Smartest Dogs (Descending Order) Border Collie Poodle German Shepherd Golden Retreiver Doberman Pinscher Shetland Sheepdog Labrador Retriever Papillion Rottweiler Australian Cattle Dog The Bottom 10 (Ascending Order) 101. Basset Hound 102. Mastiff 103. Beagle 104. Pekingese 105. Bloodhound 106. Borzoi 107. Chow Chow 108. Bulldog 109. Basenji 110. Afghan Hound My only surprise is that Dobermans scored so high and that Great Danes were NOT at the bottom, or bottom 10. Fenichel's Current Topics in Psychology - APA Convention 2009 (Toronto) - How Dogs Think
I've had a Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever, and a Beagle. The Golden was always willing to please and very smart. The Lab was a workhorse and very smart. The Beagle was cute as hell and dumber than a box of rocks... :rofl: The smartest dog I ever had was a Wolf/Siberian Husky hybrid. Very protective, gentle with the kids, smarter than hell! BDD... :{)
I've had only Beagles for a long time. I haven't found them dumb, but they ARE stubborn and hard to train.
http://www.azbarc.com/b101.html Here's a good description of beagle behavior, right down to getting into someone's lap. That's how I watch TV--with a 25-pound dog asleep in my lap.
I've had friends sing the praises of Portugese water dogs. We've considered this breed from an allergy perspective because they don't shed, but they also have a reputation as very intelligent dogs.
I think Obama has one of those dogs. You could drop him an email to ask about his experiences with that breed!
After our poodle, Misha, died at age 12, in 2010 we decided to foster poodles for the Florida Poodle Rescue Agency rather than just own our next dog. All of our poodles from the agency have been very smart. Since most of them are strays with varying degrees of health and mental issues, it is a pleasure to help them become healthy, active dogs who would make a great addition to any 'forever home'. It does not surprise me that poodles are high on the list of smartest dogs and if our current foster does well with other dogs, we may even adopt him ourselves and keep on fostering. He has been sick with kennel cough which morphed into pneumonia so presently he is being treated at the vet's office and may have to stay there awhile until he gets better.
Getting in another word for beagles! See paragraph 2 of the Temperament section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle That was exactly my point earlier. They're not Ph.D.s, but they're not dumb either. I just love those little dogs.
We've got a mix Corgi and Aussie Cattle Dog, and she is brilliant. I honestly think she understands simple words, keywords that we say. She also tries to talk. It's very cute when she does, like a cross between a dog yawn and a yowl, and it goes on for 5 seconds or so. Rowlrrrowllrrrlrowlllrrowl.
LOL! That must be something to behold. I think if you talk to your dog a lot like we do, the dog starts putting two and two together in regard to certain words Our dog learned what "upstairs" and "downstairs" meant with repetition while she was either coming up or going down the basement stairs. Then one day we were outside near the stairs to the deck, and I said "upstairs" so she started going to the basement door. Then I pointed to the deck stairs and said "upstairs," so now she understands that she can go up and downstairs in other places besides the basement stairs. It's a more one-dimensional understanding of the word, but that's fine. She hasn't tried to talk like your dog, but if we forget anything important, she comes up and stares very intently into our eyes until we suddenly remember what we forgot to do. One of the problems beagles have is a tendency to something called "reverse sneezing." It is mentioned in that article. The first time our dog did that I almost had a heart attack. She acted like she was choking, and she was making a strange noise. The vet told us what it was!
