Dogs ARE NOT STUPID - Page 2

They are not stupid at all, sometimes they are scary smart...


The other night I let my girl out to go potty before bed. She went into the forest so I assumed she needs to do the #2. I decided to let her do her business on her own and I went into the house to make myself a cup of tea. While water was boiling I got a phone call from the friend at the Airport: “Hi, I’m calling to say that I just saw your Suzie here”.  Really? - airport is about half a mile away...  Still on the phone, I opened the front door and I see Suzie sitting on a doormat with her tongue hanging down, breathing hard and smiling “Whatever they said – it’s not true, I was here all that time, Mom”. But she knew she got busted…   The question is - how did she know that somebody called her in? To be back home in time she had to realize that she was spotted at the airport and made decision that it is better to get home now and run full speed…

bee .. glad you agree .. years ago ? about 20 .. someone wrote a bokk  " the Intelligence of dogs'. the poodle was rated most intelligent .. i thkn GSADs were rated 3rd on the list.  we know canine4s learn by Association .. But they have the ability to deductively  reason , NOT Inductively.  maening they can 'think' : if this then ...that canines  . e.g.  if i sit , i get a treat .. if i out ... i get another bite ... if i bring back .. i get *** .      canine [ and wolves /foxes ] are cunning .. so i pose a question for members to discuss : what is or contstiutes intelligence ?  what is intelligence . how do you define it ... and how can we makwe ourselves and our dogs better . how do you know if your dog is intelligent , not so intelligent or lazy .. BTW living with a multitude of canines for years .. i can see amoung them the recognition that one in the pack has bewtter mental ability than the others ..  a type of 'Intelligence' in people is their social ability . YES ?? .. ok if you agree ..now let's talk about: ALPHA .. we think alpha is the biggest /strongest , right ? ...WRONG .. the 'alpha'   in a pack is primarily determined or constituted by the "Social Relations" . yes ... dogs like people form bonds , allies.. the DOG with the most support of the others takes alpha postion .. NOW the alpha position that gains  respect/loyatly/ support  that gains is formed in a multitued of ways. maybe it is the dog that shares with the others / this enables survival , maybe it is the dog that can best problem solve for the kill , maybe it has to do woith some dog being genetically reralted as opposed to not being genetically related . Again .. intelligence .. to start- i claim that intelligence has a 'social' component , for one element ..a social interlligence exists amoung canines for one.  BAs a way that we make oursleves and our dogs better : this is why i stressed in my classes. if you don't think you know what you are doing .. at least act like it and give the dog the impression that you do !![ BTW good leaders , mom s , dads , bosses , politicians have this quality too ]

They are definitely very smart!  Two of mine (the girls) can open doors in the house.  They also ring a bell hanging on the back door to let us know when they want to go outside.  My oldest girl can open gate latches like Ladyfrost's dog so we had to put locks on our gates.  If I ask her where one of the other dogs is, she will go look for them, grab them by the collar, and pull them towards me.

Sorry, this from the phone, so not the neatest! Dogs, like our GSDs , have been interacting with humans so long that a truly symbiotic relationship now exists. Research has shown that dogs can follow a humans gaze to locate an object, but cannot follow another canines look to find something. Wolves can't do that. Dogs can imitate human expressions to manipulate an imteraction with a human, wolves cannot. Dogs were able go locate an object in a 'shell game' exercise, but could not locate a hidden object until the human looked at it, according to this Nat Geo article, which I dispute, I know quite a few GSDs that can do that. That test was supposed to prove that dogs could not reason. So what does that mean for our SAR dogs & other GSDs that will readily find a hidden object? They obviously can infer that the object still exists, even tho' it is hidden! So I believe that our dogs do posses intelligence, possibly even rudimentary reasoning skills. I think we dumb humans are just slow to grasp all that our companions are capable of! jackie harris

Years ago I had an extremely friendly GSD. I let him out to go to the bathroom one morning and when I went back to get him he was nowhere to be found. I left for work and my daughter left for school. When she came home he was laying on the front steps.

A few weeks later and I receive a notice of a fine for having a dog off leash.  I called animal control and asked what this was all about. He told me he got a call about the dog being loose. He said boy is your dog smart. I said how do you know that. He said the dog was laying on the front steps and everytime I approached he ran into the woods and stayed until I left. He said I was there 4 times and he hid every time.

