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The reality is that they think too independently.
[which makes for problems when “blindly following orders”]

My Wonder Dobe and I were at the final meet of our advanced obedience class and it was test day.

On the long down, he was a hundred feet away, lying down, theoretically awaiting my recall command, 10 minutes later.

Instead, he began to sloooooowly commando crawl back to me *but* was keeping himself totally flat to the ground, and technically still in the “down position”.

The onlookers were laughing at his brilliant solution to laying his pristine self on the dirty wet blacktop unnecessarily.

Just as the 10 minutes were up, he plopped his grinning face on top of my sneaker, nubby tail wagging furiously.

He was *so* pleased with himself.
[I wanted to die]...LOL

In everybody’s memory, it was the first time they’d ever seen the strict, humorless, German born trainer laugh.

Because he thought the dog was brilliant, having violated the letter of the law but ~not~ the spirit [he *was* “down” the whole time] he passed us in spite of Laughing Boy’s antics.

The breed is the easiest in the world to obedience train but the hardest to finish to an obedience title.

They are terrible for “anticipating commands”.

When Odin was a pup, I literally taught him to sit/down/give paw/give other paw in <15 minutes.

Now he does all of those things like he’s being judged for speed...and worse than that, I can’t even get the first sound of a command out of my mouth before he’s ~already~ doing it.

Case in point, I’ll manage to say the sound “Gih” and suddenly, a huge paw is slamming into my hand.

Yeah, that’s “cool” but it takes points off an obedience trial score.

Your dog is supposed to instantly obey your verbal/hand command...*not* psychically divine your every intention and beat you to the punch....;D