Dumb Dog, Smart Dog: Happy Dog, Sad Dog

Factual Questions
1

Hi,

This may be a MPSIMS candidate but I’ll try here first. I have two dogs. One, even the vet admits is rather dumb. I’ve trained him somewhat, but he seems to be retarded dog-wise. My other dog is very smart. He has a large, brainiac head and carries himself about like Marvin the Robot. He knows many tricks, but sighs greatly while doing them. At night, the dumb one has many great and wonderful dreams apparently of barking and running. The smart one wimpers the night away locked in his angst-ridden dreams. He peed in his doggie bed last night, over some horrific dream. The dream woke us all up, and sent the cats into paroxysms of purring. If anything, I’m nicer to the smart one, since he seems to understand English and all that.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Does intelligence=angst in dogs?

2

This might be more of an opinion piece…
but I consider my dog fairly intelligent too. And she has suffered from bouts of angst.

If I am being irrational (I’ve been known to fly off the handle and yell at her for no good reason) I can definitely tell she’s dissappointed and upset with me. Especially when she poops on the rug.

I think most dog owners will tell you that they can “tell” what mood their dog is in and be very detailed in it. But I think your dog maybe special. It doesn’t matter how angst ridden my Daisy gets, if give her nice meaty bone and scratch her belly, she forgets the world.

3

Having two dogs there is always a dominance issue, which is generally settled very early on.

One dog may be acting dumb just to be submissive, and trying to remain dominant may also cause stress.

Some dogs are nervous and twitchy though and lots of hugs and attention can make them worse, which seems like a contradiction.

The tv progs I’ve seen dealing with anxious dogs all seem to involve making the dog more self reliant, and less reliant on human stimulation.

4

Egads, yes there are dumb dogs! I have had many poodles in my lifetime, and most were/are very smart. My ex-husbands’ Golden Retriever, OTOH, was just plain retarded. I would have had better luck throwing the dog and commanding the stick to fetch him. I would toss a Frisbee for him, and I would get a quizzical look. “Gee, now you have to walk over and pick up your toy, Mom!” We couldn’t teach him anything. Case in point:

We had a cabin located on a canal that led to a lake. I got up at sunrise one morning, and started off in the canoe to do some fishing in the lake. I was rowing along at a good pace, and the Golden was running along the bank, barking at me and begging to go with. He was so intent on watching me paddle, that he crashed head-first into a tree and knocked himself out cold!
Idiot. I paddled over to the bank, lugged the unconscious dog into the canoe, and rowed back to the cabin. It scared the willies out of me, as I wasn’t sure if he had broken his doggie neck or such. What a relief when he finally woke up. He never knew what hit him…

5

Hmm. I’ve owned many dogs, and fostered many more. I have found the opposite to be true. My two current dogs are: Phoebe, who is dumb as a box of rocks. I took her in as a seriously messed up rescue dog almost 10 years ago, and she is a bundle of neuroses, though a lot better than she used to be. we almost had her euthanised because she was such a mess…and she is an 80lb ShepX, so when she reacted to stress by trying to bite anything moving except me, it was a serious threat. Lots of conditioning & love, and she is almost kind of stable now, though fairly geriatric.

Meanwhile, I am on my third Rottweiler, which tend to be an alarmingly intelligent breed. Each has been confident, self~assured and neurosis free. Of the foster dogs I’ve had in the home, it seems the dumber they are, the more issues they have with fear-aggression, abandonment fears, wierd dreams, spontaneous piddling, & so on. The really smart ones know they’re onto a good thing, & play it for what they can.

The exception seems to be Golden Retrievers. Every one I’ve known has been dumb (but easy to train) and as uncomplicated as a baby.

I think that was a IMHO answer… :slight_smile:

6

Yeah, Rotties are frighteningly intelligent. At least ours is. I can train her on a new command in 10 repetitions, the problem is motivating her. She seems to want to know why she should learn what I’m teaching her.
They are also a headstrong, stubborn breed. The important thing with Rottweilers seems to be establishing dominance early on, which can be done by rolling the cute little puppy over on it’s back, straddling it, holding it down by the loose skin below it’s jowls and maintaining eye contact. With growling, this is also an effective way of disciplining them for insubordination. Insubordination won’t be much of an issue after the dog is 24 months old.
We have an American Pit Bull Terrier, who is not as smart, but not a stupid dog by any means. He is very emotionally needy, clingy and a little neurotic. Not for the first-time dog owner.

