Nice introductions!
I'm also working on training Duffy. He is doing very well with sit, lie down and his stay is awesome. I taught him to sit and stay when I put down his food bowl. He will wait till I give him the word "ok" and then he will run to eat. He is also a chow hound and that worries me so I'll be getting that bowl with the built in barriers!
This morning I made a coin can - an empty pop can with coins inside to use as a distraction sound when he is doing something wrong. For his first few weeks he was pretty good with letting go of my hand, clothing, socks or whatever he had his mouth on, but in the last few days he has been brutal. Just not letting go - ouch!!!
So I made the can and it is working well (so far). He immediately stops what he's doing when I shake it. However, my concern is that it freaks out my other (well behaved I might add) dog, a 3year old toy mutt. I feel bad about that since Teddy is doing NOTHING wrong, but gets scared when he hears the loud noise (sigh).
Duffy likes to take walks, we're working on heel and he is about 35% good. So not too great, but at least some of the time he walks nicely. He does get that he is to sit down when we stop walking and he's pretty reliable with that one.
As far as housebreaking....well, most of the time he's good. He doesn't let us know when he wants to go out, so if I'm not totally vigilant about getting him outside, he will leave a surprise. Once he gets outside, though, he knows his command to pee and does it right away. We're working on the bell ringing.
He doesn't love his crate, but he will stay in there all night without whining. At 5 AM when my husband gets up for work, he lets Duffy out to do his business and then puts him back in the crate till 7:30 when I get up. Thankfully, from day one, he has never howled or cried in the crate. That was a pleasant surprise!
He is going to be a big guy, his dad was an 80-pounder.
Oh, and he knows 'give paw', too!
I don't have a very recent, pic, but this youtube video was taken 3 days ago: