I know. Pugs assimilate people. They’re an addiction, not a dog breed. I hear that story over and over again - “I never paid any attention to pugs, then I spent 30 minutes with one and now I have 27 of them and I’ve wallpapered my living room with pug wallpaper and all my clothes have pugs on them.”
Mr. Athena started on the pug frenzy when he went hunting for a weekend with a friend. The cabins where he stayed were owned by a couple with two pugs, and he came back from that trip yammering about how we needed to get a pug. I was like “WTF, dude, I like dogs that come up farther than my ankles.”
I resisted for a couple years, then when it came time to get a second dog (our first one was bored and needed a pet according to our vet), a small dog that wouldn’t require much of my attention seemed fine. So we got Edith, and that was the end of my pug-free life. She decided I was her mother and now is rarely more than a few feet away from me at all times. She’s the best pet I’ve ever had in my life.
She’s assimilated at least one of our friends, too. They hung out with her a few times and next thing you know they’ve got a pug puppy.
My dad would whole heartedly disagree with Afghans being the least intellegent. He’s dead set that the dumbest breed ever is the Irish Setter. Apparently when he was growing up there was some real doozies in his area.
I also agree with the Border Collie being number one. It seems that herding dogs in general (although not the OE Sheepdog apparently) are smarter than most other breeds. I think it’s just the nature of what they’ve been bred to do. We had a sheltie when I was a kid and she was fantastic. We’d play with her by going to the park with a bunch of friends and then scattering. She’d then ‘herd’ us all back into a group and did a damn fine job of it!
As for Athena’s comments on pugs, I’ve noticed pug people do tend to be rather…into…pugs. And I do find them adorable, but ever since I got into working in the veterinary field my view on dog breeds are warped. All I think about now is how difficult it would to to intubate them with that short snout, or how hard it would be to find a vein on those short or thin legs. Not to mention being exposed more to the breed specific predispositions to certain diseases or abnormalities! Ignorance was bliss D:
I do not know any Afghans, but I have known many Irish and one English Setter. These were all dopey, drooly human adoring dogs.
I did see the English Setter retrieve a kitten* without harming it. They do have the gentlest mouth of any large dog I have ever seen. In my limited experience, I can see why small game hunters prize the English Setters.
Lissa: You are right of course about variations in individuals, but I believe this entire discussion is about breeds or averages. The fact is that working herding dogs have been bred/selected for intelligence, trainability and it shows up in most of the surveys and studies where the various herder breeds are disproportionately towards the top. I think the bigger surprise would be seeing Poodles up top. I already knew about this, but I have no logical reason why a hunting breed that has been a pet/show animal for years has such high overall intelligence. I am guessing they score higher for their abilities to learn commands. In my experience and again talking to vets, trainers and animal handlers over the years, the Border Collies, Shelties & Aussies are better problem solvers.
The wiki list, which is not, the only one was based on:
The key to collecting good data on this report was the survey of many trainers.
Wiki is using Coren, Stanley (1995). The Intelligence of Dogs. Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-37452-4. From my post in the other thread
Jim
The kitten however was not at all pleased with being retrieved and skunked; a major disgusting cleanup was required. The Setter was still gentle after the kitten tried to rip his nose off.
One test is simple. Put a blanket over a dogs head and see how long it takes him to get it off. I saw it on tv. I put a blanket on Quincys head and he laid down and went to sleep. He likes to be warm…
I’ve had mutts all my life, but have been buddies with purebreds. I had a malmute/sheperd/collie mix that was a stinkin’ genius of a dog, but was a tough train. Very independent-minded. I also had a Lab/Border Collie mix that was bright but not as smart as the malamute, and very biddable. The present pooch, a Lab/Pit Bull mix, is smart, but needs to be bribed with food to get him to do anything.
OTOH, my neighbor has a purebred Lab that is dumber than dirt. Another neighbor had a Dalmation that was none too bright, plus was afraid of weird stuff (like airplanes flying overhead). The beagle next door was bright, but the owners were dumb. So, I just try to enjoy and appreciate dogs for the individuals they are and don’t pre-judge based on breed.
