I Do Not..

Interesting. She sounds kind of hard to work with. (?) Or did you just need to learn to push the right buttons? I had a horse like that. LOL. Seriously. I know with Lyric, he was easily distracted and easily bored. He loved working with me, but he always had a "better" way of doing things. LOL. I had to learn to be more creative with him. Once we got on the same page, he was a dream dog. With my Chihuahuas, they are all about me and what I want. It doesn't matter what I do, they're game. (except when a bear comes on the property.) Then all hell breaks loose with Jose`. Talk about drive. LOL But I'm lovin' this breed.

She's definitely not easy. Would someone more experienced find her hard to work with? I don't know. She's really not that difficult as long as I get it right. And if I get it wrong, I just have to quit and try again some other time because I haven't figured out yet how to fix it on the fly.

It does help that I've seen several other dogs with similar needs, so I get it and I've watched their handlers bring out the best in them so I have an idea of what she needs from me. Actually doing it? That's where it gets tricky.

But she's very tuned in and in some ways surprisingly easy to live with if that's all you want out of her. The difficult stuff is with actual training - which in my world is oriented towards competition level.

That's fair. I meant that it still manages to surprise me how much he picks up and how much he seems to understand on his own.

I remember one of the first times I noticed it -- he was pretty young and we were playing fetch with one of his squeaky toys and I was tiring of the game (and he was not!), so I said "you should give your toy to grandma." (The "hint" was really for my mom -- I wanted her to take a turn!) Anyway, he ran right over to my mom with the toy. I didn't even know he knew what a "grandma" was, let alone how to put together the words to figure out what I wanted.