unintelligent dogs

that so sounds like Bugsy and his girlfriend Bella - her owner is always saying man you can see him thinking - and she always has a vacant - happy - look on her face - they are just total opposites except their  joi de vive

ORIGINAL: rwbeagles

The less intelligent the dog...IMO the easier they are to live with. You don't have to outthink them...and they spend little time plotting hostile takeovers and escape routes...lmao.
 
If you think about it the more intelligent the dog the more "work" it takes to keep them occupied mentally...
 
I also find different types of intelligence. There's rote learning...cunning...survival smarts...conniving behavior, etc etc. Some dogs may lack in one area and excel in another.

 
Lol, so true.  Trey is great at learning.  Never occurs to him to try something else or do something on his own.  If you ask then he thinks he has to.  Nik, however, is always looking for the easiest way out.  She loves to please me but she also knows how to get around the rules and how to get her way. 
 
Beau is by far the most intelligent dog I've been around ever.  He's just always on top of things and right in the middle of things.  He works out problems quickly, and he also follows commands easily.  One thing I noticed was he uses his front paws all the time to open things, unhinge his playpen, get his toys out from under things or in things, etc.  I don't know if that's because he's smart or just because he's small.

A lot of the sweeping generalizations people make about breeds are not based on intelligence but on the trait of biddabiliy or the focus on the handler. A biddable dog will learn obedience quickly but that doesn't mean they're smarter than another dog. It just means they follow instructions well and have a good memory for that sort of thing.

The breeds that are noted as "less intelligent" are often breeds that are bred to not need or want to focus on a handler. They don't care about following orders. But that doesn't necissarily have anything to do with intelligence, as we all know from encountering people who are very good at following orders but are braindead in every other way.

I go back and forth on Conrad and Marlowe. Conrad is definately the more biddable of the two. He picks up new commands faster and generalizes them better. He's more handler-focused, and has a better attention span when it comes to what I'm telling him. Marlowe on the other hand seems to have more "street smarts". He's a lot less biddable, but when it comes to solving problems that involve something that he really really wants, he's better at it than Conrad. Conrad can be a little dippy and his first course of action when he's stumped is to come find one of us and get help. But neither of them are really dumb.

Joey is beyond smart.  His trainer, his vet, and several other dog experts, including a search and rescue trainer called him smart.  Sometimes too smart for his own good.  For example, he knows what "come" means, just sometimes he prefers to either ignore it or he takes the long way to get to you peeing  on every long blade of grass as he comes over.  Other times, he comes right away and always gets a grand welcome.  Last week he did the wierdest thing that made realize how very smart he is.  We were at a park that noone ever goes to.  He was off leash, and DH and I were playing catch with a football.  Joey kept wandering too far away.  I'd call him back and he ignored me most of time.  DH and I spent most of our catch time calling him back.  Sometimes he'd come back lay down a while and then run off again.  So we decided for his safety and for our sanity, we would go home.  As DH and I started back to the car, Joey ran in front of us and laid down.  Like..."look guys, i'm being good now, look at how good I'll be."  He did this 4 times.  Then watched us walk by wined and gave in to getting in the car.

One thing I don't understand though, if he's so smart why does he get into the garbage if he knows when I catch him, he's in trouble.  We have a lock on the garbage can now, but before he kept knocking it over and spreading it through the house and then when we'd come home he'd be out of site...why? He knew he was in trouble.  We ignore him for a while.  The trainer said he connects garbage on the floor when you come home with trouble, but not getting into the garbage as being in trouble.  We've caught him getting into the garbage when we're home and have corrected him with "no."  And you can bet he has the same expression on his face when we catch him in the garbage as when we come home to garbage on the floor.  Who knows?

The breeds that are noted as "less intelligent" are often breeds that are bred to not need or want to focus on a handler. They don't care about following orders. But that doesn't necissarily have anything to do with intelligence, as we all know from encountering people who are very good at following orders but are braindead in every other way.

 
oh yeah. Our wolf hybrid was scary smart but hadn't the slightest interest in being "biddable". A very nasty combination to live with. Baxter often pretends to be dumb as a stump just because he's incredibly lazy, oops, I mean under motivated.

My sister's mostly-white harlequin dane is a little slow. His name, Leonard, fits him to a T. We call him Lenny, like the big, mentally challenged guy in "Of Mice and Men" He's got some vision and hearing problems, and doesn't know his own strength. But he is the sweetest lovebug in the entire world.

I had a rescue lab and a rescue cocker, both not the brightest bulbs! The lab knew tricks and was very obedient, but had ZERO problem-solving skills. In fact, she would get herself into messes because of things like not know she could walk backward, for instance....get stuck in a closet or corner...LOL

Nika the cocker just adored me and was my shadow. Period. She was old and had incontinence problems but that was physiological and we treated it and she improved greatly.

Both dogs were extremely poorly bred puppymill disasters.

Just like wild animals have their own ways of being "smart" depending on what their adaptations are, dogs have different smarts that are bred into them.

Stevie the red rottie/dobie mix was extremely smart about people (he had excellent character sense), about learning new tricks, and was extremely attentive. He understood an incredible amount of English, some German and some Spanish.

Sofia was a Wild Thing for years! She's still not a cuddle dog but will now ask for petting, and will lay next to me (and sometimes Scott but no one else) and just want body contact (and petting). But it's all on her terms.

She's calmed down a LOT (turned 5 in Nov.) and some of her elkhound is coming to the fore as opposed to the coyote/husky stuff. She's "inconveniently smart" as Scott says. If she wants something, she'll figure out how to get it. Like how to get out of a locked campershell so she could go visit another dog that was walking by....true story! How to figure out latches....she's been working on the front door and has the deadbolt worked out but can't do the doorknob thank GOD (Stevie could though).

But she's the best of both worlds because she's submissive and is SO GOOD. I can leave her next to a steak and she won't touch it. She leaves all my food alone, whether she's alone in the car with it or not. She never counter surfs, she never chews anything but her rawhide bone, she never gets in the garbage! She's just SO GOOD!

She's definitely wicked smart, but only uses it when she knows I won't catch her, such as undoing her tie out for instance (I know how to use the right snaps now but when we first moved here she went through a few!).

When Ole dog comes I'm going to have a rude awakening, I know, he'll be a REGULAR dog!![]

My father thinks CoCo is dumb because she LOVES, absolutely LOVES strangers!  She will run up to anyone excitedly for pets and kisses.
 
There are times when I also think CoCo is stupid because she will give me the dumbest look ever, with her tongue slightly sticking out.... with a vacant look in her eyes... like... uh.. what am I doing again? 
 
And I think she's dumb when the only thing she HATES is the dog in the mirror... she growls and barks at it nonstop.
 
But then she does something, like taking my keys, and then "burrying" it in her bed to prevent me from leaving, or rolling her ball under the dresser and then howling at it, just so I can get up and get it for her (and I can actually hear her laughing inside) or when she takes the plastic bowl, filled with water, and carefully dumps out the water so she doesnt get wet, and flings it around like a frisbee.... that makes me think otherwise...
 
She's still a puppy and will be starting school next month!  So.... I cant really decide if she's smart/dumb or anything of that sorts just about yet... lol
 
 

Ooohh. My parents definately have a stupid dog. She's a Min Pin. We've been trying to housetrain her for 3 years. Yes, that's right. 3 YEARS. She still hasn't gotten it. We let her out every 15 minutes for weeks on top of weeks. She just does not get it. You have to watch her when she is on the couch. The back is curved, and she will walk right off the back of it if she's not watching. The only thing she knows how to do is eat, drink and sleep. I've tried everything. She has also walked off our front proch before because she was looking the other way. Same thing with the dock on our pond. She was walking backward, and then splash. I could go on and on. Oh yeah, she's also eaten blocks of rat poison out of our attic before. She was perfectly fine. She just pooped neon green for a few days. [sm=lol.gif]

We had St. Bernards when I was a kid. They were pretty slow upstairs. We also had a menace of a cat who would lie in wait for them on top of the hot water heater, then pounce on them and bloody their noses. They never did learn to look for the cat when they entered the room.

I get the feeling that Schmee is smart, mostly because she's curious about everyting. When she was four months old she kept trying to play with the dog in the mirror. Eventually she understood, but only because she was curious and figued it out.

ETA: [linkhttp://forum.dog.com/asp/tm.asp?m=302200]another instance of Schmee being smart[/link]

I definitely think Wyatt's dumb. He's the kind of dog that will get tangled around a tree with his leash...when i tell him to go around he freezes, starts to back up and slips out of his collar. This happens constantly. Also, no matter how many times i yell at him for getting in the garbage can, he does it again! I also think it doesn't help being brothers with Kaiser, who is one of the most intelligent dogs i've ever been around in my life.

ORIGINAL: Amitiel

I have 1 that is .... limited - the mini-poddle/maltese mix her brain is the size of a walnut (at best) she knows 3 or 4 commands despite years of attempts at training

 
Thats impossible, every dog's brain is the same size as any other dog, its like saying that small people have a smaller brain and are not smart or basketball players are Einsteins since they are bigger therefore their brains are too

I've heard salukis being compared to cats all the time...so would that be the knowledge extent of the cat?

Maybe the Afghan appears so stupid on the charts because they have better things to do than learn stupid human commands...or eat, or get any human motivation whatsoever...they weren't bred to work alsongside people...more like ahead of them...

ORIGINAL: espencer

ORIGINAL: Amitiel

I have 1 that is .... limited - the mini-poddle/maltese mix her brain is the size of a walnut (at best) she knows 3 or 4 commands despite years of attempts at training

Thats impossible, every dog's brain is the same size as any other dog, its like saying that small people have a smaller brain and are not smart or basketball players are Einsteins since they are bigger therefore their brains are too

Espencer.....a "teacup" Yorkie's brain would rattle around Sofia's head like a marble. They DO have different size heads and they do have different size brains.