Two dogs can go through the same obedience program, receive the same commands, and arrive at very different places in the same amount of time. This is not a problem with the program. It is the reality of working across different breeds.
Nolan Empringham of Bowmanville, Ontario trains various breeds in basic and advanced obedience programs. The approach to commands stays consistent. What changes is how he reads the individual dog, how sessions are paced, and where most of the attention needs to go.
The Same Commands, Different Responses
Sit, stay, come, down, heel. Every dog in an obedience program works toward the same core commands. The commands themselves do not change based on breed. The path to getting there reliably does.
Some breeds pick up commands quickly but want to negotiate every step. Others are slower to learn but hold commands solidly once they are in place. High-drive dogs need energy directed somewhere before they can focus. Lower-energy dogs may need more structured motivation to engage with training at all. None of this makes one breed better or worse to train. It means each dog requires a different read on what it needs to make real progress.
High Drive vs. Low Drive
High-drive breeds are not difficult dogs. They are energetic animals with a strong motivation to work, and that can be an advantage in training if the energy is directed correctly. Empringham has trained breeds across the drive spectrum. What he has found is that high-drive dogs often progress faster in advanced programs once the basic foundation is in place, because the same drive that made them hard to manage early becomes fuel for more complex work.
Lower-drive dogs need a different kind of engagement. The training has to be worth their attention, which means understanding what motivates the individual dog and building the program around that.
What Stays Constant Across Breeds
The principles of how dogs learn do not change by breed. Timing matters. Consistency matters. The owner’s involvement between sessions matters. These variables determine the outcome regardless of what breed is being trained.
Empringham’s programs follow a structured format for every dog. Adjustments happen in how sessions are paced, how motivation is built, and how the dog’s specific responses are read and addressed. The framework stays the same. Breed can affect how fast a dog progresses. It cannot override the difference between an owner who reinforces training at home and one who does not. That variable matters more than breed.
Reading the Individual Dog
Breed gives you a starting context. It is not a prediction of outcome. Empringham approaches each dog as an individual, using breed background as useful information rather than a fixed set of expectations.
The dog described as stubborn or impossible to train is usually a dog that has not been worked with in a way that made sense to it. A structured program finds that approach. That is a large part of what the work involves. Nolan Empringham of Bowmanville, Ontario works with various breeds in his obedience programs. The work starts in the same place every time: observing how the individual dog responds, what motivates it, and where the gaps are between what it currently does and what the owner needs.