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“If the 2-yr old eats his own poop.”

Anything that eats its own poop can’t be too smart. ;-)

But, relatively speaking, my Australian Shepherds are very smart, and very much like toddlers. I could tell many stories, but I’ll limit myself to just one story now. As I was relaxing, Buddy walked up and gave me “the stare” that he wanted to go outside. I said, “Go tell Junior”. Darned if Buddy didn’t trot off to my son’s room and go “woof!” to be let out! I had never spoken that sentence before, but Buddy understood anyway. Scary smart for an animal.

Australian Shepherds are very smart

Yes they are. We had one that was scary smart. One time we were at a lake she was watching us me skip stones in. She started acting as though he wanted to go in so we let him go in.
My wife and I kept skipping stones, and she started to swim to the part of the lake (s few feet out) where my wife had slipped one. Then she dove under and came up a few seconds later with a stone in her mouth.
She brought it to my wife. We were both amazed then I smiled at her (my wife and the dog) and I said it is probably not the right stone. I took it from my wife looked it over, and threw it back in. Smokey (the dog) swam back in dove under and brought a rock back. It looked like the one the one I had thrown.
Tried it again only marked it with my pocket knife. She dove under again, only this time brought one back up and it obviously was not the right on (wrong color) and dropped(spit) it out of her and mouth... dove back under and brought up the right one (with the mark on it)!
She did the same thing with every other one we tested her with.
Dove under to find the one we threw in, spit it out if she got the wrong one, and dove back under to find the right stone.
She did this time and again. Now always did it till she got the right stone,

Just amazing and so smart.

She also taught our pit-beagle. Did not concentrate on getting the pit-beagle to get the right one.. just to dive under and bring a rock back to us.
There were many more things she could do that showed how smart she was, so I agree Australian Shepherds are VERY smart... just amazing! And what a great dog she was till we we had to put here down a few years back.
She is missed a lot. But the pit beagle kept up the diving Smokey had taught him until he passed few years later.
Which shows not only did Smokey learn to dive under water, but taught another dog to do it too! Just amazing!