How Smart Is Your Dog?I read an article in last week's CBS news which made me smile. It gives a number of tests you can do to try and figure out how smart your dog is. A sort of canine IQ test if you like. It suggests a number of different problems you can set your dog and according to how quickly - if at all - the dog solves them you can figure out how smart your dog is. I smiled at the third test on the list. This suggests you wrap a treat in a square of aluminum foil and fold it twice to close it. Does the dog use its paws to open the foil, or its mouth and paws together? Or can it not get the foil open and so ends up just playing with it instead? The reason I laughed to myself was that I was imagining doing it with my youngest dog. She has the most revolting eating habits of any dog I've ever come across. Think of the worst scavenging dog you can imagine then double it. You still haven't even come close!! If I accidentally drop a plastic food wrapper on the floor if it has the slightest scrap of food still stuck to it she'll wolf it down faster than you can blink. Which then gives me a really unpleasant task a day or two later when it's passed through her system and she's trying her best to get rid of it. It invariably gets stuck partway out and I have to help her with it if you know what I mean. The less said about that the better! |
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Anyway, back to the treat-in-the-foil. I have no intention of doing that test on my young bitch as I know full well what would happen. She wouldn't waste any time bothering with trying to unwrap it - she'd just gobble up the whole thing! Although these 'IQ' tests might be helpful to someone who's maybe a relatively new dog owner, once you've owned dogs for even a short length of time you'll very quickly get a feel for how bright your dog is just by how quickly it learns and how well it remembers things. Although my young bitch behaves in the stupidest way imaginable regarding what rubbish she chooses to swallow, she's sharp as a new pin, and once she's learnt something it sticks indelibly in her memory. If you've read my book 'Dog Trainig Blueprint To Success' you'll know how I train puppies to sit. This is a perfect example of assessing how bright a puppy is. The clever ones like border collies and German shepherds pick this up so fast you have to see it to believe it. I learnt this trick myself from an old hand years ago. The first time she showed me it in operation I had to pinch myself. She took an eight week old border collie that had never heard the word 'sit' before. It was sitting to command in less than 60 seconds. That's right - in just ONE minute. When you work with intelligent dogs like that you're never under the slightest illusions about their mental ability. On the other hand there are some breeds which can be painfully slow to pick up new ideas. Sighthounds are a case in point (greyhounds, deerhounds, salukis, borzois etc). Please don't be offended if you own one of these breeds. I love them to bits and have owned three myself over the years and am a big fan. But with the best will in the world nobody could realistically suggest that they are particularly smart. These breeds will take a lot longer than a couple of minutes to teach 'sit' or 'down', and it would be silly on your part to expect otherwise. But the point is that you'll very quickly come to know your individual dog and you'll develop a feel for how smart he or she is. Once you're 'in tune' with how his/her mind works you'll find it much easier to train the dog. If you know you've got a very bright dog you know that you can push the training along at a much faster pace than would be possible with a dog that's much slower to learn. Let the dog dictate the pace. It'll tell you when it's ready to go on to the next step, if only you'll listen. Just because you might have a slower dog doesn't mean you won't get there in the end. Just be patient and take things one step at a time. Recommended reading "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".
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