Clearly, an obedience judge seeing the two dogs in the ring would conclude that Dream was by far the easier dog to train. Yet such was not the case. Connie is an extremely quick study who retains what she learns. Dream, according to her handler, always has difficulty learning and retaining new behaviors. Let's indulge in speculation and generalization for a moment, dangerous though it might be.
Border collies are an entirely different story.
Dream is not such a successful obedience dog because of her learning ability. She has excelled because, quite simply, she loves to perform in the ring in front of a crowd of spectators. My basset loves to learn new things and loves to practice but gets a bit overwhelmed in stressful situations, freezing and refusing to work at all. Again, her learning pattern would be impossible to predict in an assessment of her ring performance. In both cases, an obedience judge, based on what she sees at a trial, would be unable to make any meaningful statement about these dogs' trainability.