A little updated info for any who were curious:  Darla has been with us for one month now, and I spent some frustrating time the first couple of weeks trying to teach her to stop playbiting and teething on my hands.  I was trying to apply some of the stuff I've seen on Dog Whisperer but was getting pretty much nowhere - actually she was biting harder and harder as this went on.  Because she's such a playful and energetic little booger, she interpreted the various Dog Whisperer techniques (scruff grab, "alpha roll", "Be The Alpha") as another form of play, and they just were not working worth a crap.  She'd dodge and flinch when I went to correct her, but she was still biting just as much when she had the chance, and usually in a vindictive "I got you back!" kind of way that I was really getting worried about.  I got her housebroken in this period without needing to correct her at all, mainly because I've spent a lot of time on her with the leash and making sure she was comfortable with the doggy door. 

After catching an episode of It's Me or the Dog I did a lot of reading (particularly this thread about small dogs at SomethingAwful forums) and have concluded that the whole "be the alpha" method of training is terrible.  It may work for some dogs, and in fact it was how I raised many Alaskan Malamutes in my younger days, but it works very poorly on excitable, energetic dogs.  I started trying to use a much less stressful "time out" method, where I just stop playing with her if she insists on trying to bite.  This works much much better.  Over the past ten days or so she's been playbiting less and less, and with much less pressure, and the worrisome flinch/dodge reflex that was appearing is nearly gone.

I did some more reading and research, and for other purposes I am solidly converted to clicker training.  Yesterday morning I went and bought a clicker ($1.75 from PetSmart).  It works so much better than the "Be The Alpha" it's like black magic.  In one day I've taught her a few tricks, the most impressive to me being "Speak" where she will bark exactly one time.  Needed to teach her to bark on demand so I can teach her to "shut the hell up" on command, which is another high priority problem.  I've never been able to teach a dog to do any kind of complex trick in the past and this is pretty neat.  Now I wish I had never watched an episode of Dog Whisperer.

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