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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to Houndations. I'm your host Tony Peterson,

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Speaker 1: and today's episode is all about how smart dogs really

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Speaker 1: are and why that shouldn't matter to all of us. Look,

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Speaker 1: I know you have the smartest dog out there, but

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Speaker 1: the other guys who you see hunting the slews before

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Speaker 1: you definitely have some total blockheads. The intelligence of dogs

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Speaker 1: in general is as varied as it is in humans,

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Speaker 1: and it's also something that is part genetic, part good luck,

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Speaker 1: and part practice. It's a fun topic to explore, but

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Speaker 1: there are also some lessons in it that everyone can

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Speaker 1: take away and used to help sort of level up

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Speaker 1: the dog ownership experience, which is what I'm going to

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Speaker 1: talk about right now. Way back in nineteen oh four,

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Speaker 1: a French fellow by the name of Alfred Bennet was

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Speaker 1: tasked by the Paris School Board to develop a test

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Speaker 1: for children to see which ones would need special education.

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Speaker 1: He partnered up with a colleague, Theodore Simon, on the project.

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Speaker 1: They realized quickly that the test needs to show whether

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Speaker 1: the kids could handle intellectual tasks, not just recall information

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Speaker 1: they might have learned in school. The test they developed

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Speaker 1: involved having the kids imitate specific gestures, name objects and pictures,

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Speaker 1: repeat sentences of fifteen words, and follow simple commands. It

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Speaker 1: worked at least to establish a base level of intellectual

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Speaker 1: capability in kids, so Beney and Simon expanded their testing

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Speaker 1: procedures into bigger categories and to address a wider range

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Speaker 1: in children. Well. Their tests would go through quite a

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Speaker 1: bit of evolution over the years, and it did eventually

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Speaker 1: deliver unto the world a way to score intelligence, which

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Speaker 1: we now know as the IQ score. With the framework built,

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Speaker 1: testers would factor in a subject's age and then their abilities,

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Speaker 1: and it would spit out a specific score. This allowed

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Speaker 1: for the establishment of a baseline, but there was a problem.

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Speaker 1: It obviously isn't a static measurement because people grow and

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Speaker 1: change and learn and sometimes stop learning. So the IQ

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Speaker 1: score was a good indicator of intelligence within a kind

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Speaker 1: of a tight peer group, but not much more. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: a dude named David Weschler took a stab at making

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Speaker 1: intelligence tests more relevant to both adults and children, and

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Speaker 1: to tweak them in a way that was more representative

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Speaker 1: of overall intellect. These are what we'd call aptitude tests,

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Speaker 1: which can be a strong predictor of many things in life,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to achievement tests, which are designed to see

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Speaker 1: how much information on a given lesson someone has retained.

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Speaker 1: Over the last one hundred and twenty one years. Those

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Speaker 1: intelligence tests have been used for higher education employment, They

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Speaker 1: have applications in the armed forces, and are just a

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Speaker 1: generally interesting way to assess a person's potential. They are

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Speaker 1: far from perfect, but they are also pretty good at

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Speaker 1: what they are designed for. Now, we don't really have

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Speaker 1: a standardized test for dogs, but it's pretty commonly stated

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Speaker 1: that they have the brain power of a toddler, whatever

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Speaker 1: that actually means. The problem with measuring dog intelligence is

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Speaker 1: that dogs are like people in that the variance is huge,

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Speaker 1: and it really doesn't matter if you get a breed

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Speaker 1: like say at border Collies that is generally known to

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Speaker 1: be pretty smart, and you put it up against a

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Speaker 1: breed like the Dalmatian that is, you know, generally believed

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Speaker 1: to be a not quite as smart, what does that matter?

