As the owner of a pet, much like a parent, you might find yourself praising their every deed. Seeing your dog do just about anything that isn’t chewing furniture and sniff behinds is often enough to garner praise. However, as the owner of a dog, you might also think that your canine seems to show some pretty intriguing smarts. Some dogs are simply smarter than the average canine, and there are some useful ways to find out if that is the case or not.
While dogs are known to be able to understand the context of your words simply by knowing what comes after your say certain phrases, other studies show us how dogs can learn a lot more than we think. Indeed, studies show us that dogs can learn the new of an object in just four listens. However, this isn’t something that all dogs can do; indeed, only the smartest of dogs can pick up on these kinds of things themselves.
With that in mind, you might wonder how you can get the most out of your beloved pup and ensure they can be as smart as they can be. A study was carried out recently and provided an easy-to-follow ‘recipe’ to find out if your dog has the intellect that you believe it might.
What do you do?
To find out if your dog is one of the smarter ones, you simply need to put together a little experiment to try out. What you need to do is to get all of their toys, sit them down, and then name each toy. When you speak the name, your dog should be able to pick up the toy that you are asking for and bring it right to you. If your dog is hitting above 50%, basically above the ‘guessing game’ chance, then you can probably say that your dog is a smart cookie.
However, you should then give your dog a set of four new toys – one at a time – and make the name of the toy clear. Then, let your dog play with the toy for a while and after playing with the toy and hearing its name, get your dog to choose the toys that it wishes to keep.
Your dog, if it is good at problem-solving, should be able to pick the right toy simply by associating the unfamiliar word with the unfamiliar toy. At this stage, you would need to keep reinforcing the names and the toys – with appropriate praise – to make sure that it sticks in the mind of your beloved canine.
And if they can’t pick this up? Don’t worry; some breeds, and some lesser experienced dogs, simply won’t be able to do this (yet).