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“Why are certain dogs harder to train than other dogs?”Warning This is a very long post. Get some coffee you may need it.Look up the term “biddable[1] “ and you’ll gain some insight.I’ll contrast three dogs that I’ve had over the years.Dingo — Male Australian Cattle DogDingo came to me from a family that inadvertently taught him that if he growled at them or otherwise displayed aggressively he’d get his way. Bad thing to teach a dog that was very intelligent. To say Dingo was intelligent only scratches the surface.I could teach him “stupid pet tricks” very easily. I could cue him to dance, walk on his hind feet, high five, low five, high ten and tricks I’ve long forgotten. I taught him formal obedience and agility. Neither one he did well however in a competition setting. That was due to a personality flaw.I think if he’d been diagnosed by a psychologist they would have diagnosed is as paranoid schizophrenic. He’d fly into these fits of rage with little to no provocation. I worked with this dog for three years trying to rehabilitate him and we’d make progress and something would happen and then he’d revert back and be worse off than we were before.Yet he was a very smart dog. Very intelligent and if he was in his right mind was very biddable. One of the first things I figured out about him was he was looking for someone in his life to make decisions for him. In other words be a leader and mostly that worked out well for him.Other dogs understood there was something wrong with that dog. I noticed if we went to training classes the rest of the dogs in the class wanted no part of him. I think partly because Dingo would survey the other dogs and decide “you! I’m gonna kick your ass!” with one of them and give his intended victim the “death stare” and I’d end up spending most of the training session breaking that stare.If we were on the floor working I had Dingo’s undivided attention and the threat Dingo was issuing never came to be. Thank GOD! Dingo weighed fifty pounds and was strong as hell. He’d have hurt somebody without me being in control of him.After working with Dingo’s quirks for three years a fateful day arrived. My wife, son, daughter and I took our collection of dogs both permanent and foster out for a massive walk through the neighborhood. One of our neighbors had a dog tied out on their side lawn and Dingo spotted the dog and flew into one of his rages. He barked, howled and growled at the unfortunate dog who was now straining the stake he was tied as far from Dingo as the dog could get trying to get back into his townhouse home.Normally if I kneeled down next to him and spoke quietly to him I could calm him down. Something was different this time. As I kneeled down Dingo went at my face with teeth bared and jaws snapping. My martial arts instincts and blocking saved me from injury. I decided that Dingo’s walk was over and it was time to take him home. In the short (less than 300 feet) trip back to the house Dingo went up the leash at me trying to injure me. He never calmed down the whole way back to the house. I took him off leash when I got in the door not quite knowing what to expect but my thought was maybe the leash was the problem.After snapping at me a few more times he ran for his crate in my bedroom and slammed the door behind himself. I obliged him and latched the crate and contemplated what just happened and what the upshot of it all would be.I realized I had a ticking time bomb on my hands. Sure, I could in those days take care of myself but what about my then very young son? My wife? My daughter or worse yet a neighborhood child? This dog was unpredictable and could seriously maul someone. Let’s not forget an Australian Cattle Dog was bred to deal with 1000–2000 pound steers and boss them around. Not a wimpy dog.The words of a behaviorist that I worked with when I first got Dingo came back to me at that point in which she made two points:you can’t save them allyou may have to make a tough decision about this dog and I hope you have the wherewithal to make the correct one.Next business day I took Dingo to the vet and helped him to the Rainbow Bridge.[2] I really didn’t want to do it but I didn’t want to be responsible for this monster I had to hurt someone.Main reasons I tell that story is as follows:While Dingo was very intelligent and biddable not all issues are something you can train out of a dog. The thinking in those days when I had Dingo was you could train anything out of a dog. Dingo had some sort of underlining psychology that undermined his quality of life and affected his social interactions with both people and dogs. Being paranoid and psychotic is no way for a dog to live.Dingo’s prospects of being a proper “canine citizen” where in doubt. He’d just be a smart menace.Bosun — AKA Brierhaven’s Boatswain’s Mate — Male Australian Cattle DogI’ve had Bosun since he was 8 weeks old and he is now 10 years old. Bosun is the easiest dog to train I’ve ever had. He’s not long on tricks (that wasn’t my focus with him) but he performs in agility, obedience, rally, herding and has acted as my wife’s assistance dog.What makes him so different than Dingo? First off his socialization started as soon as I picked him up at the breeder’s home (farm). Secondly he unlike Dingo only had one home so his world has been more consistent. Dingo changed hands four times by the time he was nine months old. Bosun doesn’t have any of Dingo’s hangups either.With a clear mind and a lot of intelligence Bosun has excelled at everything I or my wife have attempted to do with him.Cosette to the left, Bosun to the rightCosette — Female Australian Cattle DogCosette was a shelter dog. I was helping Australian Shepherd Rescue by going to the Associated Humane Society in Newark to evaluate what was supposed to be an Australian Shepherd and the dog they showed me turned out to be some sort of retriever cross. Not even close and definitely no cigar.Across the run from that unfortunate soul was a run with three dogs in it. Two little dogs that I cannot remember what they were except they were small and kept running over this absolutely depressed and despondent dog. I looked closer and she to my surprise