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Speaker 1: What matters to us as dog owners is how smart

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Speaker 1: our dogs are and what can we do with that

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Speaker 1: intelligence to help them become better dogs overall. But first,

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Speaker 1: at the very least, anyway, it's important to acknowledge something

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Speaker 1: about canine and brain power. We often confuse which is,

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Speaker 1: you know, repetition with knowledge. Take my two dogs, Luna

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Speaker 1: and Sadie. Five years ago, I would have told you

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Speaker 1: Luna is pretty dang smart, thank you very much. She

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Speaker 1: could find a rooster or a quail or a grouse,

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Speaker 1: or run hand signals into the chop to find a

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Speaker 1: down duck like an absolute machine. Training her wasn't hard

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Speaker 1: because all she wanted to do was train. But is

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Speaker 1: that smart? Her younger sister, Sadie, is a different kind

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Speaker 1: of beast. Sadie loves to show up for work, but

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Speaker 1: you can actually watch her solve problems and ask for help.

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Speaker 1: She doesn't have the mindless terminator drive of Luna when

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Speaker 1: it comes to retrieving drills or whatever, but she reasons,

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Speaker 1: or at least sure looks like she does, and when

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Speaker 1: she learns a lesson, it's like it sticks forever and

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Speaker 1: will never be a problem again. She also has better

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Speaker 1: blood than Luna overall, and that's the secret sauce to

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Speaker 1: the whole thing. A dog that comes from a line

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Speaker 1: of field trial champs and master hunters is a dog

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Speaker 1: that is going to have some generations of problem solving

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Speaker 1: cod in its genes. Think about it this way. If

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Speaker 1: you took a man who is a master chess champion,

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Speaker 1: and that man finds a wife who is an astrophysicist

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Speaker 1: who spends all day trying to solve the kinds of

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Speaker 1: mathematical equations that tell us what's going on in deep space,

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Speaker 1: you'd probably think that their child will be the kind

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Speaker 1: of kid who's not going to put his pants on

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Speaker 1: backwards and shove crans up his nose when he's eight.

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Speaker 1: It's not going to happen. When we think of genetics

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Speaker 1: and dogs, we often just think of body size or

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Speaker 1: fur color, or hunting drive and ability, maybe temperament, but

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Speaker 1: we don't think of intelligence and problem solving. Now, those

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Speaker 1: professional trainers out there, you know, the ones that folks

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Speaker 1: pay good money to in order to whip their dogs

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Speaker 1: into shape. Those trainers, they think about that stuff a lot,

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Speaker 1: and it's part of the reason their dogs are often

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Speaker 1: so dang good. Now, it's not the only reason, since

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Speaker 1: a shitty trainer could ruin the most well bred and

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Speaker 1: smartest dog out there in a hurry, But most of

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Speaker 1: them start with real good material, and that matters. Now

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Speaker 1: I've gone off track just a little bit here. Now

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Speaker 1: you can get a dog to a very reliable state

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Speaker 1: through repetition, and that's important. You won't get a dog

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Speaker 1: that can work double blind retrees with ease by not

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Speaker 1: training every single part of double blind retrieves a hell

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Speaker 1: of a lot of times over in a variety of

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Speaker 1: situations and around a pile of different distractions. How quickly

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Speaker 1: the lessons take and how well they stick will be

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Speaker 1: informed heavily by a dog's mental horsepower, though now. I

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Speaker 1: interviewed a guy named Phonsie Bissan quite a few years

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Speaker 1: ago for a different podcast I had, and I asked

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Speaker 1: him about his favorite breed, which is Border Collies. I

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Speaker 1: figured he would say they were the smartest dogs out there,

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Speaker 1: but he brought up an interesting anecdote about his dogs

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Speaker 1: that made me think. He said that he had a

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Speaker 1: particular dog that would ride in the back of his

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Speaker 1: truck when they were working sheep, and that the dog

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Speaker 1: would leap out and do his job at exactly the

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Speaker 1: moment it was supposed to. He said people were often

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Speaker 1: very impressed by that move and would comment on how

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Speaker 1: smart the dog must have been, but he knew that

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Speaker 1: the dog had done that move hundreds of times. To him,

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Speaker 1: it was just learn behavior and not a signal that

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Speaker 1: the dog was reasoning exactly when he should do his

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Speaker 1: job and how he should do it. Outwardly it appeared

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Speaker 1: as a big brain move, but inwardly it was mostly

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Speaker 1: evidence of repetition and practice. That's not to say that

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Speaker 1: dogs don't display crazy levels of intelligence at different points.

