Is your dog smart?

[BostonBanker]

Meg is probably average; I certainly don't think she's dumb or slow, and she's very trainable when she's not scared, but she doesn't think stuff through by herself or anything like that.

Gusto would either be the class genius, or the one that the teacher called the FBI about, because just maybe he's building a bomb at home or planning to hack the National Treasury. He's not only very trainable, but he figures out the strangest stuff. For instance, he likes when I get the yardstick out to get his ball out from under the furniture. It hangs on the inside of the door to the basement. He will deliberately paw his ball under the tv stand, and then run to the door with the yardstick, rather than barking or pawing at the ball like most dogs do. It's fun to watch his little brain click through things.

 

[Slick]

Leo is a derpy derp boy, so sometimes I think its hard to tell how smart or not he is.

He picks up tricks pretty quickly and he differentiates really well between small cues. Sometimes that is really convenient (for instance, instantly knowing he isn't coming along because I am wearing "work shoes"), and sometimes that is really inconvenient (only following a command if I signal with my left but not my right hand, because that is how I accidentally cued it in the beginning).

Then, sometimes, he just does really dumb stuff.

I would say over all, he is either average or above average, but I wouldn't describe him as a genius.

 

[*blackrose]

Let's just put it this way...when Michael came back and saw Abrams for the first time, he said, "You know, he looks kind of like a cow. Big, brown vacant eyes and when he looks at you, you can see wheels are turning, just very, very, very slowly."

Abrams is....not the brightest. His focus is great and he loves to work, and he learns fairly quickly. But his common sense...he's not all there. LOL He's kind of like a big dumb jock. When you walk him through something and he trains, he's good; but he has no book smarts on his own and also has no street smarts.

He's my special boy.

Cynder has street smarts, but never really learned how to learn, so she's not the easiest to train, but she can problem solve real life scenarios fairly well. I'd say she's about average.

 

[Sit Stay]

Quinn is quite smart. She learns things extremely quickly and retains things even better. She knows many words, picks up on routines very quickly, and can tell where we're going in the car very early on during the drive. She LOVES learning and had a ton of focus even as an 8 week old.

I would say Ned is very smart too, although perhaps in a slightly different way. We've always said that he's street smart, and a survivor. Ever since he was 8 weeks old he will drink at every opportunity, and remembers where any water source is. He will find the coolest place to lie down when he gets overheated and remembered where the door was after the first time he came inside the house. He's super alert, aware and remembers EVERYTHING.
He's also more biddable and willing to please than Quinn is.
He doesn't seem to catch on to new behaviours quite as quickly as Quinn does, during clicker training, but I think that's also due to the fact that I simply haven't done as much with him as I did with Quinn. He hasn't learned how to learn (and then had that skill nurtured often) as young as Quinn did.

eta: Ned is also a bit of an escape artist! He used to unlock his crate, so we put a carabiner on the door, only to find that he could consistently get that off too and free himself. His crate gets locked with an extra bolt snap now lol

 

[SpaceMutt]

I think Astro is about average to a little above-average intelligence. Not a genius, but he remembers behaviors well, generalizes to new places and people pretty decently, and he methodically tries his best during every training session. He doesn't offer too much (despite having been constantly encouraged to offer behaviors from day 1), but he is very patient and there have been times where I probably made a training session way too long, and he came through anyway.

I do think he has the potential to have been seen as very, very dumb by a different owner, however. When faced with aversives or corrections, he simply sits and stares hard at you, or keeps looking at whatever he was already looking at without moving or changing his course whatsoever. No crying. No backing down. No angry redirection. Just a stoic "I'm going to pretend you didn't just do that." I could see him being labeled as a dog that "just won't listen!" because he seems to learn things easily and then forget - but I know him too well for that, he usually hasn't forgotten, you just need to make sure what you've asked him to do is worth his time

 

[maxfox426]

I always say Morgan is of average dog intelligence. I wouldn't say he's terribly smart, but he's definitely not dumb, either. He's very eager to please, can typically solve minor problems on his own, usually quite biddable, but sometimes is a little on the slow side of comprehension.

That said, I may not give him enough credit, because I also live with a pair of mutant-genius cats. They have kind of skewed my personal scale of guess-timated animal intelligence.

 

[SpringerLover]

Buzz lives his life for himself. If he wants something bad enough, he'll get it.

