I had a black Lab-chow mix named Whitney who was a fairly bright dog. I mean, you could take one look at her and just know that there were wheels turning within her head. The doors in my house all have levers instead of knobs. She figured out all on her own that she could put her front paws on a door lever and push down and the door would open, at least if the door opened away from her. She never got the hang of opening doors that swung in toward her, or she would have let herself loose in the street. She also had a specific toy she was fond of playing fetch with. You could tell her “Whitney, go get your toy,” and she would bring it to you, even if the toy were in another room. She could mentally associate the word “toy” with a specific object, even if she couldn’t see it.
I didn’t realise that was a sign of real intelligence - Poppy does that, she must be brighter than I’d realised. She does know quite a few tricks and is an incredibly good dog in a lot of ways - though she loves her food you can take her bowl away when she’s halfway through a meal without a murmur of protest from her, and she never touches food that isn’t her own - leave her alone with your dinner in plain view and easy reach and she’ll sit and stare at it intently but never touches it. But she was incredibly hard work to train, which had led me to assume “not all that bright”.
Our old dog would do that as well, and would distinguish between a ring, a ball, and her duck if asked for one or the other. While working out this a.m. I was reading a Nat’l Geo which had a cover story on animal intelligence. They described a border collie who knew 300 or so words, learned new words at the rate of a toddler, and could distinguish between 20 people by name.
In the book I mentioned upthread they suggest that a “fetch” instinct in puppies may be the surest sign of “trainability.” IIRC they cited records kept by the Scandinavian military - which was one of the largest banks of data on dog training. They said a pup should show some willingness to chase after an object, or at least indicate some interest in a ball rolled past it’s nose, for it to be accepted into various training programs. Damn, I wish I remember more from this book I read only a couple of weeks ago! :rolleyes:
Is what I’m sayin’. We owned a few German Shepherds (one of which was a police dog) when I was growing up, and my sister in law owns one now. While they were all good natured, excellent family dogs and very good at taking direction, they were without exception dumber than dirt. My Dachshund (who sits smack in the middle of the list) has better problem solving capabilities than any of them.
I’ve had just about every kind of canine out there and so far, I rank them thusly:
(smartest to dumbest)
Wolf
Chihuahua (my current dog companion is a long-haired chi who is just about the smartest dog I’ve ever seen)
German Shepherd
Irish Setter
St. Bernard
Husky
Poodle (that one is tough – some can be unbelievably smart, with others droolingly stupid)
Collies
Retrievers
Labradors
anything else canine
Pomeranians
That’s just my experience. I base my idea of what makes a dog smart on how easy they train, how well they remember their training and what they figure out on their own. My chi doesn’t get put through his tricks regularly, but when we have company who want to see it – he will do his whole line of tricks happily with few failures. Oh, and I don’t often use treats as rewards, so I tend to feel a little more confident in their abilities. (If you’re wondering, I use treats for the first couple times a trick/command is taught, after that, it is only praise)
In my experience (limited to only one basset hound), I’d say the opposite is true. They’re very sweet dogs but man they are dumb. Our basset hound is very pretty, but a complete ditz. (Also, the reputation of their laziness is grossly exaggerated. She has tons of energy, but isn’t overweight like most bassets.)
We used to have a golden retriever, so the patterns are pretty strikingly different.
Let’s say you’re playing with the dog and you pretend to throw the toy. The golden keyed into this pretty quick the first few times and ever after would just assume you had it. She’d start sniffing around you right away, and would even remember the most common tricks (like hiding it in the couch or putting your hand behind your back). The basset hound is fooled by this trick every time. She goes to where the toy would have been thrown, sniffs around, and sniffs all around the room. She never figures out it’s you even after seeing (in that play session) that you try to fake her out sometimes.
The basset hound was also much harder to potty train. She learns tricks fairly easily, but she gets them confused - teach her a new trick, and she’ll start doing it randomly when you ask her to do something else.
Awesome dog, but not that smart. It can be a pain when there’s a change of scenery - our basset just doesn’t get that the procedure to ask to go outside can be the same if it’s a different house. She has to relearn the process based on every new situation. The golden wasn’t like that - she was actually, as others have reported, “too smart” (like sticking her big face right in front of the vents in the car to suck up all the air-conditioned air in the summer).
The basset hound also barks at reflections of herself, or reflections of the TV in the window. She gets nervous if a dog barks on the TV. I think bassets get a reputation for being stubborn because they’re a) just not terribly bright and b) they tune out nearly everything if they’re sniffing something interesting.
What kind of a list is that on Wiki? The smartest dogs in the universe did not even rate at all?
Oh, …Jack Russells of course, I thought that was obvious.
Point 1. During his first trip to the groomer, Bandit picked the lock. Now his card has a note to double lock the cage.
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Hide a treat under a towel? Please. We hid one in a drawer. After he pushed a small box over he pulled it open and got the treat.
