Dog IQ

According to S. Coren, author of “The Intelligence of Dogs”, the top four breeds of dog are 1) Border Collie, 2) Poodle, 3) German Shepherd and 4) Golden Retrievers. He rated 80 different breeds of dogs on a three part intelligence scale which included the speed with which different breeds learn new commands and their consistency in responding to the commands. Dobermans, Shetland Sheepdogs and Labs were the next three, in that order.

As a life-long Golden Retriever, the fix must have been in for Border Collies, Poodles and Shepherds to beat us out. The last time I read a blog that a Poodle had written it was full of misspelling and bad punctuation. They are not even smart enough to run spell check and grammar check before posting to the internet. There is a shepherd down the street and all he does is run up and down the fence barking, he thinks protecting his yard is a big deal. The Border Collie next door spends all of his time putting his toys into long straight rows and gathering the squirrels together in a herd. Neatness must have been one of the factors. Yes, the fix was in on the rating. They gave too much weight to ability to learn commands and how consistently we responded to them but not enough weight to typing skills, grammar and spelling. Doesn’t he know the importance of communication? On behalf of all of us blogging Golden Retrievers, we demand a recount! We learn commands just fine, thank you. Goldens just happen to be independent free thinkers. We want to know “why?” when we are told to go jump into freezing water to rescue a dead duck. Give us a motivation such as a dog treat, two treats if the water is really cold, then watch us move up to number one on the list. Why do ducks always die way out in the middle of a large, cold lake, how dumb is that? I never will understand why humans want dead ducks rescued anyway.

I think I will do a book on “How to train your Human”. I have trained my human to obey me, a much better approach than simply taking orders. It took me days to teach him to scratch my tummy when I roll over on my back, weeks before he figured out that he should take me for a walk when I bring him my leash. If they rated humans on the same scale, they would have placed 82, just behind ducks.

Mogley