was an Australian Cattle Dog. I looked at the cards on the door of the urn and by process of elimination realized they had her listed as a “mixed breed.” Somebody I guess has no clue as to what a Cattle Dog is. Her gender was listed as female but there was a question mark next to her age.Looking again I realized this poor thing was laying in a huge puddle of urine and was the very picture of a dog that had given up. This is not quite what I expect from a Cattle Dog and that should have been a harbinger of what her personality would be like going forward.My wife was becoming interested in what I was doing at this point and I said to her “we need to contact Cattle Dog rescue and find someone to foster this girl or we are going to lose her.” My wife replied “Oh.. we can foster her.” So I called the kennel worker over to pull her (as a ‘registered’ rescue I had reduced cost privileges to pull dogs) and I took her to a quiet ‘meet the dog room’ to evaluate her better. By the time we got her to the meeting room my wife was whispering to me “you know… this could be your next agility dog.”Well at that point the die was cast and this lost waif was about to become my dog. We named her Cosette on the way home for one of the characters in the play Les Miz. When I got her home I right away gave her a bath which caused her to think “that’s it! They’re going to drown me! That’s how it is all going to end!”After I washed all the yellow stains out of her fur and dried her off I sat “Indian Style” on the front lawn with her. In very short order after sniffing my face she curled up in my lap, let out a heavy sigh and went to sleep. That was the start of a bond between us.She took to training picking up skills very quickly. She was intelligent and mostly biddable but there was something about her that I was picking up on that I wasn’t sure about for a while.On a visit to Maryland for a Bull Run Australian Cattle Dog meeting one side of her showed up very quickly. One of the members knowing what I was going through with Dingo brought me a puppy and dropped it in my lap. Cosette grabbed the puppy gently by the scruff, took it out of my lap and placed it on the ground. She then jumped into my lap and death stared at the the puppy in a way that said unmistakably “this is my person! bugger off!”The breeder of the puppet laughed and said “well then… that’s not going to work out. She’s claimed you.” According to the brain trust of ACD knowledge I had a sixteen week old youngster.I noticed more things about her. During a training session I threw a frisbee for her and an intense pain poked at me in my shoulder. I’m talking on a scale of 1 to 10 at least a 12.5. Just as I felt the pain I noticed Cosette’s ears flatten and she seemed to deflate and refused to work the rest of the evening. She could sense pain in me.As her training progressed we started entering trials. If I was having knee trouble she wouldn’t perform as well as days when I was pain free. She never was a burn up the course agility dog preferring to take her time and be accurate. If she missed a cue or I was late in a cue she would “take the rap” and she’d get really depressed about it. I had to be very careful how I handled her on course.A friend of mine that I consider to be one of the top agility trainers in New Jersey watched us working together one day and said to me “you know, the only reason she does this is she loves you not that she enjoys the sport.” It took me about four years before I took what she said to heart. The last time I took her in the ring I could hear her stomping her feet and saw she was avoiding looking at me. My friend’s words came back to me and that was the last trial I entered with Cosette.What did Cosette like to do? Anything involving using her nose for one. I had a tracking monster on my hands and while we didn’t compete in tracking (I have a feeling that would have ruined it for her) she did get to track a pygmy pot-bellied pig that escaped from a neighbor. She entirely enjoyed that.She also loved to herd and the thing she loved to herd the most was GEESE! She would start quivering with anticipation if she saw geese. It was the happiest I ever saw her.I say all this to make the following points:training a dog to do something they like and/or were meant to do makes all the difference in the world. In the case of training Cosette in herding I was the one being taught something not her. She already knew how to herd I needed to learn how to control things.Competition is not always a good thing to do with a dog. Cosette would rather do agility for me in our back yard or our club’s training field. She couldn’t stand the pressure of the crowds of onlookers the other dogs that were there. She needed it to be just her and I.Jack — AKA Bright Star Jack Tar the Sailor — also AKA Jack Tarrius Maximus Brateus Magnus — Male English Shepherd Born April 29th 2016.Jack is part of a litter of puppies born to our Luna (Windy Hill’s Luna) that I delivered on a whelping pad laid out on our bed. On day #2 of his life I had decided that he was mine.Jack Tar at about 2 months old — not happy about being heldJack as much as he loves me and as much intelligence he possesses has been the toughest dog I’ve ever owned to be trained. He is not very biddable and mostly thinks he has all the answers.That said I have managed to get him somewhat trained. He is a natural at rat hunting and will make one hell of an agility dog if we can convince him to play by the rules. For instance “NO! You may not drag the teeter home with you!”Jack is also very protective of me now that I’ve developed mobility issues. He thinks I am to be protected from EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. Usually one of the first things I teach my young dogs is the roles such that I am their protector not the other way around.English Shepherds are not only herding dogs but guardian dogs as well.The nature of a dog’s instincts and breeding affect how well you can train behaviors.A stubborn dog is very hard to trainThere is a relationship (I believe) where higher intelligence means you have to outthink the dog to teach them anything.Hope this all is helpful.Footnotes[1] Definition of BIDDABLE[2] The Rainbow Bridge Poem