Quote: Jose Miguel Gome

 Quote: Dennis Jones

Just cus' you write a book doesn't make you smart...

There's a couple on the bottom of the list only because of trainability, not intelligence. The Basenji being one of them. They are natural escape artists which obviously requires maybe above average intellengce. Which is smarter, doing what your told with little reward or not doing what you are told and getting away with it with greater reward. It requires a lot of smarts to shirk work and get away with it. Just ask my boss

I can see that you have not read the book...

The author divides the kinds of canine intelligence into 3 basic cathegories: intinctive intelligence, adaptative intelligence and obedience/working intelligence.

That list it's only about the obedience/working intelligence. It does not consider the other types. Just the trainability.

The way the author made the study seems very well planned and with lots of data from american and canadian obedience trials and lots of experts opinion.

In general the list makes a lot of sense, but there are some positions that don't.

As far as i know this is one of the biggest study comparing breeds trainability.

I have read the book. The problem is the author's use of the term intelligence used to mean the same as trainability for that catagory. The two are neither the same, nor closely linked. The book is more than just crap, but the author should have used terms that had the correct meanings. Intelligence is not the same as trainability. If you want to rank both, you either need two lists, or you need to take both into consideration! This ranking is of trainability, and intelligence is assumed to be the same.

I've never heard of anyone ranking both intelligence and trainability in the same list. There have been some controlled studies on canine intelligence that compared certain breeds, but those studies did not address trainability and were not lnked in any way with the dog following commands or directions by humans. They were made by the dog's gaining food or toy through their own initiation and problem solving ability with devices. There have been considerably more documentation available on compliance which can be gotten simply by looking at ob trial scores, or similar competitions. Some breeds who rank high in one field rank low in the other. Some rank high in both. Some rank low in both.

I will say it again: The author divides the kinds of canine intelligence into 3 basic cathegories: intinctive intelligence, adaptative intelligence and obedience/working intelligence.

It has a chapter on each kind of intelligence, but what i am asking is just about one of the three kinds. Problem solving ability is not included in working/obedience intelligence.

Maybe the terminology the author used to divide the diferent kinds of intelligence is not good. That's not the point. The point is that there are obviously certain tendencies of the diferent breeds twoards following commands and speed of learning new commands. Of course there are also individual diferences...

Lets say i want to be an obedience competitor with a great dog at learning new commands. Having that in mind, is this list a good help or should i look somewhere else in order to choose the right breed?

I'd throw any and all lists away.
I'd go spend some time with some dogs.
That way I could put my own subject attitude to the task and use my own vocabulary.

Does anyone know what intinctive intelligence is?

 Quote: randy allen

... Does anyone know what intinctive intelligence is?

OK, I'll bite.

 Quote: jose miguel gome

The author divides the kinds of canine intelligence into 3 basic cathegories: intinctive intelligence, adaptative intelligence and obedience/working intelligence. .... As far as i know this is one of the biggest study comparing breeds trainability.

Spelling aside (all of us having been guilty of spelling failures ), the comment about "trainability" is, for me, way more appropriate than the author's use of the word "intelligence" where "trainability" should be (IMHO).

But I don't remember the book all that well and I'm very interested in others' opinions .....

Okay, okay.
I'll stop being a prig. I knew it was instinctive he meant. I still don't know what that means. I'd like to know how a general law of 'instinctive intelligence' evaluation was made.
And no way Jose, I am not going to read that tome.

The top of that list is filled full of dogs 'generally' renown for their bidability/bond to handlers and work ethic.
So?
I read somewhere the swine will put them all to shame in the 'intelligence' department.

I'm with Mike. The list may have some value as a very generalized and subjective ranking of a breed's aptitude. But not much more.

Very generally, one could say that Standard Poodles are smart dogs--in the same way that one might say Samoans are good football players. Well, yes, many are. Enough perhaps even to make a generality. But those generalities don't account for a lot of poorly-bred crazy Poodles...or Samoan women.

But you are looking to buy a single dog...not a generality. So use the list perhaps to narrow the field--with a good idea of what you want your dog to do and how much effort you're willing to put into it.

IMO, I'd rather see you looking at lists of breeders, instead of breeds. The quality of the breeder is a better indicator of how good a dog you're getting.

Jose, I have read the book as well. I had mixed feelings about it. It was a while ago and I don't remember it very well, so bear with me. Here's my review:
Coren certainly did break it down more than that and most of his discussions were interesting and worth reading, but that ranking he created was odd and so were his intelligence tests at the end. It was created through a survey of obedience judges. Surveys are not always very valid. I don't think he ever said specifically what question he asked the instructors, but I assume they gave him a general ranking of how well breeds tend to do in obedience competitions.

Personally, I filed it in my head as a list of how much dogs tend to want to work for their owners, with very little other motivation than a natural inclination and praise. Until very recently (Intelligence was published in 1994, it may be a bit out of date) most obedience competitors taught with a combination of compulsion and praise. Low energy dogs are pushed towards the bottom of the list. Also notice that a lot of the really obscure breeds are smack in the middle. I would guess that is probably because most judges felt they hadn't seen enough of them to give the breed a fair ranking.

Randy, instinctive intelligence, as defined by Coren was the "intelligence" that made some breeds better at some tasks than others, for example, no matter how smart a standard poodle might be, he will never be very good at herding sheep. Border collies will never make the best hunting dogs, etc.

Unfortunately, that breed list (which was supposed to measure "working/obedience intelligence" or trainability/biddability) and the intelligence tests at the end were supposed to be a kind of climax to the book. Adaptive intelligence was the only one I really considered intelligence by most definitions. i.e. being able to solve problems without previous training and independent of a handler. The two "intelligences" are being muddled, especially by Coren's promotion of that survey.

In some ways I like what Coren is trying to do. There is after all, very little "science" in dog behavior. I just think his implementation is really poor. Dr. Coren has a PhD in human psychology, not canine, and it really shows in some places, especially in his intelligence tests.

Joy mentioned other intelligence tests being done to compare breeds in and she's right. The one I remember was a really old one that compared fox terriers? And Shelties. The terriers were found to be very good at independent problem solving and the Shelties were very good at following cues and directions, but not independent thinking.

Ed posted a video on the Leerburg newsletter about a week ago of a young Ibizan Hound, doing some unpolished, obedience work for food. More importantly, however, he showed a good relationship with his handler and a willingness to learn. Ibizan's are ranked low-middle on that list, but they are rare, and sight hounds as a rule are pretty independent so they might have been ranked even lower. I guess my point is it is very important to find what motivates a specific dog and then determine how "intelligent" he is.

Nice post Kristin,
My question is; how can anyone compare apples and oranges, then rate one is better then another?

No matter what kind of training I do that number 2 poodle is not ever going to be the stand up guy like the Rottie, nor is he ever going to track like the number 74 Bloodhound.

What kind of weird rating system is this?
Working/obedience rating?.......phiff. Junk science if you ask me.