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Speaker 1: We've all seen videos of the dogs that can use

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Speaker 1: a soundboard to push different buttons, each of which then

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Speaker 1: produces a spoken word. There was a speech language pathologist

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Speaker 1: out in California sometime back who was working with a

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Speaker 1: Catahoula Blue Healer mix to see how far the dog

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Speaker 1: could go in stringing together words and communicating with her.

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Speaker 1: Her dog learned at first to use a single paw

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Speaker 1: to hit a button that would produce a word like

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Speaker 1: eat or play, and then eventually it would use two

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Speaker 1: pause to hit different buttons which could add qualifiers. Instead

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Speaker 1: of just eat, it would be eat now or play now,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty cool but could also be explained away

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Speaker 1: by repetition, although I'd like to think that dog is

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Speaker 1: doing more than that and is actually a reasoning out thoughts.

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Speaker 1: While having the first legitimate way to speak English to

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Speaker 1: a human, I also can't help. But think if you

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Speaker 1: trained a Labrador retriever like Luna to use that board,

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Speaker 1: all you would hear all day long is eat now,

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Speaker 1: Eat now, Eat now, until you threw that soundboard into

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Speaker 1: the backyard pond. There are some examples out there of

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Speaker 1: dogs doing things that just seem to indicate a higher

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Speaker 1: level of problem solving and reasoning than even those soundboard dogs.

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Speaker 1: One of the best examples I've ever heard came from

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Speaker 1: a buddy of mine I named Jordan Horrock, who is

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Speaker 1: a really, really good dog trainer with an affinity toward

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Speaker 1: English cockers. Horrock told me a story one time of

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Speaker 1: a male cocker that he had in his kennel who

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Speaker 1: was particularly crafty. This dog figured out how to open

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Speaker 1: the lock on his enclosure door and let himself out. Now,

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Speaker 1: that could be a happy accident for the dog, maybe

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Speaker 1: by just bumping the latch with its nose and noticing

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Speaker 1: that it moves, Or maybe at some point where in

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Speaker 1: Jordan's kids didn't fully engage it and the dog got

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Speaker 1: lucky and opened it. Who really knows what happened next

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Speaker 1: is a different story, though. Horrock said that when the

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Speaker 1: male figured out he could jail break himself he would

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Speaker 1: go along the run and open the doors only to

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Speaker 1: the females. I don't know how to describe that as

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Speaker 1: anything other than a big brain move. You leave your

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Speaker 1: competition locked up and give yourself free rein over all

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Speaker 1: the ladies. Stories like that point to a dog learning

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Speaker 1: something it hasn't been taught and then expand on that

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Speaker 1: knowledge to use it for a further advantage. This isn't

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Speaker 1: quite like jail breaking yourself and then having a party

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Speaker 1: with a bunch of females. But I took Luna down

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Speaker 1: to Nebraska when she was maybe five years old to

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Speaker 1: hunt across the state and see if we could find

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Speaker 1: some prairie chickens and sharpies and roosters and even quail

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Speaker 1: on the public land down there. And when we hit

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Speaker 1: a ridgetop on a property in the central part of

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Speaker 1: the state that I had deer hunted previously and I

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Speaker 1: knew held a couple covees of quail, I watched to

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Speaker 1: see how she'd handle it, and at one point she

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Speaker 1: poked her nose beneath a cedar tree and her tail

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Speaker 1: went into helicopter mode. I figured we were working with

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Speaker 1: some robins or something, since she had never seen or

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Speaker 1: smelled a quail in her life. When that covey busted

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Speaker 1: out of the backside of that tree, I fumbled with

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Speaker 1: my shotgun like it was my first time trying to

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Speaker 1: shoulder one while trying to find the safety and the trigger,

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Speaker 1: like I had just had a bad run with some

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Speaker 1: tequila and firecrackers and blown off most of my important digits.

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Speaker 1: Needless to say, that covey scattered without a shot being fired.