This dog was totaly friendly with everyone including strangers, he would bark  to be let out to greet the mailman who loved him. How he knew to hide from animal control is beyond me.
 

Alphapup,

Intelligence in dog for me it is the level of his ability to observe, understand, communicate,  learn, reason, plan and solve problems.  

Here is an example:
Field trials for police dogs.
There is a water channel – handler throws the article over the channel and orders the dog to retrieve it.
There are 10 dogs in a trial.

9 dogs, given order, jump into water, swim, retrieve the article, swim back and present the article to the handler

1 dog, given order, looks both ways, runs full sped to the right where there is a fallen log, goes over it, retrieves the article, goes back over the log and presents the article to the handler.

At the end you have 9 wet dogs that performed that task in  +/- 16 sec. and 1 dry dog – that performed this task in 11 sec.
(P.S. in this test the time was of an essence and nobody trained those dogs to go over the fallen log.)

For you to decide, if this dog was more intelligent or just ‘lazy’…

From my perspective the 9 dogs were very well trained to perform the exercise, while only one showed true intelligence and problem solving. He understood the 'objective' of the excercise - retrieve the article as fast as you can. He made an observation that swimming may be not the most efficient way in this situation.. (most dogs lost seconds shaking the water off both ways). At the end he was the one that performed the task in the shortest time.

For me truly intelligent dog grasps everything fast and learns quickly, but is more difficult to train to perform repetitive tasks/commands. Intelligent dogs are focused on completing the task while well trained dogs are focused on performing taught routine.   

I am NOT trying to say that well trained dogs are not intelligent, nor that intelligent dogs cannot be trained well.

Mine wipes his own ass. Don't know where he gets the paper or what he does with it. Never actually seen him do it, but he's always dingle-free.

I defiantly like and understand/agree with APUP'S post. I think we notice these things daily (even those who don't have GSDs). I think we just take it for granted or the norm till either someone points it out to us or a non-dog person is amazed by what was performed. Here are a few examples of mine.

When Anastacia was a pup, (She's the Czech) her kennel latch is like, you have to "lift up" a tad in order for the mechanism to flip up or down. Without this "lifting" the latch will not go up or down , it's like "locked". One day coming home I thought I saw one of the farm's foxes in the front yard,( big ears). I said to myself, "that's a brave fox to come around all these GSDs" but when I pulled in the driveway ole Ana, was beaming like she did the greatest thing..................... I put her back in the kennel and ran in the house to look out the kitchen window. And watched her work that latch like a pro!

Another time, my boy, Reiker (always hangs out at the woodworking shop with me), once in a while he'll throw up, (think it's due to certain types of sawdust, sometimes?) but one day I

m talking to my friend and his wife and Reiker is at our feet starting to hack. As he is getting ready to throw up I say "Reiker, go throw up over there on the grass and lay down". So, Reiker walks over to where there is grass, throws up and lays down. When he feels better he's back at are feet like nothing happened. He does stuff like that all the time, so I never thought twice about it. But my friends always boast saying he's part human. Other things; a simple nod: follow me or come here. I could have 5/6 toys, things on the ground. Tell Reiker to bring me the "KONG", will do it. Bring me the "FOOTBALL", will do it, bring me the ...., will do it. Every time.

Each one has their "specialty" even at a young age. Arabella, even at like 5 mos. knew that say, if by chance she was on the bed and Ana wanted to get upon the bed that if she, (Bella) stayed right on the edge that Ana couldn't jump up. So, if Ana went to the other side, Bella would go to that side and "block" Ana from being able to jump up. There's a million more but those were a few to share.  

Ok, I take back what I said about Ansgar not being the sharpest tool in the shed! I just scolded her for barking at 4:15am as I was going for a glass of water, thinking she was barking at me. No, she was barking at the mouse that ran across the kitchen floor a minute later, putting herself between me & the little monster...which I might add, scared the crap out of me! She was trying to protect me, knowing before I did that I was about to be freaked out! My Hubby wouldn't get out of bed, but my dog was right there! God bless you, Ansgar! Jackie harris