I was chatting with a lady on the weim forum chatroom & I asked this
question & thought it might be an interesting one to get a wider variety of
opinions on.

My last dog, Stone, was pretty much 'born trained' - she was compliant and
willing to please and I never really put any work in to her training at all.
We had a few games but it wasn't till near the end of her life that I
realised that she really wasn't very 'trained' at all. Her understanding of
word commands was quite confused (though i did tend to use hand signals
which she guessed on very quickly) but she figured that if I asked her to
sit, she could sit or lie and on lead she wouldn't get very far if she
pulled, but anyway, being a shepherd and a clingy one at that, she'd rather
walk closely beside us.

She was always 'good' - but not necessarily trained.

My weimaraner puppy is *much* harder work. The only one she's generally
willing to please is herself and so clicker training has worked very well
with her. At 7.5 months she knows far more words and hand signals than Stone
ever did and will differentiate between a sit & a lie down - we've practiced
this well & one finger movement can have her doing press ups!

But she is hard work - she knows the commands and she will chose to disobey.
(Occasionally she will get confused and offer an alternative behaviour -
that's different) When she is 'choosing to disobey she'll literally lay down
on her front legs & put her butt in the air - which I take as a doggie
translation of 'up yours!'

So what constitutes the trained dog - the one that knows most commands,
whether or not they chose to obey, or the dog that is compliant and willing,
whether or not they actually know what they are being asked to do?

Diana