Are French Bulldogs Stubborn? Training a Strong-Willed Frenchie

The reputation for stubbornness is accurate, but slightly misdescribed. French Bulldogs are not hard to train because they lack intelligence; they are demanding training partners because they openly evaluate whether compliance is in their interest. A Labrador Retriever works enthusiastically for a dry biscuit; a French Bulldog will look at you, look at the biscuit, decide it is not worth the effort, and walk away. The solution is not to demand more from the dog but to raise the value of what you are offering.

Why the stubbornness reputation exists

French Bulldogs were developed as companion animals, not working dogs. The breeds that train most easily are typically those selected for responsiveness to human direction, herding breeds, gundogs, retrievers. These dogs have centuries of breeding that selected for dogs that worked for people because the work itself was rewarding.

French Bulldogs have no such heritage. They were bred to sit in laps and provide company. There was no selection pressure for responsive training compliance; there was selection pressure for a calm, pleasant companion. The result is a dog that is perfectly intelligent but has no built-in motivation to do what a human asks unless there is something specific in it for them.

This is not stubbornness in a negative sense. It is a rational calculation. Understanding it as such makes the training approach obvious: make the reward good enough that the calculation always comes out in your favour.

The adolescent regression

Many Frenchie owners train successfully during puppyhood, then experience a period between six and fourteen months where the dog appears to have forgotten everything it learned. Commands that worked reliably at four months are being ignored at eight months. This phase is real and has a neurological explanation.

During adolescence, the canine brain undergoes significant remodelling. The prefrontal areas associated with inhibitory control, the ability to suppress a competing impulse and follow a learned behaviour instead, are temporarily less efficient. The dog is not forgetting its training; it is experiencing reduced capacity to apply it when anything competing is present.

The appropriate response to the adolescent phase is to maintain training routines at a reduced difficulty level (familiar environments, familiar requests, high rewards), stay consistent rather than escalating demands, and understand that the phase ends. By twelve to eighteen months, most Frenchies settle into more reliable responses as the brain remodelling stabilises.

Why the reward level matters so much

The French Bulldog’s training calculation is straightforward: is the reward worth more than what I would otherwise be doing?

Dry biscuits vs competing smells in the park: The biscuit loses. The dog sniffs.

Piece of cooked chicken vs competing smells in the park: The chicken wins, most of the time.

Nothing vs a warm spot on the sofa: Nothing loses. The dog stays on the sofa.

This is not complicated. The practical implication is that French Bulldogs should be trained with the highest-value treats you can manage, in environments matched to the dog’s current skill level. Starting every new skill in the least distracting environment available, then progressively introducing distraction as the behaviour becomes reliable, is the method that produces a Frenchie that actually responds reliably outdoors.

The treats guide covers which treats motivate most Frenchies and how to manage the calorie impact of high-value training treats.

Session length and frequency

French Bulldogs have a shorter effective training attention span than many other breeds, and this shortens further when they are tired, too warm or not in the mood.

Optimal session length: Two to five minutes. This feels impossibly short to most owners, but the quality of a two-minute session with full engagement is significantly better than the quality of a twenty-minute session where the dog has mentally left after the first five.

Optimal frequency: Two to four sessions per day, spread through the day. Multiple short sessions are more effective than one long session because each session begins fresh, with full attention and motivation.

End on a success: Always end a session with a request the dog can reliably perform, and reward it generously. The last experience of a session is what the dog takes away from it; ending on a success maintains a positive association with training. If the session has been struggling, simplify the last request to something the dog knows well rather than persisting with the difficult one.

The distraction problem

A Frenchie that performs a sit, down and recall perfectly in the living room may appear to have forgotten everything at the park. This is not stubbornness; it is a failure of generalisation.

Dogs do not automatically transfer skills learned in one environment to different environments. Each new environment is effectively a new training context. A skill must be practised in multiple environments, living room, garden, quiet street, busy street, park, before it becomes genuinely reliable across contexts.

For each new environment, treat it as an early training session rather than a test of established knowledge: use higher-value rewards than you would at home, set lower difficulty (familiar requests rather than new ones), and build up gradually as the dog demonstrates reliability in that context.

Common owner mistakes that create apparent stubbornness

Repeating commands without consequence. Saying “sit, sit, sit, sit” while the dog ignores you teaches the dog that the first request is not the actual signal. The rule: ask once, clearly. If the dog does not comply within a few seconds, reset and try again rather than repeating.

Asking for behaviour in a new environment without having trained it there. A dog asked to recall across a field when recall has only been trained in the kitchen is being set up to fail. The failure looks like stubbornness but is a training design problem.

Training when the dog is not in the best state. After meals (reduced food motivation), in hot weather (already uncomfortable), when tired, when unwell. Frenchies perform best when they are alert and comfortable and have not recently eaten.

Using punishment for non-compliance. As noted above, aversive responses shut Frenchies down rather than producing compliance. They stop offering any behaviour rather than offering the right one.

Expecting rapid mastery. French Bulldogs need more repetitions than many breeds to achieve reliable behaviour. This is not a failing; it is the breed’s reality. One successful sit does not mean sit is trained. Reliable sit across many environments requires hundreds of successful repetitions.

What Frenchies train well for

The stubbornness narrative sometimes leads owners to low expectations about what a French Bulldog can learn. These dogs are actually capable of learning a wide range of behaviours, including complex ones, when the training is well-designed.

Frenchies tend to be particularly good at trick training (high rewards, short sessions, immediate feedback suits their learning style), rally obedience (lower physical demands than agility), nose work and scent games (strongly self-rewarding activities), and household manners (wait, off, leave it) when these are trained from puppyhood consistently.

The French Bulldog training guide covers the full framework of positive reinforcement training for the breed. The puppy training guide covers foundation skills and the approach to start with from the first weeks of ownership. For the specific technique of marker training, how a clicker creates the precise communication that reduces the ambiguity that causes Frenchies to disengage, the clicker training guide covers the method and its application to the breed’s specific training challenges.