Top 10 Smartest Dog Breeds

BlackPuppy

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#1
My coworker sent me a list of the top 10 smartest dog breeds. I've seen these before, but this new list was very interesting. It included Australian Kelpie, Beauceron, and Belgian Malinois! Of course, I can't find the list now that I've deleted his email, but I found this. It's the same breeds. I don't know if the order is the same. http://www.petside.com/article/smartest-dog-breeds
 

Romy

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#2
Eh, those lists just separate handler oriented dogs from independent "cat-like" dogs. You wouldn't put a border collie and a cat next to each other and say the cat is stupid because it doesn't do all the tricks the border collie does. Same thing with an afghan hound.

People have a really bad habit of judging another animal's intelligence by how much they want to please us. They're completely different traits.
 

Emily

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#3
People have a really bad habit of judging another animal's intelligence by how much they want to please us. They're completely different traits.
lol no kidding. Blossom learns rapidly and also crashes into walls a whole lot. :lol-sign:
 
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#6
Agreed! Ruffian and Tonka were my Shibas, Ruffian was the more trainable of the two, food motivated so she would pray, play dead, anything, if food was involved. Tonka was not, he didn't care two flips what I wanted him to do...also never had a fence that he couldn't find his way out of either, never by jumping either, he would climb, dig squeeze or slide anything. One place he dug under my trailer and pushed the skirting out...he was far from stupid, but at best he would sit when asked.
 

Romy

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#7
It always makes me all kinds of angry when I see those lists, and especially when I see borzois on the "dumb" part.

Strider was never trained to alert to my blood sugar. He figured that out on his own.

He was also never trained to respond to my blood sugar getting low. All by himself, with his stoopid little borzoi brain, he realized there was a connection between my blood sugar getting low and my blood sugar improving when I ate food.

He started alerting to my blood sugar, and I'd be like, "hey thanks dude." Then if I didn't eat something right away, he'd get antsy, run into the kitchen, and grab some food and come drop it in my lap. Usually it was an apple or banana.

He then took it a step further, and realized that if my blood sugar is low AND I'm sad, chocolate makes me feel better. So if I'm distressed, he brings me chocolate.

I NEVER trained him to do any of that. I reinforced him with praise when he offered the behavior, and that was good enough for him to continue helping me out. I dare anybody who thinks they know better to say that borzois are stupid, because Kaia is every bit as clever as he is. They're both incredible at generalizing, which from what I understand is really challenging for most dogs.

IME, those primitive and independent breeds show themselves to be exceedingly intelligent when people actually put in the effort to work with them in a way that compliments their drives and attitudes.
 

Beanie

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#8
lol no kidding. Blossom learns rapidly and also crashes into walls a whole lot. :lol-sign:
Happy ran into walls, backed up looking surprised, then ran into the wall again...
and he was also not a very quick learner.

Oh Happy.

He was special.
 

Laurelin

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#9
Trey used to get caught on corners when he had his cone on. He would just stop and you'd have to come rescue him, lol.

It never fails if people have heard about papillons, the question they will ask me is 'Oh aren't those dogs really smart?'
 

chaospony

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#10
I hate lists like these.
Care to guess why? :lol-sign:

I've been around enough Afghan hounds to know what utter bull honkey those things are!

Obedience and intelligence are not the same thing.
 

AdrianneIsabel

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#11
Wall running into with Malinois is because they're too busy to be bothered by a stupid barrier. ;)

Sloan *is* brilliant and extremely trainable. Backup is a dope but we're carving away at molding a brain.

I have found several dogs of a variety of breeds to be dumb, like has trouble figuring out how to get the reward, but I'm not sure I have a total dumber than breed list.
 

Emily

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#12
Sometimes clients at work who have some idea what a Malinois will say, "Oh, those dogs are really smart, right?" I usually just simplify to "yes". Blossom does do stuff that average people would be wowed by, usually to do with quickly grasping what I want and doing it eagerly, just because I asked. I think it's that hyper-biddability that makes them smart. And they are masters of patterns and subtle cues as well.

But truthfully those same traits can make her act kinda dumb. When I pack her crate up for any reason, if I tell her "kennel" she will run to the empty space where it was and jump just like she's hopping through the door that's not there, LOL. Keeva would run to where the crate should be, find nothing, look around for another crate, and then probably bark at me and offer some other behaviors.

I put slippers on the other day, and she was all, "YOU PUT SHOES ON AND SHOES MEAN WE GO OUTSIDE AAAAAAHHHHH" and it took her like 20 minutes to accept that we weren't going outside. If Keeva is crated and I let her out, Blossom also thinks, "OMG TIME TO GO OUTSIDE. I BETTER SPIN AND CRY!" because I guess she associates dogs being let out of crates meaning we go outside, probably because that's what happens when I get home from work.