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On his own, started getting his leash and dropping it in my lap when he is ready for a walk.
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Figured out how to open his doggie door when it has the insert in and locked. he grabs with his teeth and stands up on his hind legs so he has the height required to remove the insert.
All dogs should be trained not to be food-aggressive. I have never had a dog that was possessive over its food. All of my dogs would tolerate my picking their bowl up in mid-meal, especially if I were going to add something yummy to it. And they respond to being petted while eating with friendly eye contact and wagging tails. Most dogs that are properly socialized and fed regularly don’t regard food as a resource to be hoarded. Most rescue groups won’t let a food-aggressive dog go out for adoption. They will work with the dog to train the aggressiveness out of it before letting anyone adopt it. Non-aggressiveness is something everyone should expect from their animals. My dogs also have learned to respect my food and not bother it, mainly because I don’t feed them food intended for people or give them bites off my plate. They only get dog food and dog treats, so they don’t have a reason to desire any of my food.
I’m not taking away from your dog’s intelligence. Dogs which learn to co-operate with their human masters show a great deal of intelligence. Scientists regard them as better than chimpanzees in picking up non-verbal cues from humans, such as pointing and cues from eye contact.
I had a springer spaniel who was constantly nagging to be let out, let back in, let out, let back in, let out, let back in, etc, ad nauseum. Most of the time he didn’t have to pee or anything, he’d just go out and sniff around for a while. Eventually we started ignoring many of his requests to go outside.
Now, you know that sound/motion that dogs make when they’re about to puke? Whenever a dog starts making that noise, every dog person in the room will leap to their feet and open the door and throw the dog outside before it throws up on the carpet. My springer spaniel realized this fact, and on several occasions he actually faked the I’m-about-to-puke noises because he knew that we couldn’t ignore that.
My friend reports that sometimes when he takes his lab into the woods, the dog will find a rabbit trail and take off in pursuit. More than 50% of the time, he takes off in the wrong direction.
The dog in my life now is a pit bull. It’s hard to tell how smart he is because he is so very eager to please, and as soon as he figures out how to please me, he does it. Generally what pleases me is when he chills out on the couch and stays out of trouble, so when we’re at home he’s not particularly active. (He doesn’t get bored easily - when I had the flu for three weeks, he spent 22 hours a day lying in bed with me, and didn’t complain once.) The canine intelligence test mentioned above (hiding a treat under a towel) doesn’t give him a moment’s pause (altho my friend’s Malamute still hasn’t figured out where that treat went!).
Once a friend of mine was out walking with him, and she got home and realized she’d lost her cell phone. She went back out again with the dog to retrace her steps, and as soon as they got in the vicinity, the dog took her straight to where she’d dropped the phone. Upon reflection she realized that when they’d been in that spot earlier, the dog had stopped walking and (not realizing at the time that she’d dropped her phone) she had to pull the leash and tell him to keep moving. He saw her drop the phone and tried to tell her, and then took her straight back to it!
I know this isn’t a cat thread but I can’t help it: My sister’s (impossibly stupid) cat has learned how to pull doors open - but not push them. When faced with a (push) door that is ajar, the only way she can get through is if she can pull it with enough force that it bounces back far enough.
The theory here is that dogs are so good at picking up on non-verbal cues because, in the wild, they hunt in packs without the benefit of any kind of verbal communication.
I walk my dogs every day. When I get to the corner we have to decide which way to go, we are next to a park with several entrances. Nordberg doesn’t care where we go as long as we go. Quincy makes a decision which walk he wants and balks it I start to go the wrong way. He plants his feet and wags his tail . When I go the way he wants ,he moves.
Voltaire is a bichon/schitzu/yorkie mix and I think he’s pretty smart.
I mean, he’s not writing a novel or anything, but he has a rather substantial vocabulary. If I put all his toys in a pile and ask for a specific one he will sort through the pile till he finds it and bring it over - I’ve never seen any other dogs do that.
Katie is a purebred Border Collie. Our third one. She’s very smart. She’s been through 2 levels of obedience, some agility, and she’s perfectly socialized. We give her ‘mind teaser’ type toys where the dog has to solve puzzles to get treats, and she loves them. She knows all her favorite toys by name. I can say “Get your bee”, or “get your Bird”, and she’ll fetch the right one. She also knows the difference between, “Where’s dad?” and “Where’s the kid?” and she’ll go hunt us down.
But her real gift is her ability to read verbal and physical cues and just do the right thing. If we say, “Look after the house”, she knows that’s her cue that we’ll be gone for a few hours, and she’ll just truck off to the sofa and go to sleep. If guests come over she stays out from underfoot, but she’s always close at hand if you look for her. She can tell when you’re tired, or when you’re willing to have some fun, and adjust her behaviour accordingly. That sort of thing.
My border collie was too smart for his own good.
Sometimes, it would be time to leave the park, and you’d call him and he’d come.