The smartest dog I’ve ever known was a friend’s Springer Spaniel. He knew people’s names, could differentiate his toys. You could tell to look for a specific toy, and if he didn’t find it, you could say, “upstairs” and he’d go upstairs and get it.
My border collie was smart, but not totally trainable. He was independent minded. He wasn’t the smartest border collie I’ve ever seen by a long shot.
Our Akita is smart in different ways. He’s not very trainable, but sometimes my wife will be walking him off leash ona path near our house. He’ll be out int eh woods sniffing around, but if another person comes up the trail, he’ll come back without being called and stand in between my wife and that person. He has interesting instincts.
I don’t think smart dogs are the best pets. You’re not getting a dog to do your taxes. Our vet used to say, “you want a dog without separation anxiety? Get a bulldog. You leave the house for work, and by the time you come home, he’s just realizing you’re not there.”
My friend the professional dog trainer loves to have clients bring poodles to her – the training is a snap and she is able to have more fun in the process. She says they are so smart that she feels almost guilty when the owners rave about her abilities as a trainer. I’ll have to ask her specifically about problem solving. I think it is the dual background of hunting breed/companion animal that you describe makes the breed so smart. They’re very alert to what is going on around them without being easily distracted from their interactions with you.
In my own personal experience with poodles, I agree that they are smarter than the average dog. I think most people who haven’t spent much time with poodles would be surprised by how sharp they are.
The big surprise for me was that goldens are so high on the list. I’ve always thought that goldens had a strong desire to please which can make them eager and willing to do the command thing, but that on their own time they’re not overly bright, and even a bit on the low end of the curve. This is probably colored by my experience with my own golden – the sweetest dog you ever saw, but not so heavy in the head, to say the least. He was routinely flummoxed by corners.
Smart dogs are the ones who figure out how to open the refridgerator door and how to escape from their crates. They’re the ones who train* you *to the point where before you know it, you’re doing the dog’s bidding and didn’t even realize it.
I agree. My current dog, a rottwieler/dane cross, pick up commands quickly and he is also an escape artist. I don’t think dogs like that are meant to be an “only a watch/companion dog”.
Regarding poodles: my dad has a toy poodle who, when he got neutered (at about a year and a half) went around for weeks trying to avoid letting anyone see that he was missing his balls. He would stand with his butt backed into a corner and generally keep facing you at all times. He eventually got over it. Overall, though, I’m not sure that he’s all that brilliant. He weighs about 10 lbs and routinely attacks 100+ pound dogs, leaping into the air to go for the jugular. Luckily these big dogs have been more bemused by his antics than pissed off, so far.
I use to think Goldens were big sweet dopey dogs too, but then they started taking over for German Shepherds as guide dogs as they were just as trainable and had better dispositions and looked friendlier to general public. So I was not surprised by the survey.
Except for the Guide Dogs, most golden retrievers I have met are indeed the big sweet dopey dogs that you and I expect. I am not sure why this is. I wonder if the rejection rate for Golden puppies is higher than the rejection rate for Shepherds for the Guide Dog programs.
This seems like a good excuse to relate a non-topic experience that I love to tell. When I was living in the Navy in San Diego on the USS Ranger, I was at a decent, popular and fairly crowded restaurant with some friends. A middle-age couple was eating, a woman, and her guide dog (a Golden Retriever) were seated two tables over.
The woman of the couple complained in a loud voice to the waiter, “That filthy animal should be removed from the restaurant.”
The waiter got the manager while the husband looked uncomfortable. The woman repeated her complaint, even louder, including how it was unsanitary to eat in an establishment with a dog.
The manager replied, “Ma’am we do not wish to serve you in our restaurant, please leave and do not worry about the bill.”
She looked flabbergasted; her husband looked completely embarrassed, someone starting clapping and most of the rest of the restaurant then clapped for the manager.
The manager finished up by apologizing to woman with the guide dog for the disturbance.
