How smart is your dog?

[BKLYNCyclone]

Have had a couple of beagles- not very bright.

I, unfortunately, have a smart beagle...

1. We can teach her new tricks in an hour with food motivation, and she doesn't forget the trick... We made the mistake of making roll over the final trick too often, so she does it automatically now whenever we have food.
2. She learned how to open our cabinets. Luckily she's not big enough to open our fridge.
3. She learned how to operate the childlocks that we installed to prevent her from getting into our cabinets...
4. She understands tone of voice and words better than any dog I've ever had. For instance, if I catch her trying to open the cabinet and say no, she'll immediately stop, leave the kitchen, turn around and grunt/growl at me, then continue on her way. She pretty much does this anytime we tell her to stop doing something... (and we don't use "no" every time).
5. She knows exactly who to kiss up to as she goes to my wife every time.
6. If she gets in a lot of trouble, and I take away her garbage, or whatever item she wasn't supposed to have, she'll go find something of mine and take a leak on it... Once, I yelled at her for getting into the garbage. She came over all apologetic and I rewarded her by letting me jump into my lap... She proceeded to calmly urinate all over me.
7. She watches TV intently. She howls at animals, monsters, or people doing bad things to other people...
8. She figured out how to get onto our counter. She got on a chair, jumped on our table, and then proceed to run and jump 3 feet to get onto our bar height countertop... I have no idea how she didn't slide right off... Luckily this has only happened once.
9. She recognizes all grates and walks around them when we're outside. She also will only pee on manhole covers or grass. Since we're in brooklyn, she pees a lot more on manhole covers...

We'll leave it at that now... My other dog is a border collie/pit bull mix. She's relatively smart (she loves frisbee), but she has the focused one track mind of a pit bull. Mostly with her its a matter of getting her enough exercise so she isn't so wired that she won't pay attention. She's more of a "jock" than an academic.

 

[cybsball20]

One of our favorite things to do with our dog is say, "Who's here?" then she rusn to the front door and starts barking, no matter what she was doing before...

 

[Clonefan94]

I've only ever owned one dog in my life. My parents, out of the blue, bought me a Cocker Spaniel, when I was a kid. It didn't surprise me that that breed wasn't on the list. He's the reason that to this day, 30 years later, I have never even considered owning another dog.

 

[OWLCITYCYFAN]

I, unfortunately, have a smart beagle...

I installed an underground dog fence at our home in Minnesota to keep our beagle from roaming. We trained him and for six months and I thought it was working great; he had the run of the yard and was always there when we called for him.

One night a neighbor called and said a dog had been tearing up his garbage when he set it out on garbage day; the collector saw the culprit and it was our beagle. I told him he must have been mistaken but set up surveilance anyway.

The next morning, I see the dog steeling himself to take a run at the fence in the most remote corner of the yard, furthest from the transmitter. I got to the back door just as he ran thru and yelled his name, at which point he turned around and came back thru, yelping as he got shocked both times! I've never been able to decide if he was smart or dumb but you've got to give credit where it's due. He did find the spot with the weakest signal and he'd been going on excursions without our knowing it for months!

 

[balken]

Nice list. However your missing some smart dogs.

1. Wondermutt (from the movie summerschool with Mark Harmon
2. Hooch
3. Lassie
4. Chesty (The mascot of the Marine Corps)
5. Yellow dog (from the movie funny farm)

I will grant you Wondermutt is definitely in the conversation. Hooch and Lassie are overrated, IMO. Chesty has a solid resume but I am not sure about Yellow Dog.

Some honorable mentions would include Mr. Peabody (Rocky & Bullwinkle), Sparky (South Park) and Spike the Bulldog (Looney Tunes).

 

[cytyler]

My dog sleeps for about 90% of the day. His schedule goes: wake up, eat, outside, sleep, sleep, get up, jump onto the couch, sleep, sleep, sleep, outside, sleep, sleep, eat, outside, sleep, sleep, sleep, go to bed.

 

[CyCrazy]

List looks very similar to what is on Wikipedia:

The Intelligence of Dogs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My dog is #16 on that list. (Keeshond)

well it looks like my rotty might be smart after all........... honestly the smartest dog I have had. Ive had dobermans, 2 german shepards and she is the best. but does like to bark at random noises. oh well shes my little baby girl:wubclub:

 

[Cyclone90]

I'm surprised Golden Retriever is on the list. IMO one of the dumber breeds I've been around. My breed of choice is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever and based on their criteria of obeying commands on the 1st time I understand why they're not on there. They're intensly loyal and stubborn as hell until they know you're the boss.

