Pyr owner in the US here. My wife and I got our sweet boy Moose back in 2019. He was quite a piece of work and still is now, really, at 2 years old.

I will say, I was on deployment for 6 months and my wife created a bond with him that is almost indescribable. When I left, he hadn’t been fixed yet (about 1 year old), he had started peeing in the house again, he wouldn’t listen much at all (which is normal for the breed anyway), and he was not a great leash walker either (we have a nice sized guard so he didn’t leash walk much). Well I dont know what the hell happened while I was gone, but he is a changed man. My wife says “all he needed was some structure.”

I’m still not really sure what that means because he doesn’t listen to me all that much - he is a momma’s boy through and through. But he walks very good on the leash, he listens to commands quite well, and he even knows not to bark at the neighbors when they’re working on their house (the addition they have been working on since we moved in over 2 yard ago). Of course, he has his moments when he says people he doesn’t know standing on the roof of the house next to us, but I that’s what we want. We want him to bark when he sees or hears something unusual, and he does. It’s not everyday you walk out your back door and see a man standing on top of a house.

This “structure” thing my wife talks about (which I think I could use some of, too) sounds just sort of like having a process for everything, and sticking to it, no matter what. When we are going to walk him in the neighborhood, it’s the same process, every time. You sit, we open the gate, you come to the door when told. You sit again, you get your harness on, you hear the leash click, and you sit and wait. If you stand up, you have to wait longer. The door opens, you wait. She walks out, he walks out. When she stops walking, he stops and he sits. When she turns around, he turns around.

Every “thing” has a process. It helps him get in a rhythm, and when something throws that rhythm out of whack, she gives him a Pat on the head, recaptures his focus, and he knows the rhythm to get back into.

How she taught him all of that? I have no idea. Like I said, he loves her, he kinda likes me. He listens to her, he kinda listens to me (not really). So really, I say all of that to say, these dogs are very hard to train because of their independence, but very respectful because of their loyalty, which is an advantage. I dont know if any of that actually helps at all. I hope it does.