The smartest dog in the world

[WillBrink]

Yep.

True loyalty in people is a rare thing, loyalty in dogs is amazingly common.

But absolutes do not exist. All people aren't good or bad, all dogs aren't good or bad, but in my personal experience I've found most dogs to be better than most people.

I've learned a lot of people reveal their true nature by how they treat dogs, employees and wait staff.

Bolded for truth.

[Adrenaline_6]

He trains the dog 5 hours a day. It might be the most educated dog...but the smartest is up for debate.

Humans are primarily egocentric in thinking. The dog doesn't listen or doesn't do what I want them to do when I want them to do it so they must not understand and are stupid. Maybe...or maybe they think your a d*ck or a p*ssy and that's why they don't want to do it.

Wolves are better problem solvers. Human gesture reading was never a survival requirement.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Lol such good friends they send 1 million a year to the hospitals. Dogs are annoying, dangerous and stupid. I hate the damn things.

That is about 0.3% of people. I think more people need biting frankly.

Pretty sure I'm not alone in this, but most of my dogs have understood pointing for most of their lives.

Dogs seem to have an innate ability to read humans, a product of our long history together- tens of thousands of years. Im fairly sure dogs are the only domestic animal to instinctively understand the concept of the human “point” gesture, as well as following the gaze of a human. I seem to recall someone testing dog and wolf pups of the same age and even at that young stage the dog pups were much more tuned in to their human handlers and able to comprehend their gestures than the wolf pups were (despite wolves potentially being “smarter”, in absolute terms, than most dogs). The rapport between dog and man, and the history, and prehistory, of dog domestication has always interested me.

I think we saw the same thing. I think the other take away was when they would put something out of reach of the dog and when a human was introduced, the dog would sit there and look at the thing then look at the person, and go back and forth and then bark, kind of like an interspecies “Help a brother out..”. Wolves wouldn’t do it. I think other animals will, we see wild dolphins approach people when they are hooked or wrapped up. Thumb envy?

Dogs were always my secret ally when meeting girls or their families. Maybe I just always smell of meat, but dogs seem to love me.

My dogs are horribly trained. We tried to train them, but I can’t tell if they are incredible dumb, or incredibly bright and lazy. I’ve heard that an intelligence test for dogs is to put a blanked over them and see how long it takes them to get out. Our one dog will just stay there, perfectly still until we worry that he is going to run out of air…

It is funny. That last one is all about my wife, follows here around and sits with her. The other dog is similar, but instead of her ‘belonging’ to my wife, I am the dogs human. The second dog gets very jealous when the first one pays attention to me- and only me. But she isn’t ‘my’ dog- she loves my wife more…

The dog that loves my wife follows her all around- but if my wife turns on the Roomba robot vacuum- straight to daddy and I think he’d sit on my head if he could. When that dog perceives an existential threat- he wants as much beef between him and the threat as he can get.

[jsbhike]

Yep.

True loyalty in people is a rare thing, loyalty in dogs is amazingly common.

But absolutes do not exist. All people aren't good or bad, all dogs aren't good or bad, but in my personal experience I've found most dogs to be better than most people.

I've learned a lot of people reveal their true nature by how they treat dogs, employees and wait staff.

The eulogy.

https://www.warrensburg-mo.com/591/Old-Drum

[SteyrAUG]

He trains the dog 5 hours a day. It might be the most educated dog...but the smartest is up for debate.

Humans are primarily egocentric in thinking. The dog doesn't listen or doesn't do what I want them to do when I want them to do it so they must not understand and are stupid. Maybe...or maybe they think your a d*ck or a p*ssy and that's why they don't want to do it.

Wolves are better problem solvers. Human gesture reading was never a survival requirement.

There is a problem of subjective criteria. This guy is mostly using capacity for vocabulary, and with that criteria this dog is smarter than all wolves combined. If your criteria is how to get a sheep without getting caught, all wolves are smarter than dogs.

So I think in order to judge intelligence, we have to focus on the ability to understand abstract ideas as well as the ability to understand that past and contemplate the future. Dogs are probably closer to those capabilities than wolves simply because humans have controlled their evolution around that kind of development.

The ability for dogs to understand non verbal commands like hand gestures (which I always train my dogs to do) is probably a higher order of intelligence. When dogs exhibit a capacity to read body language and facial cues (something even children have difficulty with), they really do go near the top of the chart.

But we need to be careful to not engage in absolutes, especially when they are not fully supported.

Depending upon our criteria used we can arrive at all of the following.

Wolves are smarter than dogs or chimps.
Chimps are smarter than dogs or wolves.
Dogs are smarter than wolves or chimps.

And if we focus on single factors, like communication and possibly language, dolphins might be smarter than all three.

The real problem is humans need to be much smarter than we are, to definitively determine the true capability of each species in order to truly judge their comparative intelligence and we need to come up with cognitive testing for such that is far less subjective to factors unique to each species.

[henri]

Lol such good friends they send 1 million a year to the hospitals. Dogs are annoying, dangerous and stupid. I hate the damn things.

I prefer the company of my dogs to the vast majority of the unwashed masses. I would venture to say my pups are smarter and definitely have a better pedigree than the majority of humanity.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I don’t know about the rest of the animals on the planet but I’m pretty sure it seems that only humans and dogs know the Las Vegas car dealer hand, wipe and palm show to indicate no more chips or cheese for the dog.

[chuckman]

We have a Jack Russell terrier, she just turned nine, we got her when she was 7 from a friend whose mom had her but could not keep her because of worsening health issues.

She is very very sweet, and has a never filled love tank. But she can be as dumb as a box of rocks, God love her.

She loves the kids, and they love her. That's all that really matters to us.