Have you looked into the foster program for the puppies? My wife’s family use to do this when she was young. I could ask for for any information she remembers.
This is a great idea. Also, you might let them know you’d be willing to take in one of the dogs who “flunked” if they can’t find a home for it. (Sometimes dogs make it through most of the program but then are found to have a flaw which would be dangerous for a guide dog, but they’re still awesome, well-trained animals.)
Guide dogs don’t flunk, they get “career changed”, and even those ones are awesome awesome pets. Usually they get dropped for health reasons, occasionally for behavior, like signs of very early hip displaysia or being afraid of walking over grates, or “losing their focus”. Things that aren’t really problems for pets.
My puppy is a lab, the organization I work with uses 70% labs, a few lab/golden crosses, a few goldens, and fewer shepherds. Just from looking at our group, the labs are so trainable because they just want to please, which is good since we don’t train with treats or anything. The one german shepherd in the group is really annoying and I don’t know how she deals with him.
Oretty much anyone can raise/train guide dogs-in-training since we only do obedience and distraction and leave the big stuff to the real trainers.
Chiming in to echo this sentiment, and variations thereof already expressed on this thread. Intelligence and trainability are two different things, and even within “trainability”, a lot depends on how much independence you expect the dog to demonstrate while accomplishing its task. Does acting as part of a brace to pin a wild gazelle with no human intervention (Afghan Hound) require more or less"intelligence" than convincing a herd of sheep to pass through a gate that the owner specifies (Border Collie)?
The best comparison I’ve ever encountered comes from the world of reptiles, but it applies well here too:
Take a box turtle and a pond turtle. Place each on a flat table, and act threateningly. The pond turtle will dive off the table. The box turtle will walk to the edge, look down, and stop. Is the pond turtle less intelligent? No. It has developed in an environment where the best strategy to evade a predator is to leap off of the rock or log it’s sunning on into the pond water below. The box turtle, developed in a land based environment, has other concerns.
Traditional obedience tests, like those the AKC uses, are based on the behaviors expected of a bird dog in the field. That’s why, for example, it is considered unacceptable for the dog to drop a retrieved object at its owner’s feet. If that object were an injured bird, it could potentially escape. By contrast, in the words of one noted sighthound trainer, “My dogs have never dropped anything at my feet that couldn’t just sit there until I decided what to do with it.” Different needs, different behaviors.
And to add to your statement about anyone being able to pre-train guide dogs: the inmates at the prison where my husband works do so. The puppies are taken from the local animal shelter and taught basic obedience by the inmates. The ones who show the right characteristics go on to the training academy. The ones who don’t meet the criteria are adopted by the community, or sometimes, by the inmate’s family. (It’s been an awesome experience for everyone involved.)
Does acting as part of a brace to pin a wild gazelle with no human intervention (Afghan Hound) require more or less"intelligence" than convincing a herd of sheep to pass through a gate that the owner specifies (Border Collie)?
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Is the wild gazelle smarter than the sheep in question? Is it just one gate, or a gather off “the hill”? For Border Collies, especially in the UK, their primary function was to gather large flocks of wild/range type sheep off the craggy, often cliff infested hills. Both dogs in question would chase a wild gazelle- the “intelligence” in the afghan would be more a superior ability to catch the wild gazelle and the stamina to wear it out. For the Border Collie- the decisions and responsibility it often has to make out of the sight of the handler makes it the more intelligent dog, IMHO, overall.
The dog on the hill must bring down multiple sheep, sheep that are comfortable in challenging the dog and who must not ever be run off in a panic ( or they will tumble down a cliff) and bring them to no harm. Many shepherds will not allow these dogs to ever bite a sheep unless the sheep aggressively attacks them. I know of Border Collies in the West that are actually dropped off in a plane (usually more than one dog) and gather hundreds of cattle and drive them with no human input home.
I admit I’m biased- as the owner of 6 working border collies that constantly amaze me with their abilities- but I just wanted to clarify that “taking sheep through a gate” is only a very small bit of what they do.