Dogs As Smart As 2-year-old Kids

[Jose]

From LiveScience:

The canine IQ test results are in: Even the average dog has the mental abilities of a 2-year-old child.

The finding is based on a language development test, revealing average dogs can learn 165 words (similar to a 2-year-old child), including signals and gestures, and dogs in the top 20 percent in intelligence can learn 250 words.

And the smartest?

...

I couldn't disagree more.

Forget about comparisons to 2yos - on many occasions my dog has demonstrated a lot more intelligence than the average local adult hunter & gatherer.

Do you have any stories of dog smarts you'd like to share here?

[sbk]

required reading: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/...nia-morell-text

[bina]

250 cues is the standard that most dog trainers accept for dogs: most of the 250 words/cues are strings of same thigns;

the foundation words:

go

up

out

on

leave it

drop it

stop

off

etc, and then double word commands ; there's actually a good old (1989!)book usuing a samoyed dog as the star for demonstrating a working dog's use and understanding of commands... and how to build your dog up to those commands... 'communicating with your dog' by ed baer its the 20 word language of commands that turns in to the 250 words in combination. its actually a great book. i lend it out with karen pryors' dont shoot the dog to many folks on kibbutz that run in to problems with their dogs, each book is a different system but actually gives most people a good insight in to basics. (and any one that works with kids catches on really quickly to the basics of dealing with dogs since essentially when dealing with young children u are building their cues and responses in the same way.).

not sure if that shows intelligence or just responsiveness. goats learn verbal and visual cues also as do horses (back up, stand, trot, etc)...

intelligence has more to do with taking info and using it one step further. something that a majority of humans seems to lack also....

as for my three: the male lhasa is very very smart but doesnt want to please anyone, the jack rat terrier is smart and really wants to please when his terrier instincts dont over rule him, and lilee the lhasa has got to be the stupidest dog i have ever met in my entire life of working with dogs, i think she may have suffered brain injury after falling in to that dry well in our antiquities ruins on the kibbutz. my boxers were super sharp. ive met dumb dogs but lilee really is lacking in intelligence. she wants to please but if u place an object in front of her, she wont go around it. she just stops. she gets lost going on the same walkways. we often find her standing with a puzzled look on her, waiting for us to find her. she did have hearing issues but we have checked as much as we could and she does here within the norm for a small furry dog. she also sees pretty well if her hair is gathered in a topknot. food motivates her but she just doesnt manage to actually anticipate or figure out the next step. i think that even ceaser (there we go...) had a dog on his program that really wanted to please but was just really really dumb and aprt from some operation conditioning for certain commands, the owners couldnt expect more from him.

someone once wrote that dobermans were so smart they would anticipate actions before the trainers thought of them.

bina