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Speaker 1: But as we worked the singles and then moved on

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Speaker 1: from those birds, I watched as she would read the

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Speaker 1: landscape and check underneath every single seater out there. It

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Speaker 1: was like watching her learn in real time, and it

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Speaker 1: was cool as hell. The thing about all that stuff

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Speaker 1: is that we look at dog intelligence not only as

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Speaker 1: kind of a general thing across whole breeds, sort of

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Speaker 1: like how on a nature documentary, some deep voice fella

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Speaker 1: will say something like, you know, gazelle's can leap twelve

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Speaker 1: feet in the air, but which gazelle's certainly not all

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Speaker 1: of them. Alex Hanold, who's one of the best mountain

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Speaker 1: climbers in the world, can free solo climb three thousand

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Speaker 1: or so feet of vertical rock without dying. But that

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean that I can. Even if I tried, I'd

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Speaker 1: slip off the rocks at the height of maybe a

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Speaker 1: basketball hoop from how sweaty my palms would be and

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Speaker 1: how slippery the rocks would be after I pissed myself.

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Speaker 1: Dog intelligence is all about the individual, and it's all

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Speaker 1: about what we do with the individual. This is maybe

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Speaker 1: the most important thing for us to acknowledge here. We

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Speaker 1: have control of how much we maximize our dogs' brains,

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Speaker 1: just like we have control over our own brains. With

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Speaker 1: our dogs. The biggest problem a lot of folks have

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Speaker 1: is they underestimate what dogs are really capable of, so

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Speaker 1: they never try to get them somewhere special. This is

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Speaker 1: maybe a poor example or maybe not. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: but when I found out that I was going to

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Speaker 1: have two little girls at the same time, I realized

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Speaker 1: that I didn't know a hell of a lot about

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Speaker 1: raising little girls. Much of the stuff I read about

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Speaker 1: it said that one of the things we have done

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Speaker 1: is a society for a long time, and it's sort

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Speaker 1: of an unconscious thing but still pretty damaging, is that

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Speaker 1: we focus on the aesthetics for the girls. With little boys.

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Speaker 1: We are quick to compliment them on being smart and

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Speaker 1: strong and you know, having some attributes that are generally

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Speaker 1: very positive and useful and admirable. But with little girls,

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Speaker 1: we are quick to point out how cute they are,

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Speaker 1: how we like their princess dresses, and our focus is

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Speaker 1: not on their brains or strength but their appearance. Now,

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Speaker 1: this can follow them throughout life, and it's a disservice

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Speaker 1: to them to condition them to believe their value is

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Speaker 1: locked up largely on their paint job and not what

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Speaker 1: they have going on under the hood. We often don't

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Speaker 1: think our dogs are capable of doing big brain things,

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Speaker 1: but that's because we either just don't ask them to

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Speaker 1: do those things, or more often, don't ask them in

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Speaker 1: a way that allows them to answer correctly. And the

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Speaker 1: more we don't ask them to solve problems, the worse

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Speaker 1: they get at solving problems. Looking at the brain like

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Speaker 1: it's a muscle that can atrophy is important. It isn't

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Speaker 1: a coincidence that an awful lot of the people who

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Speaker 1: are really successful in life also happen to be voracious readers.

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Speaker 1: Reading is kind of a cheat code to keeping your

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Speaker 1: brain's momentum moving in the right direction through learning and visualization.

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Speaker 1: And engagement, and that matters with dogs. The more we

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Speaker 1: work with them to solve different problems, the better they

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Speaker 1: get at solving them. Take finding a dead ruffed grouse,

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Speaker 1: for example, you go walk the logging roads on a

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Speaker 1: national forest and a bird flushes in the blink of

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Speaker 1: an eye, and somehow your string of shot finds it

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Speaker 1: before it gets away, and the grouse tumbles to the ground. Now,

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Speaker 1: if your dog didn't see it, it's going to have

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Speaker 1: to use your help to find it. If you walk

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Speaker 1: that dog in with the wind in its face and

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Speaker 1: tell it to haunt dead, hopefully your dog will work

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Speaker 1: along until it gets a whiff of the good stuff

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Speaker 1: and then retrieves it to hand. But you could also

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Speaker 1: just walk up and pick up the bird yourself if

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Speaker 1: you saw it fall, and the end result would still

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Speaker 1: be a tasty bird in your game bag, But your

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Speaker 1: dog wouldn't get the same chance to solve a little

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Speaker 1: problem out there. And for bird dog owners, that is

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Speaker 1: a problem that's going to come up a lot in

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Speaker 1: a variety of situations. There'll always be different variables to it.

