I remember the story about a military trainer that set up a class of Shepherds to try and reach their handlers behind a high brick wall. The GSD's all tried without fail to go over the wall, and failing, would sit there and whine and bark.
The airedale tried once to go over the wall, stopped and thought, and then went around the wall to reach the handler.
Even after the GSD's were showed how to go around the wall, they still insisted on trying to go over when left to their own devices.
:-)
They were probably all too conditioned, having been trained specifically, to go over walls! They wanted to do it the way they've always been told to do it! Obey!
My Shana outsmarted all my aunt's Border Collies IN THEIR OWN HOUSE which she hardly knew.
Their house had an old door w/windows you could close between rooms, basically on 1 side of the house down the centerline. The house layout was like a perfect rectangle - you could walk around the whole perimeter of the house unless you closed that 1 door to block the route. My cousin started thrown balls thru the door to the other side of the house. After a while he decided to tease them and close the door when they ran to get it. All the BCs stopped at the door, looked forelorn, and sat down looking thru the window at us on the other side. My GS came back, saw the door was closed and us thru the window, then promptly ran to the other side of the house to get around the back way to us! :D
(God I loved that dog.)
I had a different experience.
When my shepherd was a puppy, I barricaded the area I wanted him to stay in with a bookcase, but every time I came home he had gotten out. I finally caught him hurling himself at it from across the space till it moved enough so he could squeeze through.