Dogs are not as dumb as you think; when they want a person to do as they want it is hard to resist the proffered paw and soulful eyes.
Dogs and human beings have a long association largely as a result of the dogs unique capacity for communicating what they want in terms their owner will understand. Just think of the times that your dog brings you its ball with a look that you know means time for fetch? These are just a couple of examples of a dogs capacity for learning complex behaviors.
Although dogs process information differently to humans they are able to understand body posture and a significant amount of language. Dogs respond differently to color and are better than humans at seeing things in a low light they also have acute hearing and locate the source of sound accurately and quickly. In addition to these attributes dogs also have an acute sense of smell.
The differences between dogs and humans are evident at many levels of mental functioning for example, dogs have a very different understanding of cause and effect relationships compared to humans.
Conditioning where a response is associated with a particular stimulus is far more evident in dogs than in humans. Human beings are far more able to modify their own behavior and responses than dogs which have difficulty in overcoming conditioning. This difference is even more evident when it comes to grasping cause and effect relationships resulting from positive and negative reinforcement.
When I am going to play fetch with my Golden Retrievers I always exit by the rear door. Even though I let them out of the side door and dont follow them far more often, they still go to the back door and expect a game to follow.
My dogs have learned a variety of behaviors including sit, stay, down, roll over, retch etc on command. This is because each action was associated with a particular tone, word and hand gesture. In spite of this they will persist in behaviors such as eating grass which leads to problems such as an upset stomach. This is because they cannot connect effects with events when there has been an intervening period of time.
Clearly, whether your dog is a Daschund, Basset Hound, Shepherd or Retriever they can learn a variety of things, just dont expect too much of them. Dogs can be taught complex dance routines, or to pull a wheelchair and fetch a container of water. Just because they are trained to emulate their owners, dont expect their thinking processes to be the same no matter how many times you tell them not to eat grass they will continue to do so.