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Speaker 1: Maybe that's too simple of an example, but helping a

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Speaker 1: dog develop into a smarter, more capable dog. Ug is

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Speaker 1: kind of simple. They need to solve problems, and it's

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Speaker 1: not only better for us to have a dog that

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Speaker 1: approaches situations with some level of reasoning bouncing around between

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Speaker 1: their ears, but it's just better for them. Mental exercise

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Speaker 1: is as important as physical exercise, and without it, a

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Speaker 1: dog isn't going to be as well behaved or as

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Speaker 1: fun to own. They just need to solve puzzles, and

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Speaker 1: the more puzzles they solve, the better they'll get at

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Speaker 1: solving them. This is maybe the final point I want

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Speaker 1: to drive home about this topic. I once interviewed a

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Speaker 1: woman who nearly won America's Got Talent with an act

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Speaker 1: she put on with her dog. If you watch that act,

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Speaker 1: you'd think her dog must be the smartest dog to

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Speaker 1: ever set a paw on planet Earth. Now, her dogs

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Speaker 1: aren't dummies, so I don't want to imply that, but

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Speaker 1: you know what else is true. She asks a lot

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Speaker 1: of her dogs. She works with them a ton every day.

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Speaker 1: She brought up new challenges, new tasks, and then she

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Speaker 1: would help them work through those tasks and help them

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Speaker 1: develop those individual skills that could eventually be daisy chained

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Speaker 1: together into something that is truly incredible to witness. Does

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Speaker 1: she have the most intelligent dogs on the planet. Probably not,

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Speaker 1: but she's taking dogs with a hell of a lot

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Speaker 1: of potential and then guiding her dogs to realize that

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Speaker 1: potential in a way that most folks would say is impossible.

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Speaker 1: It's not. We just either don't know what to ask

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Speaker 1: of our dogs, or worse, assume that our dogs have

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Speaker 1: a low ceiling for what they can handle, and so

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Speaker 1: we never check to see if they can bust right

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Speaker 1: through it and show us something that will make us

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Speaker 1: rethink their capabilities. One of the things that's really really

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Speaker 1: cool about that is that while their intelligence is theirs,

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Speaker 1: it's potential hinges on their relationship to us. Dogs will

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Speaker 1: literally ask us for help if they have the opportunity.

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Speaker 1: And you know who doesn't do that. Domesticated wolves. They

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Speaker 1: meet problems on their own and they don't know how

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Speaker 1: to look to humans for guidance. But our dogs do,

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Speaker 1: and it's our obligation to help them out when it

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Speaker 1: comes to problem solving. We can literally help them be

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Speaker 1: smarter and in turn have a better relationship with them

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Speaker 1: for it. I think that's pretty freaking amazing, don't you

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Speaker 1: so think about that and think about coming back in

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Speaker 1: two weeks because I'm going to talk about how to

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Speaker 1: go about finding the right breeder for you, whether you

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Speaker 1: know you're in the market for a new puff this

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Speaker 1: spring or just might be in the market in the

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Speaker 1: next few years. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.

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Speaker 1: This has been The Houndation's podcast. As always, thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for listening and for all your support. Call

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Speaker 1: and I really appreciated here, as does everybody else at

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Speaker 1: mediat Or. We would be nothing without you, so thank

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Speaker 1: you for that. If you need some more hunting content,

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Speaker 1: some more entertainment, maybe you want to watch a film,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe watch my daughter hunting in the Northwoods

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Speaker 1: of Wisconsin last year. Or maybe you want to listen

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Speaker 1: to another pot cast on your drive somewhere, maybe Clay's

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00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:06,200
Speaker 1: Bear Grease or Brents This Country Life. Maybe read some articles,

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Speaker 1: find a recipe, whatever thumb mediator dot com we put

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Speaker 1: up new content every day. There's so much good stuff.

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Speaker 1: Go check it out. The mediator dot com