The rabbit lobby does not take kindly to that comment :D.
Slight hijack: My two-watt-brained lagomorph reverse-engineered the following: my wife loves a bowl of ice cream before bed-time. She likes banana slices on said IC. Mr. Ears insanely loves banana. So even though he cannot see the freezer, when the freezer door closes any time after 8 PM, he goes bonkers. Freezer door=IC=banana=happy rabbit! Go figger–we now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast.
One thing that is factual is that in general (there are always exceptions) dogs that were bred to be working dogs tend to be near the top of the intelligence heap, and those that were traditionally valued for whatever innate characteristics they already had tend to be the dumb ones, on average. That’s why you’ll typically find working dogs like herding dogs near the top of the list, and hounds (valued for the scenting abilities) nearer the bottom.
I suppose the corollary to this is that since it’s the bigger dogs that were frequently the working breeds, there tends to be somewhat of a size correlation with intelligence in that respect.
Also, I just want to add that that list, like many such lists, fails to include the magnificent Bernese Mountain Dog as one of the most intelligent breeds, I think only because it’s a relatively rare breed. My last dog was a Bernese and was the greatest non-human love of my life. A very, very loving and loyal dog (he wouldn’t let anybody but me or my son walk him) and very intelligent, but unfortunately for us humans, his intelligence overshadowed his obedience. When he was still relatively young I took him out into the yard to teach him to play fetch. I threw a tennis ball, and I can still see the scene now: I watched the ball bounce off into the distance, and he sat beside me and watched the ball bounce off into the distance. Then I turned and looked at him and he looked at me, and I could almost hear him say, “is that all it does? Well if it amuses you, knock yourself out – I think I’ll go inside and have a snack now.”
But man, he was smart. A first-time visitor to our house had a hard time because he was jumping all over this new person and wanted to play, so he pretended to join him, lured him outside, and then sneaked back in and shut the patio door. This person came back again 4 or 5 weeks later and once again the dog was all over him. So he took a dog toy and went outside on the deck and pretended he wanted to play. The dog just stood on the inside watching, and once again you could almost hear him speak: “I’ve seen this movie before”, he was saying to himself. 
double post
I find BMDs all over the internet lately in lists like “the top 7 whatever dogs” or “5 dogs that will get you laid.” IIRC they are ranked in the positive direction of most of the categories I’ve seen them in.
In Coren’s Working Intelligence list, they are #22 (Excellent working dogs), tied with Belgian Malinois.
BTW they are actually 4 breeds, of the format “* Mountain Dog” or “* Sennenhund,” where * is, from largest to smallest:
Greater Swiss
Bernese
Appenzeller
Entlebucher
The other three aren’t listed, probably due to greater rarity, but I doubt intelligence correlates with size.
If you are talking irish setter they may not score real high because of the excessive inbreeding they went through durring their popular show phase. However the red setter which is basicaly an Irish setter that has been judiciously outcrossed in an attempt to restore the breed as a sporting dog is very intelligent. Most all your sporting dogs are intelligent but not neccessarily the best in obedience classes.
Eh, I hear aethists could do with some organisation.
