My grandma had border collies all her life. She started going deaf as she got older, the dog she had at the time, Jason, basically taught himself to be her hearing dog, entirely unprompted.
We first noticed it when we went for a walk with her & him. We were on a country road, no pavements just a bit of a verge so walking in the road, a car was coming from behind and Jason heard it early, came and stood in front of grandma until she stopped then hopped onto the verge and looked significantly down the road behind her at which point she turned and saw the car and got out of the way. She said he'd started doing it a few months previously. After that we realised he'd started alerting her when we came to the house and apparently he'd come and stand in the doorway when the phone rang.
Dogs are a lot like people in that way, some are just born stupid and some are born geniuses. Even within the same breed there can be a lot of variation. Kind of the opposite story to yours, my dad had an Australian Shepard for awhile when I was younger and that thing was just not smart, which was kind of funny. He found it wandering the streets and it was already 4 or 5 years old. We put up posters and no one claimed it. So we don't know what it's history was - if it was just born that way or if it had a head injury, malnutrition or what, but I'm telling you that thing was dumb even by dumb dog standards.
It was one of the most lovable dogs I've ever been around though, it just wanted to cuddle and have head pats all day.
My friend grew up farming and said he always had border collies. This particular one spent her time learning how everything worked, as in, they didn't train her at all, she just learned her own way.
He said it was great, except for when she'd sent cattle the wrong way on certain days (they needed to go left and she'd send them right or something, I can't remember exactly).
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u/Imanidiotththe1st 2d ago
Border colliers are very intelligent dogs, this one looked like it was doing math in its head before the the start of the competition.