Is your dog smart?

[Jare]

I would say Nellie is decently average, she isn't particularly slow or quick at picking up new things, easy enough to teach thing but not so easy that we just fly through new behaviors left and right. Come to think of it, that ol gal is 10 and she just learned to "speak" finally, she never offered it before so I could never capture it and one day she got frustrated, let out a bark and I jumped all over the opportunity.


Aija...hmm. Well, to be honest she lacks common sense, the poor fool. If there is a short simple path and a long complicated one she will almost certainly choose the difficult path. If asked to go over/around something she is straight up dumbfounded sometimes. We tried flyball, and she did...okay I guess but things just weren't clicking and it wasn't the type of work she enjoys doing. On the other hand, she can pick up new tricks FAR faster than any other dog I have owned and can move onto new behaviors at a bit quicker pace and she's is also pretty good at figuring out puzzle toys.

The only thing about her is she has a very very short frustration threshold, if she doesn't get it quickly she will result to some pathetic tantrum of defeat. And while I said she's good at puzzle toys, she really doesn't understand "empty" and once all the food is out she will scream her face off and slam the toy around in frustration. Magical food producer had stopped producing magical food= RAGE.

 

[Dagwall]

I'd say Jubel is above average but not in the too smart for his own good, get himself into trouble way. He's very bibbable, extremely food motivated but doesn't get overly excited to the point he can't focus on what I'm asking, fairly good problem solver, picks up quickly on routines, not easily frustrated/will keep working with me well past and hour.

He is my first dog so I can really only directly compare him to some of my fosters, he's been smarter than all of them. Partly I can attribute that to the fact he has been taught to learn, some of my fosters weren't worked with much beyond 'sit' and some basic house manners. They don't really know how to learn so training them was much more complicated. Plus a few became over excited when treats came out and couldn't focus.

With some of the fosters I could see some intelligence inside them based on their behaviors and how they interacted with the world. Others the same thing showed off their lack of intelligence. Such as just understanding the leash is an extension of them to me; they need to go around trees, sign posts, etc as the leash will get caught. Duncan never seemed to grasp that, always got himself snagged. Duncan also ran into a glass door, twice in the span of a minute.

My most recent foster to go I think was pretty smart but was never worked with beyond 'sit' and manners. He wasn't that hard to train in general but he just didn't have much experience learning new things from people so it was a bigger challenge than with Jubel.

Jubel has figured out every puzzle toys placed in front of him very quickly. Learns new tricks very easily. Remembers things we worked on and abandoned for whatever reason a long time ago and picks up right where we left off when I try and go back... which can be a problem sometimes. If I abandoned the trick because he was stuck in the wrong pattern, I have to come up with a new approach so he thinks it's a new trick and doesn't revert to the unwanted behavior.