I'm wondering if others have similar experiences? We adopted our two dogs at the same time from a shelter last June. We did not have any history about them: the then 4 month old was left abandoned at an apartment when the owners moved away, the 10 year old fox terrier was picked up as a stray and no one had come to claim him after a month in the shelter.

Today I realized my dogs might well be smarter than me! Point 1: I'm modifying the hand signal for Down. When I gave the Down cue to Skipper (10 year old fox terrier) he spun in a circle for me (1x round, stop, looking straight at me). When I tried a slightly different gesture, he rolled over for me (again, 1x, up on his feet, looking at me for the next instruction). This tells me I have no idea what commands or cues he has under his pointy cranium. I could see, all too clearly, that I have been under-exercising his mental abilities (we thought maybe he was going deaf and blind!).

Point 2: As we were rounding the corner for the home stretch, Jethro picked up a plastic coffee container, one of those big ones. It had been raining, and a couple of inches of water had accumulated in the bottom of the container. Jethro carried it very carefully, making sure no water spilled out! It was amazing. He did this for more than a block, before he carefully put it down, no spills. Then, he was rooting around and accidentally knocked it over, spilling the water out. He righted the container, looking in it expectantly to see if the water was still there. When he realized it was empty, he lost interest in it and moved onto the next Sniff. I kept asking myself, "What does he think he is doing?" I mean, what intention is motivating this very concentrated effort (to carry the container of water)? At this point I do not have the skills or knowledge to even conceive of teaching him such a trick.

I got a call a while ago to teach a shepherd mix to walk nicely on a lead. Got there and it was a Mal pulling like a train.
Started doing some work with the dog and it seemed like he'd had some training. I said Fuss and he came straight to heel, looking up at me and doing some of the best heelwork that I have ever seen.

With a rescue dog you may get one who has been training. Treat it as a fun way to see what he knows.

Lucky you!!!! I got Koenig expecting some basic OB. A sit? Hopefully a down, and a stay.
Nope, nada, nothing. It was refreshing in some ways, ot have a clean slate to work with, without the attention span of a 8 wk old pup. His attention span was more along the lines of a 12 week old pup. (at one year)