Bailey used to run into walls... insanely fun to train-zero street smarts.

Gabby is average at this point, but she's turning into more of a dog with more opinions lately.

 

[Finkie_Mom]

I would say that Kimma is definitely smart. So much so that it gives her anxiety LOL. She remembers EVERYTHING. Every experience, every person she meets (if only briefly), where said person keeps treats LOL.... And she manipulative. With other dogs and people. She is also persistent with what she wants (usually food) and will remember, say, where there was food dropped outside yesterday while we were training. SO she has to go check it out as soon as possible, of course. It's creepy. But everything is for her - not to please me (and that's fine by me!).

Jari is turning out to be a great little problem solver and he is really biddable, but he's just not the same as Kimma is. He's also still growing up, though, so who knows how I will view him in another few months

The other two are biddable enough and they can be quite clever when they want something

 

[teacuptiger]

Roxie is the right kind of smart for me. Biddable, picks up on things quickly, ever so slightly telepathic, etc. Although, I do joke that if she were to regenerate, she'd be saying "Still not a Border Collie".

Perfect amount of brains, though. She is incredibly fluent in body language, which probably accounts for most of the train-ability.

The only thing I've had difficulty teaching her recently is toy name association... she is getting better though, 6/10 times she is able to discern which toy I want her to bring to me out of a small group of toys.

 

[Whisper]

Millie is definitely smart, but what leaves an impression on me most lies with the fact that she's so very, very intuitive and seems to know what I want before I ask. She's easily the most biddable dog I've ever had. Problem solving creatively isn't her strongest suit, but to be fair that's mostly due to lack of confidence.

Fable is scary smart. Sometimes I forget that when she's being an idiot, but she's the one who will find sometimes astonishing and funny solutions to whatever she deems as a problem. She's not quite as biddable as Millie, though, nor does she have a great attention span, so training her often isn't as easy as with Millie, who hangs on my every word. I'm continually impressed with what she figures out by herself simply by observing. She's the kind of dog who learns what you hope she never will.

The male Rottie I had was a big dumb goofball, and sometimes I find myself missing not having a dog who's smarter than me.

 

[sassafras]

Well... my dogs are good at getting what they want.

 

[DenoLo]

Lola is smart in some ways. She also has a very haughty personality sometimes so that can make her seem smarter. I'd say she's about average, but very very motivated and persistent, so training is easy.

One thing that that she's creepy good at is finding stuff. Like if a toy rolled under the refrigerator all the way to the back a year ago, one day she'll just decide that she NEEDS TO HAVE THAT right now and will paw and cry and growl until I get the thing. Most of the time she can't even see it, I don't think she can smell it, but she somehow knows it's there. If I put a dry cookie up on a top shelf and forget about it for a few months-- same thing, just one day she suddenly decides it's time to have that.

Then of course after she successfully gets something, she'll try again in that same spot just to see if she can strike it rich again. You can tell the difference in urgency though, between when it's a real thing and when she's just fantasizing.

 

[Oko]

Okay, Feist dropped an old bone under my bed a couple of days ago and hasn't looked for it since. She just wiggled under it very purposefully, retrieved the bone, and lied down on her bed to chew on it. Whaaaaaaat.

 

[k9krazee]

Crossbone is super smart - he's very observant, remembers everything and thinks he can predict the future. I can't even try to explain it. But I may be suuuuuuper biased.

 

[Southpaw]

I think Juno is smart. The kind of smart I like, at least. She picks up on concepts really quickly (sometimes things I don't want her to know!) and is a pretty good problem solver. She doesn't get frustrated by challenges, she's more likely to keep plugging away until something works. She's not a troublemaking kind of smart though, thank God. I don't want that. Often times I think these traits are basically a direct result of the type/frequency of training we've done. That clicker training/shaping makes her notice the details, makes her more creative and makes her want to keep trying until she gets what she wants. Maybe training her a different way would have yielded different results that don't make her look "smart."

I don't work with Cajun much but when I do, I see glimmers of intelligence hidden in the puppy silliness. She seems to grasp things relatively quickly. To her credit, she is the only dog in the house to figure out how to open the garbage can. Or maybe that makes her stupid for thinking she can get away with it.

Lucy and Happy..... oy. Dumb as rocks sometimes. I give Happy a free pass for being geriatric.

