I got a call from my veterinarian one Friday morning. "I need Tikka for the weekend."
"Oh?"
"I am testing a new, state-of-the-art kennel run for the back room of the hospital. I want to make sure it's escape-proof, and I know that if any dog can open the latch, she can."
I dropped her off at closing time, nine that evening.
Early the next morning, my phone was ringing.
I heard a sigh. "Come and get her. She's out."
And yet this same dog barely squeaked her way to qualifying scores in AKC obedience trials. Okay, she got Highest Scoring Siberian in Trial once. Okay, she was the only Siberian entered.
From time to time, on social media, articles about the smartest dog breeds pop up. In these lists of brainy canines, the reader can most often find those breeds that do best in performance events. The statistics are usually based on interviews with obedience trainers. Although I am such a trainer myself, I'd like to offer another perspective.
There is a vast difference between "trainability" (I made that word up) and "intelligence." You can ask a person with a low IQ to sit at a peg board and put pegs in holes... chances are he'll do it all day long, without fuss.
Put a person of average or above intelligence at that same board, and you'll probably get, "Why am I doing this? For how long? Do I get paid? When's lunch?"
Allow me to share with you a story of dog intelligence at its finest.
Decades ago, a friend was driving a sled dog team of purebred Siberian Huskies at a race in New England. She had sixteen dogs on the gangline, which means that her lead dog was roughly ninety feet in front of her. As the sled went around a curve, it slid on ice and threw her against a tree. The team, of course, kept going. She was badly injured and just lay there, stunned.
The lead dog, recognizing that the musher was no longer standing on the runners, turned the team around on the trail, brought them back to where she was, and stopped them. Imagine... he had fifteen race-happy Siberians running full-tilt behind him! He did this independently, with no command from anyone.
The woman was able to drag herself into the basket of the sled, whereupon she passed out. The leader then brought the team back to the starting chute, again without human direction. This is a striking example of intelligence and independent thinking. (She suffered broken vertebrae in her back.)
Now... Siberians are known in the dog world as the clowns of the obedience ring. One of my own stuck his neck through the side of a show ring (they are like stretched-out baby gates, with diamond-shaped openings) and dragged it through two other rings, thereby disrupting the judging in progress in three rings. Not the greatest display of intellect in action.
Those dogs that are the most difficult to train might not be "dumb," just as the ones that are easiest are not necessarily "smart."
Dogs of some breeds will obey almost without question. When you tell others to sit, they say, "Why?" And then the bargaining begins.
So you think you know what the smartest dog breeds are? Think again! There is a huge difference between trained responses and independent thinking