7

::THUMP THUMP, THUMP THUMP THUMP, THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP:: Dog show!

Sorry, I just couldn’t help it.

::runs away::

8

If anything, I’d say the reverse is true. In our house, it definitely is. We have two dogs.

One is, and I’m being as nice as I can here, really really dumb. He has the problem-solving ability of a mature goldfish and after one year with us and three years of life has just managed to learn his sixth word.

The other is too smart for her own good. She’s two and has been with us since she was nine weeks old. She has frightening problem-solving ability. She learns tricks in minutes, learns words without being taught, and is rapidly approaching the 100-word barrier without slowing down or losing her grasp of the previous words.

The first dog is neurotic, anxiety-ridden, and often given to periods of either angst or terror. He truly seems much less happy than most dogs. Even if things are okay right now, seems to be his reasoning, they could go bad any second. His motto: “Things do not remain the same, and change is always bad. Fear the future.”

The second dog is the world’s last true optimist. If things aren’t great now, they’re still good, and they’re definitely going to be fantastic in a second or two. She loves her vet - sure, he does some things that hurt, but he’s a great guy! - she loves new things, she loves everyone and everything (except cats, owing to an early Scary Experience). She has never suffered from a moment of angst in her life. Her motto: “It’s all good.”

Some caveats: the first dog is a retired racing Greyhound who came off a track in Mexico. Details of his early life are unknown to us, but probably not ideal. The second dog is a Labrador Retriever whose breeder deliberately breeds for problem-solving ability and intelligence, and may just have gone over the top in this dog’s litter. So there’s other reasons for the intellience and the outlook in both dogs.

9

My cainine kingdom is about the same as yours- one really dumb one, and one really smart one.

The really smart one often looks genuinely depressed if my husband doesn’t pay enough attention to him, and gets really moody over perceived slights to him. He often dreams bad dreams and wakes up from them.

The really dumb one walks around with a dumb look of glee on his face at all times. He dreams of chasing bunnies and butterflies (judging by the motions and sounds he makes), and loves life. He’s always in a good mood and very content.

Interesting…

Zette

10

Standard Poodle owner checking in:

Second smartest breed, according to Intelligence of Dogs, though I have issues with that book, it’s fairly accurate at the extremes.
All of my guys and gals have been incredibly smart, and incredibly happy. Course, they’re well taken care of.
The current one is white, and you can really watch his facial expressions, which was much harder with the previous black ones.
So far, he can open sliding and swinging doors, the doorknobs just slow him down. He does watch TV, and reacts in ways that show he is following the plotline… as he sees it.
As a bit about self-image and sentience, as mentioned in an earlier thread, he almost killed the TV, from charging it, the first time he saw Westminster, and his father’s brother from the same mother and father but a different litter showed up.

Contrawise, the most neurotic dog I’ve ever known was on the far end of the spectrum. Twas an Afghan Hound. Named Jessica, after the redhead on Soap.
Dumb as half a brick, and nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

However, I’ve found, having been involved in dog shows, that both intelligence and neuroses are breed-related tendencies.
Goldens tend not to be too smart, but incredibly happy, for example. Well known for it. Very well adjusted dogs.

So, while breed X may be known for being smart and neurotic, breed Y may be known for being smart and happy.

However, individuals within these breeds may be neither smart nor happy.

In short, dogs are people.
You got the jocks, you got the sensitive artists, you got the soldiers and you got the thugs. You got the salt of the earth, and you got the freak show.

Personally, I vote with John Steinbeck.

11

I only have one dog. And she is a beagle/mutt, that I found on the side of the road after her oh so kind owners abandoned her with naught but a flea collar that was nearly strangling her to death.

The vet told us that she was definitely removed from the care of her mother WAY too soon and I wonder sometimes if that contributes to her…um…idiocy.

