Originally posted by Kfamr
I think anyone would say that their breed of dog is the "smartest" - when I comes down to it, personally I think it depends on training. You can teach a kid to add and subtract, and you can teach them to multiply and divide as well... You can train a dog to sit and stay, and you can teach them to pick a specific toy out of the bunch, ect. I've seen these tricks done from a small Schnauzer all the way to my Mutts.

ALL dogs are smart if they're given the chance to be.
This is not quite true. It may not be breed specific, but some dogs just ARE smarter than others. Gracie, our beloved mostly Great Dane, was a sweetheart. She was funny, adorable, clumsy, and just not terribly bright. She never understood fetch, never even understood that if she opened her mouth, she could *catch* food thrown toward her. It would just bounce off her nose, then she eat it off the floor - if she noticed. She was housebroken of course, and walked nicely on a leash, and knew "sit." That was it. Even when she was an old girl (she lived to 14 1/2) when I would go to visit my parents, she'd get so excited to see me that she'd wag the whole dog, and half the time hit herself in the nose with her own tail, then look around to see who hit her! Poor girl, she just didn't understand. Silly, sweet, and much loved. Intelligent? Um, no.

Great Danes often rate low on the intelligence scale when scientists do those tests, funny enough.