I agree wholeheartedly with you, John, adding only that the desire to please you has to be paramount in a dog that you are training. Oh, and if the dog you are training has an inbred talent it's the easiest thing in the world to develop that skill.

I've had a good many dogs and some of them were astonishingly perceptive and smart. Others were more 'normal', I suppose, although it is difficult to score normal.

I have sometimes owned as many seven dogs at a time and have trained many dogs for other people. Dogs are a constant source of stories and just plain good fun and there haven't met many that I haven't liked.

Right now, I have a Cairn Terrier, one of the really smart dogs I mention. (Probably the smartest dog I ever have had was a miniature poodle; on the other hand I had her longer than any other dog.)

The one constant in 'making' smart dogs, I think, is talking to them. Meggie, my Cairn, zeroes in on my talking, listening to see if I am going to talk to her rather than to the cat or to other people.