I have discovered that my labrador would kill himself trying to figure out how to solve differential equations if he knew he could get a bite of ginger bread for it :-).
That said, having raised a puppy that was destined for guide dog training, the trick is early on getting the dog to understand that you are asking it to do stuff. That is a big part of puppy training, and once trained, the dog will look for you to ask it to do new things, and knows that if it figures them out quickly you will reward it. It has been one of the more amazing experiences in my life.
Well besides the guide dog's puppy raising guidelines (which are fairly long and detailed) we took him to an agility school after he was career changed[1] which used a device that make a 'click' sound (clicker) which was used to tell the dog "yes that exact thing" and treats. Apparently that is pretty common (but I was not aware at the time). But between the two experiences I don't think there is anything I couldn't train him to do, if I can communicate exactly what it is.
[1] Seriously, that is what the Guide dog folks call it when a dog washes out of the program, in our case it was for a skin allergy which would have been undetectable for a blind person to notice, not for his lack of trainability.
In addition, check out Sophia Yin's website[1]. It's chock-full of free videos and articles. She also wrote an excellent book[2], which I highly recommend to all dog owners. I train dogs as a hobby (agility with my own dog, plus I do volunteer work for puppy and obedience classes). As a warning, dog training is highly addictive for both you and the dog!
That said, having raised a puppy that was destined for guide dog training, the trick is early on getting the dog to understand that you are asking it to do stuff. That is a big part of puppy training, and once trained, the dog will look for you to ask it to do new things, and knows that if it figures them out quickly you will reward it. It has been one of the more amazing experiences in my life.