re: Are Yorkies really that stupid?

They're actually in the top tier of dog intelligence, albeit on the low end of that "top." 76% of dogs are dumber than Yorkies, yes, even your incredibly intelligent Beagle who's the 8th dumbest dog in the world, or your big old Mastiff who's reliably ranked 1st or 2nd on "dumbest" dogs.

I always question how they rank these things. Highly trainable - to me - in the human world means "dumber than a rock." If you think of people who conform or just go along with everything, they rarely come across as intelligent. But they're happier. I think it's the same with dogs. Not easy to train doesn't mean the dog is stupid. It means the human is stupid and doesn't understand the breed.

I trained my dumb beagle dog perfectly. I can't get my Yorkie to reliably do anything, but it's not because she's dumb, it's because she's stubborn. When she wants to - or thinks she'll get a treat - she'd do cartwheels if I asked. So I'm not sure how reliable the dog IQ tests are anyway, but that's what they say. Yorkies are actually brighter than 104 other dog breed and only dumber than about 33 of them.

I think the problem is always the owner. If you can't train your dog, you're the problem, not them. If you know the breed, know their limitations, know their strengths and their personality, you can train almost any dog. But humans don't have time for that most of the time.

Anyway, Yorkies aren't dumb by a long shot. But if you get the wrong owner - AKA tough guy who's ashamed to have a little dog - stupid insecurities prevent a bond from forming, and eventually that little dog doesn't give a flying dang what you think. So bad owner = bad dog.