The intelligence of more primitive breeds is very different IME. Keeva definitely has a streak of that in her - she's a thinker. Well sometimes, she definitely has her obsessive herding breed times too.

Blossom is more trainable, but I would absolutely call Keeva the "smarter" dog.
 

AdrianneIsabel

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#13
If there is an open crate anywhere, like in the middle of the room, would she still pick that spot? My dogs are pretty spot specific unless I point at a different crate, it's just a creature of habit thing but also something I trained in so that even when I took down crates I could point to their area and they would lay down and settle.

I do laugh when my dogs hit walls but its purely because I have allowed such high value for rewards. In a less motivated dog you wouldn't see this behavior, i.e. what wall? all i see is the reward or you being the barer of a reward, and at the same time you wouldn't have a dog appropriate for such extreme work and subsequent sport which they've been bred for generation after generation.

In other words, although Sloan is the best dog ever to shape with because she's stupid smart and extremely motivated they as a breed may not be problem solvers in the same ways an independent, less obsessive, primitive dog is.

However, I also don't want a primitive thinker if I need a SWAT dog, too much analytical, well maybe if we waited and tried this instead, would likely get us killed. lol
 

Flyinsbt

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#14
However, I also don't want a primitive thinker if I need a SWAT dog, too much analytical, well maybe if we waited and tried this instead, would likely get us killed. lol
Well, unless you have a Stafford. They're great thinkers who can easily figure out complex stuff on their own, but they don't have much sense of self preservation, so trying to avoid getting killed wouldn't occur to them.

:rofl1:
 

Laurelin

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#15
Mia is a wonderful combination of biddable smart and also problem solving smart. I don't see that combination that often. Summer is also a very biddable, intelligent dog too. My trainers have all talked about how bright Summer is. She doesn't problem solve nearly as well. But really doing agility you don't see much difference at all. They each have strengths and areas where they need more work (and those areas are often the same for both of them). But it's at home life where you get to realize how the two are really different. Summer's never unlocked the crate to get what she wants out of it or locked her sister in a crate (that was the funniest thing). Or climbed the shelves to get to food. Or many other things.

I put slippers on the other day, and she was all, "YOU PUT SHOES ON AND SHOES MEAN WE GO OUTSIDE AAAAAAHHHHH" and it took her like 20 minutes to accept that we weren't going outside. If Keeva is crated and I let her out, Blossom also thinks, "OMG TIME TO GO OUTSIDE. I BETTER SPIN AND CRY!" because I guess she associates dogs being let out of crates meaning we go outside, probably because that's what happens when I get home from work.
Mia does both of those. But she knows which ones are my work shoes and doesn't get excited about that. But my knock around the house shoes? Oh oh oh we are going to the PARK. Every time. At my dad's house if his dogs are kenneled and mine out, I can't let the others out without Mia screeching and running back and forth to the door. Then Summer starts doing loops around the couch. But Summer's kind of a follower, if Mia gets excited Summer figures she probably should too.
 

SaraB

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#17
If there is an open crate anywhere, like in the middle of the room, would she still pick that spot? My dogs are pretty spot specific unless I point at a different crate, it's just a creature of habit thing but also something I trained in so that even when I took down crates I could point to their area and they would lay down and settle.
I tried this the other day when we were staying at a friend's house, asked Zuma to find her crate and she would run into any open crate both in the house and at the person's indoor training space. Zuma is smart. Zinga is smart, but lacks impulse control so it makes her seem pretty dumb at times.
 

Emily

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#18
However, I also don't want a primitive thinker if I need a SWAT dog, too much analytical, well maybe if we waited and tried this instead, would likely get us killed. lol
*shrug* No doubt. It wasn't about one being better than the other, just a comparison of the different ways in which dogs can be "smart".
 
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#19
I don't really like rating dog (or people). Smart depends on your definition of smart or the situation.

My Greyhounds are smart, but they aren't going to be as easy to train in obedience and perform like a Doberman would.

Dogos I find to be highly intelligent, but can be difficult for some people to train b/c it can be hard to keep their attention as they get bored with basic stuff. I had one female, that figured out to open doors, she could get up and turn the water on in the sink for a drink (or play in the tub), open the fridge and help herself. And one of the things that impressed me the most was with the trash can. We had a big outdoor trashcan and I came home and she had dumped it over and rummaged thru it. I was not happy and bitched and complained the entire time cleaning it up. She watched me and I pointed to the can and said I better never see tipped over again. Ok- like she really knew what I was talking about, plus she was deaf- so I know she didn't understand the words, just body language.

I come home the next day and there is patio chair beside the trash can and the lid is flipped back, but the can is upright. No trash on the ground. So I close the lid and put the chair back. My neighbor comes running over. She said I wouldn't believe what happened. Bianca had grabbed the chair, drug it over to the trash can, got up in it, flipped it open and got what she wanted out and went on her way. But she didn't knock the can over!
 

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