Canine Intelligence
All dog owners like to claim that their canine friend is so much smarter than the average dog and can often be found boasting in the local park to fellow dog owners about just how incredibly clever their pooch really is.
It has been proven that dogs in general are intelligent and especially those who are asked to complete a task that they were bred to do, their intelligence seems to shine from them when they are busy ‘working’ hard at the requested command. You only have to watch a dog at work to see the pure delight on its face; guide dogs for instance live for their blind or partially sighted owners the same as dogs trained to assist the disabled.
These dogs thrive on helping their owners and seem so clever to outsiders looking in, whilst this fact is undoubtedly true with no question, the dogs are clever down to the training that they have received.
If you took a guide dog and presented it with a flock of sheep for instance do you think it would know instinctively what to do? The same if you took a Border collie and asked it to guide a blind person it would not have a clue what to do or what you were asking of it. Dogs are extremely intelligent creatures and generally they learn very quickly.
Motivation plays a huge part in their intelligence and their learning process. One such case that I heard of recently was concerning 2 Labradors; 1 of the dogs would carefully open doors using its nose and also its paws whilst the other dog would purely sit back and watch and when someone opened the door it would go through. The owners were convinced that the dog that never opened the door was slow and could not learn the art of door opening, a dog behaviourist was called and it was pointed out to the owners that actually the second dog was a lot brighter than the first dog because it would wait for the door to be opened for it!
Another ‘funny’ story concerns a very clever Border collie, the dog would show aggression by curling her lip up at the other dogs on the farm where she resided; the owner was taught how to help the dog and how to teach her not to carry on with the behaviour.
The owner invited the trainer back to the farm one day to witness how well she had worked with the collie as it had ceased the lip curling behaviour now. The trainer observed that the dog seemed to have stopped and moved around the other side of the dog to praise it only to witness that the collie was still continuing the lip curling but only on the side away from its owner! It had learnt how to be discreet so it would not have to endure more training.
Our canine friends are a lot smarter than we give them credit for at times, so watch and make sure your pooch does not outwit you too often!
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