 

[Toller_08]

Keira: Smart? Yes. Easily trained? Not at all. Keira is a big thinker and really good at solving problems she feels are worthy. She's very opportunistic and never misses a chance to get away with something naughty, and the things she does I know she has to be very intelligent. I wish I could mold that intelligence into something useful though haha. She takes forever to learn anything that doesn't fit her idea of being worth while, and she is not at all biddable. She actually reminds me of a sighthound in the way she goes about life and learns. Which isn't a bad thing, but it's very different from what I am used to and prefer.

Ripley: I honestly don't know. Most days I think he's not actually very smart haha. Just a dumb boy dog who would do anything for his beloved person. He's very push button and rarely thinks for himself. He's a terrible problem solver. But he likes to learn (though takes a while sometimes) and tries his hardest.

Dance: Yes, I think so. Not the most intelligent dog I've ever had, but she is pretty intelligent. She figures stuff out very quickly, whether it's stuff I wanted her to learn or stuff she's taken upon herself to learn. She is very independent minded and manipulative also, which can make her seem kind of dumb sometimes when training, but as long as there is a good motivator (for her it's food) she'll try her very hardest to figure things out as quickly as possible.

Journey: Yes. She is easily one of the most intelligent dogs I've ever had. And she seems to not forget things too. I can show her something once, and she remembers. Alternatively, I got pretty frustrated at her once for something I shouldn't have, and she didn't forget that either and I inadvertently created a problem that we had to then work on. So sometimes it's not always a good thing. But yes, she learns incredibly quickly in general life as well as training. I love free shaping with her because she problem solves and thinks things through so easily. She's so much fun. Thankfully she never uses her intelligence for bad either.

 

[JacksonsMom]

Ugh, yes, lol. Sometimes it doesn't work in his favor. ha.

He picks up tricks and commands very quickly, he's very perceptive to me, intuitive and often knows what I want of him before I ask, he knows what's going on around him. He's a great communicator with other dogs. He remembers, like, everything (ex: one time my mom set off the smoke alarm because of the oven. Now he won't go near smoke at ALL. Won't sit out by campfire, etc, and it's like he NEVER forgets when something bad happens, and doesn't just associate it with one area). He doesn't forget easily.

He's definitely "book smart" but also has "common sense".

 

[JacksonsMom]

Mia is scary smart. I have never had another dog like her. The GSD mix was smart in a very different (ie: sane and noble) and Nikki was also pretty darn smart. I can't even explain how smart Mia is but it's something a lot of people who are around her mention. She is difficult though in a lot of ways because she's overly observant and somewhat reactive and also just fearful. But she's also the dog that picks things up faster than can be if she wants to, she knows many objects and things by name, she problem solves to impressive degrees. The last is what blows me away with her. She is a very creative thinker and comes up with some zany ideas on her own. The biddability and intuitiveness is nice but the creativity is what blows me away. Mia makes me reevaluate how intelligent dogs can be.

In certain ways, Mia reminds me a lot of Jackson when you describe her. This is a better description than what I gave, lol, and fits Jax pretty well. He's hard to explain too.

 

[StillandSilent]

Gambit is the smartest dog I have ever met, much less owned. He can solve a problem like no ones business, learns a new trick in a few reps, and I swear he can shoot out opposable thumbs like the wolverines claws, because there is no way he should be able to do some of what he does otherwise.
That said, he's so nervy that I can't even take him out in public, and he would certainly never do anything outside of my or my parents house but cower, so his brains are a bit wasted.

Shaman....well, three weeks ago, I would have said he was kind of an airhead. But all of the sudden he's taken a huge interest in training, so time will have to tell on that one.

Lady Chesh is an idiot. Seriously, that cat is the perfect image of the perky cheerleader who is bubbly, and friendly, and perky, and doesn't have a thought in her head. If anyone watches Glee, she's Brittney.

 

[meepitsmeagan]

Harlow is dumber than a box of rocks as far as training goes. She also isn't really interested in learning much. OTOH, she retains things very easily. No biddability unless awesome food is involved and even then she can find better things to do.

Rider is moderately intelligent. He is biddable if we aren't in a scary situation. He's a smarty pants as far as creativity goes, though, especially in the case of stealing things or playing keep away from Harlow.