She’s the sweetest, most loyal, cuddly pup (I’m almost crying thinking about her) I’ve ever known, but she’s also afraid of feathers. She doesn’t allow any dancing in the house because it scares her. She doesn’t like to walk on tile. She barks at mushrooms. She lays down when we say sit and sits when we say come. We can’t touch her feet. She likes oranges and won’t sit on the couch if the phone is anywhere near it. When we take her to the park to play with other dogs, she prefers to sit with the people. Odd at the least.

When we took her to “Good Dog” here in the Windy City for training we were told that she ‘has no clue about anything’, and yet when my husband says “where’s Donkey?” she comes over and sits right at my feet. She knows the words ‘walk’, ‘cookie’, ‘beer’, ‘supper’, ‘comb’, ‘tub’ and ‘chewie’, yet won’t answer to her name. However, if we call her “Pol Pot” or “Jimmy Smits”, she answers immediately.

So I don’t know if it’s always dominance issues. I think she’s just, well, kind of a, pinhead.

jarbaby

12

Hmm. I’m wondering where all of these dumb golden retrievers are coming from…

My own golden retriever, Snoopy, is 10 years old, and she is highly intelligent. She has been an indoor dog since she was about a year old. During the time she was living outside, she had ample opportunity to practice her natural hunting skills, capturing (and retrieving) several birds and killing–but not eating–several snakes, including a cottonmouth. If she had any degree of stupidity, she would not have been able to kill that snake.

When we first brought Snoopy in the house, it took her about 6 seconds to realize that the door between the kitchen and the living room doesn’t catch properly–when the door is closed, you only need to push on it to open it again. She realized that she could enter the room just by pushing the door with her head. From that point on, she would test closed doors around the house, occasionally gaining entry where a door hadn’t been closed completely.

And I hardly think that a dog’s refusal to chase a stick is grounds for branding it stupid. Speaking from personal experience, sometimes a dog would rather play a game of chase than a game of fetch.

13

I’m with Phoenix on the subject of goldens. They’re smarter than they let on, and they’re convinced they can psychically dominate you.

<owner throws a stick>
Owner: “Fetch the stick, Rex!”
<quizzical look, concealing the pressure Rex is putting on owner’s mind>
<owner goes and brings back the stick>
Rex: :Hah! I have dominated the puny human once again!:
O: “Sit, Rex.”
R: :I am sitting, you fool. Clearly the distinction between a dog sitting and a dog sprawling is too subtle for you to grasp.:
<lather, rinse, repeat>

Goldens are often goofy or scatterbrained, and see no real reason to exert themselves except in play, but they’re not generally stupid. If you convince them that it’s worth the effort, you can teach them almost any trick, and some of them have really outstanding problem-solving skills. I’ve even seen one use a forked stick to pin a snake down while the cats killed it. Barring physical illness, I’ve never seen an unhappy golden retriever.

Labrador retrievers are similar in some ways, except they often have a notable talent for acting and subterfuge–traits utterly foreign to goldens.

14

Maybe it’s like that movie, except he got misrouted on the way to Ellen Barkin.

15

After further consideration, I’m modifying my point of view on Goldens. They’re not stupid, they’re uncomplicated.

Strong difference.

They just appear stupid to the casual observer. Then again, I’ve known people like that.

16

I meant no disrespect towards Golden owners when I said they were “dumb but easy to train.” I adore Goldens…I have never owned one, but have fostered a couple & they are just gorgeous, sweet dogs. I almost kept the last one I fostered, I just fell in love with him.

Hijack…I wonder how the folks that rank “intelligence” in dogs define intelligence? I’ve known hunting dogs (a friend has a champion Vizla) who is an awesome hunter & great in the field. I’ve babysat him in my house lots of times, and after 3 years he still doesn’t get the concept of screen doors…he has destroyed mine twice by trying to walk through it. And there is a dog door 18" away in the wall that he knows how to use.

I’m most familiar with Rotties as a breed (have owned them since 1986), and they are not as easy to train as a lab or Golden, but have awesome problem solving skills. They get bored very quickly in obedience classes and are pragmatic…if they can’t understand why you want them to do something, they won’t do it. Give them a reason, & they’ll “work” all day long. I have known many Rotties. The only neurotic one I’ve ever met is one owned by my best friend, and she is sweet but not real bright.