now we've modified that but still not there....Heck she already knows stay for several situations - stay at the door until I give the OK to go out, and we're working on introducing stay in other situations now.  But down, forget about it!