Sometimes, you would call him, and he would sit down, cock his head like he had no idea what you were talking about, and then run off for another dip in the stream.
It’s like he was considering his options.
Smartest dog I ever knew, though, was a Springer Spaniel. Knew a ton of his toys (maybe 10+). Knew people’s names. Knew every command I’ve ever seen a dog know. If you told him to find a toy, he’d search the house. . .sniff the whole floor, go upstairs, go to the basement. Incredible dog.
We have six working border collie, 3 competitive dogs, 2 retired dogs, and one pup.
I don’t do alot of “obedience” type stuff with them, aside from walks at lunchtime, the majority of their training is basic manners and shepherding. It’s no surprise to us though that dogs like the one featured in National Geographic know hundreds of commands. Here’s just a few that my Open level dog knows:
“Go left/right”
“Go left/right fast”
“Go left/right slow”
“Go left/right near”
“Go left/right wide”
“Pause”
“Stop-on your feet”
“Lie Down”
LIE DOWN!
“Get Out”
“Go back”
“come forward- fast,slow”
“Keep sheep on this line”
“Turn the sheep and take them to X”
“Push”
“Do what you need to do to move that ornery sheep*” (My dog’s have a specific whistle for this and they LOVE IT!)*
“Sheep are close, stay in”
“Sheep are waaaayy out there”
“There are more sheep behind you, go back and get them”
“I need these sheep, but not these others”
“Pen them” - I do seriously use this, sometimes the dog can figure out how to get the sheep in better than I can so I will drop the directions and just tell them to do the job."
“Here”- more of a calling in to a balance point than a recall
“That’ll Do”- we are done.
There are several jobs my dogs can do with very little input- things like gate sorting, holding sheep for doctoring, adjusting their work when I have ewes/lambs. Most of these things are never trained specifically, we just show the dog how we want it done one or twice and then hold them to that expectation for the rest of their lives. Most dogs have their own method of work, you learn to work with it and be flexible in what they offer you as long as it “works” for the job at hand. Every command has at least a half dozen variations that are almost intuitive in the working process- the smallest body language change or tone inflections can influence how the dog handles the command. It’s amazing what they can pick up and my older dogs feel like mind readers a good deal of the time.
Living with them, they have various levels of cleverness- one of my most intelligent working dogs will let a treat bounce off her head and has never figured out that she should try to catch it before someone else gets it. She isn’t driven to figure things out unless it involves sheep or cattle. One of the dumbest (total washout) dogs I have on sheep figured out how to push a drawer out from the other side to get a tennis ball inside- if it involves a treat or tennis ball- she’s suddenly Einstein.
The new pup is scary smart- she mimics whatever the other dogs do, lords over the house already and is working out nice on sheep. She’s a bit of a pistol, and after splitting sheep up, she took one ewe up the hill and got her about 20 yards away from the others. A pup her age, most of the time would just keep going until she or the sheep were stopped somehow but after she chased her off a little, she suddenly stopped on her own, thought about it for a second and went around (instead of behind) the sheep to bring her back to the others. I was too far off to influence her/push her out around the sheep- she thought the whole process out, decided what she was doing wasn’t right and made a plan to put sheep together instead of the much more entertaining task of chasing a single sheep.
I gotta ask, how the hell do you train them to do that? I’m still working on ‘lay down’ with my dog? 
Where do you gets the pups from? Do you breed them yourself or use a fairly local breeder?
Our Border Collie came from an AKC Breeder, but we found out after the fact that the AKC Breeder part doesn’t really mean much. Thankfully he was a smart if stubborn dog. Sadly he died young from heat stroke.
That one is really easy- most of the time we are “putting the brakes” on how the sheep are handled- most dogs start out wanting to bring them 90mph to you so basically I would just get them so excited they would forget about pace and just push the sheep or even grip them to make them move.
What Exit?- I would definitely recommend getting a border collie whose breeder does not register AKC- it’s considered unethical in many working dog circles to have dual registered dogs- you want ABCA registered dogs. Sorry to hear about yours though :(! Try these people in your area, go to some trials and you should be able to find a good breeder- www.nebca.net
I don’t breed mine very often- last litter was 8 years ago. I like to have a “new” breeding every so often- something I haven’t worked with one (or in the beginning, four or five) or more related dogs so I usually buy my pups from working breeders.
S’truth. After you’ve seen enough to compare, with German Shepherd Dogs it’s easy to tell a schutzhund from a “ring dog” – one that will do well at an AKC show. Likewise, you can tell a racing greyhound from a ring dog at a glance. And I say this with three AKC Salukis in residence (Desertroomie likes to show. Comparing our guys with desert breds I’ve seen, well let’s just say the latter would do better at getting something for the pot.
If you want a dog to actually do something, your best bet is to find breeders who work with their dogs at that purpose. AKC or not is almost immaterial.
Maybe some border collies will be smarter but I’d say ‘Skidboot’ was on up there.