Different people have different ideas of whether a dog is smart or not. The intelligence level of your dog depends on a number of different things. Intelligence of a dog is a very subjective idea, although many pet owners report that they can clearly understand their own dogs’ level of intelligence. Before labeling your dog as smart or dumb you may want to take some of these factors into consideration.

The Breed Makes a Difference

One thing that will help you determine the intelligence of your dog is their breed. Certain breeds are known for particular intellectual abilities and skills. Labs are commonly known for being good hunters, German Sheppard’s for being very protective, and collies are known for being good at herding sheep.

Each breed of dog has its own task at which they excel. If your dog is not excelling at a certain activity maybe it is not natural for the dog to excel in this area. If you try a different activity or task your dog may pick it up right away, but some skills will come easier to your dog than to other breeds of dogs.

Personality

In addition to breed, each dog will have his or her own personality. Just like humans, dogs are individual beings and their personalities will develop in conjunction with their upbringing and genetics. Some dogs may learn better by imitation while others dogs may need simple repetition to learn a task. Try several different teaching methods when you are trying to teach your dog a command, a variety in teaching methods is the only way to figure out which learning personality type your dog has.

Dogs can be very intelligent, there are dogs who can sniff out drugs, or lead people and help people like the seeing eye dogs do. There are endless possibilities to what dogs can do for humans, but as humans we need to pay attention to each individual dog and train them according to their learning ability and style.

If your friends dog seems to be doing way more advanced things than your dog, like opening doors, or picking up their own toys, don’t be so quick to label your dog as dumb. Maybe your dog is not doing these things because it does not want to, or maybe your dog is smart enough to know that if he doesn’t pick up the toys he will not get in trouble or wont get punished, and you will do it for him. There are many things to consider before you label your dog as dumb.

Gender of the dog is another thing people seem to think has an affect on a dogs intelligence, as of yet there are no studies that prove this to be true. Gender does not seem to affect the intelligence of a dog. If your male dog is not excelling as much as your female dog you need to look at the other factors, such as breed and personality. Just remember that some dogs need to have a different kind of training than other dogs so your training needs to be specialized for each individual dog.

Article by Allison Duarte of Oh My Dog Supplies – more elevated dog feeders added monthly

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