Here's the thing,
Taking their cues from Romero, most mythos-creators in the Zombie Genre leave a lot of the nuts and bolts of their zombie phenomena unexplained in a definitive sense, choosing instead to go with the more organic-feeling passing around of possibilities/speculation by the Survivors. That said, whether we see it or not...there IS an objective nuts-and-bolts reasoning that I'd wager most creators of zombie material have in mind.
Yes, jaw removal and double amputation INSTANTLY rendering Walkers completely docile doesn't make much sense to me. The only reasoning for it that's supported by a (reasonably) sound theory based on Dr. Jenner's briefing on the Walker phenomena is that immediately after the Walker has its jaw/arms removed its very limited neurological activity is essentially "shocked"....and since Walkers only have two modes, Hunting and Standby...what we're initially seeing isn't a Walker that's suddenly become docile per se but rather one that goes inactive as instinct butts up against the impossibility of responding to said instinct.
I mean we know Walkers have at least a VERY basic "body awareness"....what I mean is that a Walker that's missing its right arm will turn towards a nearby human in an attempt to grasp them with its left hand. Ie: We don't see evidence of "Phantom Limb" phenomena amongst mutilated Walkers. Since on this most basic level the Walkers "understand" that if they don't have a right arm, they can't use their right arm to grasp and hold prey to feed on. The next increment of mutilation would be an armless (or possessing arms too damaged/decomposed to function) Walker still capable of biting. Such a Walker is all about lunging forward, jaws leading. (The closest example of this I could find was during Rick's dash from the tank after speaking to Glenn on the radio. One of the Walkers was a shorter female, sandwiched between two larger Walkers all approaching from Rick's left side, but forced into cramped confines as they negotiate their way between two derelict cars. Though completely out of range, this Walker still thrust its head forward and snapped at Rick as he raced by.)
Finally, we come to the all-important lower jaw. If a Walker's instinctive "body awareness" functions as we've seen examples of, then the loss of the jaw would...on some very basic level, register for the Walker. Their indifference to non-terminating wounds doesn't contradict this theory because, for example, a bullet striking a Walker in the chest in no way affects its ability to pursue the instinctive feeding drive.
So, if the loss of its capacity to bite registers....interacting in some way with the feeding drive, it's not completely inexplicable that a Walker would default to "Standby Mode" since its instinct has no physical vehicle to operate through.
All of this is complete supposition, of a fictional construct no less....but I don't think it's an unreasonable explanation for the docile mutilated Walkers.
That leaves only the camouflage aspect of the Docile Walkers...which, as many have already opined is probably nothing more than the daisy-chain effect of Walkers taking their cues from the most active Walker they can see. How does a herd end up heading north down the middle of a highway? One Walker on the side of the road saw a northbound car zip by a couple days earlier, so thus stimulated it starts plodding relentlessly after said car. As it passes Walkers in Standby Mode, they are in turn stimulated by the Walker which is pursuing the car in its dim hopeless fashion, and join the northward slog.
Now just invert the phenomena. A herd drifts into an area following the path of least resistance (like a road)...and comes to a place where several Walkers are in Standby Mode, standing around listlessly. In the absence of stimuli from the survivors concealed in the nearby house, there's nothing to stimulate the herd into moving towards the house. They can't think, but if they could the reasoning would be "If there was anything to eat in that house, those other Walkers would be clawing at the windows and doors to get in." So the herd either drifts right on by without a second glance, or it stops next to the mutilated Walkers and THOSE Walkers go into Standby Mode.
I can get this far with theory-crafting, but the wheels come off at the point where the presence of mutilated docile Walkers prevents "normal" Walkers from recognizing the human in their midst as food. From a distance, if the human was moving slowly with their tethered docile Walkers I could believe any Walkers seeing them just see another small group of non-food plodding onward. The story has Michonne take things beyond the realm of the believable by walking along in the midst of the herd. There's no comprehensible reason I can find that whatever mechanism makes Walkers attack live prey but not attack each other would stop functioning close-up like that.
So to summarize: I can buy Walkers becoming docile after precision mutilation. I can buy said Walkers acting as passive camouflage, for a house survivors are in.....and I can even buy a slow-moving human "blending in" with their docile Walkers from the PoV of any other Walkers at some distance. What I CAN'T buy, and have to just suspend my disbelief for is the close-up camouflaging. It doesn't make sense to me why a Walker three feet from a live human would be affected in any way by the presence of mutilated Walkers.
Actually, here's the best I can do to explain the close-up Walker camouflage: It's the same thing as a Lion not getting up and chasing down a human being who slowly and confidently walks right by it. Or a Great White Shark not going after a diver who faces it head-on in open water instead of fleeing. The target isn't acting like prey, so it isn't perceived as prey. The huge problem with this theory is that human-shaped organisms are not the natural prey of lions and sharks, but ARE the most common prey of Walkers. So this notion I can see people going either way on.
Just some thoughts from someone with too much time on their hands 
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Originally Posted by facestabber
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