When we were teaching him basic obedience commands we wrote them on recipe cards, one word per card, and he learned to recognize them through simple shape recognition. He can recognize the commands regardless of the order in which the cards are shown. I read about this in Scientific American magazine several years ago, and my son taught our previous golden, Hogan, to 'read' them for his fifth grade science fair. After Hogan died from the treatments for a nerve sheath tumor and we got our new pup, we tried again with him and he learned to recognize the written commands.
We have been very happy with Watson. He has a very low co-efficient of inbreeding, which was important to us when we researched breeders. He is a high energy dog, which I would expect from his bloodlines, but he has a very sweet temperament and is eager to please. I had major surgery last week and since I came home to recover he has been sweeter and gentler than I have ever known him to be. He is still patiently trying to win over our cat, even offering him his own toys.