I beg to differ. Pun intended. I've been around dogs all my life, the latest a Golden. Hardly dumb. Easily among the smartest. It's not a coincidence that they're often used for guide and service dogs. It will be tough having another dog besides a Golden.

 

[jaretac]

It's like there is a bunch of proud parents on this board, "my dog is not dumb, his is one of the smarts dogs ever".

I'm just a guilty as everyone else, still funny.

 

[Wesley]

Do those shed? I wonder if someone could train one to hunt...

Long hair that does not shed due to poodle strain. They have a doodle website with pics.

 

[Covenant Clone]

I beg to differ. Pun intended. I've been around dogs all my life, the latest a Golden. Hardly dumb. Easily among the smartest. It's not a coincidence that they're often used for guide and service dogs. It will be tough having another dog besides a Golden.

Totally agree...we had labs growing up and they were very smart dogs, but my wife and I decided on a golden and he is far more intelligent than any dog I have ever been around. He understands and picks up things very quickly and he is just over a year old. I will be a golden owner the rest of my life!!

 

[cytech]

:biglaugh: That's pretty good - you should video tape that sometime.

I tried to get her to do it the other day to take a video and couldn't get her to. But she didn't have a problem doing it today.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C-ExRPcQaU]YouTube - Dog opening door[/ame]

 

[Kyle]

My dog is #1 so I'm not going to argue about where they placed him. I will say that I agree with everything they said about Boarder Collies.

The only thing I should add is that they don't seem to be motivated by food, so tricks relating to food are impossible to teach.

That must be specific to your dog, because our border collie (see avatar) is very food motivated.

 

[jaretac]

That must be specific to your dog, because our border collie (see avatar) is very food motivated.

Just curious, male or female?

I've heard that there is a big difference in personality. Mine is a male, he will sneak down in the middle of the night to eat in solitude. All he does during the day is chase shadows all over the room.

 

[DanCyn]

We had a dog that I am convinced was the smartest dog ever. She was a mutt, some type of Terrior mix. She could almost understand everything we said. If we mentioned the word treat, she would sit, roll-over, shake hands, speak, every command you can think of. She understood my wife perfectly - go lay down, go to your cage, etc...

One time we went on vacation and had friends keep her. Within one hour, she taught their black lab how to get out of it's kennel that it had been in for years. I think they're still mad at us...

We eventually had our cousin's kids watch her when we were away, and they are still thrilled to his day that she ran straight to her cage when she was told to. Smartest dog I've ever seen. Not trained smart, but just plain smart. We had to put her down because of cancer, but I still miss her and her intelligence.

And she was just plain ugly. Smallest head you've ever seen on a dog of that size. But she was brilliant - in dog years.

 

[clones_jer]

Not trying to hijack the thread, but what does it usually take to get into some of these competitions? My dog is pretty talented (speed, jumping & coordination) & easy to train (especially when it comes to playing frisbee), so I've thought about conducting some more formal training & enterring some contests, but don't really know how to go about it or if it's even worth the effort. Any input or links to websites/organizations is appreciated......

We take agility classes through Kirkwood with our sheltie-mutt. You might check around town.

Depends how your dog is tempered but I've seen some flyball dogs get "racy". Not sure that is a dog term, but we used in with our horses back in the day. They run so much and so often doing something repetitive they get a little stupid with other things.

 

[CycloneDaddy]

I'm still trying to determine if my beagle Hilton is really smart or really stupid. I was leaning towards smart until the other day when I witnessed him jump on the bed (he needs a running start because he has junk in his trunk) and snatch a Kleenex out of the box and then ate it at lighting pace before I could take it from him. I'm now leaning towards dumbest dog ever.

 

[Cyclonepride]

Have had a couple of beagles- not very bright.

No, they're not. My beagle could find damn near anything food related though. We wrapped some presents (one of which had crackers in it) and put it on top of the fireplace. The dog was standing under the fireplace as soon as she got back inside, with her nose in the air. Smelled it from 6' away, through plastic and wrapping paper.

 

[alaskaguy]

To somewhat hijack this thread, does anybody other than me follow the Iditarod standings? Having lived in Nome, Alaska for a number of years, dog mushing and the Iditarod were the sport of sports.