Is your dog smarter than a toddler?
If your dog is Lexi, it is. This Labradoodle, who gets her hair done by Billie Wright of Minooka, is the Houdini of the dog world.
“You cannot keep her in a kennel,” said Billie. “Oh, you can put her in and she’ll be sitting there when you leave the room, such a sweet dog. And then you’ll notice she’s standing besides you.”
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Tying the cage door shut won’t stop her. Once, Billie backed up the front door of the cage against the wall.
“I couldn’t hear her because of the dryer, but she must’ve pushed her paws against the wall, because after a while, she was back with me again.”
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Doors don’t hold Lexi, either.
“She opens then with her paws. We tried changing the doorknobs but it didn’t work. She could still open the door.”
Dr. Jon Rappport on his Web site Petplace.com says “Most dogs have the mental abilities of a 2-year old child. They can understand up to 150 words and can count to 4 or 5. If you compare this to most other animals, this is considered pretty smart in the Animal Kingdom.”
Everyone agrees that Border Collies are the smartest dogs on our planet. The American Kennel Club rates dogs by intelligence this way:
- Border Collies
- Poodles
- German shepherds
- Golden retrievers
- Doberman Pinschers
- Shetland Sheepdogs
- Labrador retrievers
- Papillons
- Rottweilers
- Australian Cattle Dogs
Really? These guys are smarter than my Frosty? Siberian huskies rate No. 45, after Cocker Spaniels and that is just not right. Bloodhounds are rated No. 75 and Afghan hounds rate at the very bottom, No. 80.
“Bloodhounds are the blondes of the dog world,” said Billie. “They have ADD. There are just too many great smells to concentrate.”
Jan Walters of Channahon, an assistant professor of veterinary medical technology at Joliet Junior College can stand up for the second smartest on the list.
“My Standard Poodle Julie (age 12) is the smartest dog I’ve ever met. She communicates so well with me that it’s almost like she reads my mind. Actually, I know that she’s not psychic, but is just incredibly observant of my body language and tone of voice. She ‘reads’ humans better than any other dog I’ve ever met,” she said.
Dr. Barri Salbego, a veterinarian at VCA of Channahon Animal Hospital, says her late Lab-Greyhound Jessie was the smartest dog she ever met.
“He could problem solve,” she says of her dog, who died six years ago at age 11 and is still greatly missed. “If his chain was wrapped around a tree, he would unwind it himself. I would put treats under objects, like a bowl or a large box. And he would flip the object with his nose, or move it, like with his shoulder. If I could have cloned him I would have.”
Years ago, they had a deaf puppy. Jessie was 2, the puppy was 4 months old.
“I said one day ‘Jessie, go get your brother.’ And he did. The puppy was upstairs. He ran up and down the stairs until the puppy followed him downstairs,” she said.
After that, she could always count on Jessie to round up the deaf pup with those four words.
Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, wrote a book titled “The Intelligence of Dogs” published in 1994.
Coren said intelligence in human might be subdivided into verbal ability, numerical ability, logical reasoning, memory and so forth.
He said in dogs, it’s:
1. Instinctive intelligence: What a dog is bred for, i.e. herding.
2. Adaptive intelligence: What a dog can learn to do for himself, i.e. learning and benefiting from experience with his environment, solving new problems.
3. Working and obedience intelligence: Closest to what we might call school-learning ability, based upon what the dog can learn to do when instructed by humans. This is the type of intelligence that Coren's research focused on, and is what he used in determining rankings of various dog breeds.
But not everyone wants a smart dog. Billie, the groomer, says it’s a lot easier to work on a pooch that isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“Keep in mind that the smartest dogs often don't make the best pets, trainers and vets say. Your job is to find a breed that suits your lifestyle and to focus on bringing out the best in your dog,” advises Petswebmd.com
Jan Larsen is best friends with one of the smartest dogs she’s ever met, Frosty the Snow Dog, who exhibit independent thought all the time. The household is rounded out with two Siamese cats. You can reach her at janettellarsen@aol.com
