How to tell if your dog is as smart as you think he is

Dogs are like babies: everyone thinks theirs are exceptionally intelligent. But how can you tell if your dog is really smart or just adorable? Of course, they respond to their own name, or a good word (“walk” or “treat”) or a bad word (“veterinarian” or “bath”) – although that may have more to do with survival than having a command solid English language.

But now, a recent article published in the newspaper Nature, indicates that some dogs are capable of a skill that was thought to be limited to humans. Here’s what you should know about this and how to find out if your dog is secretly a genius.

How to Administer a Canine IQ Test

In the study published in Nature, the researchers found that some dogs are able to learn the name of a new object after hearing it only four times. And according to Dr. Jan Hoole, a biology professor at Keele University who wrote about the article for The conversation, it is possible to replicate the test at home with your own dog. Here’s what to do:

1. Start with a baseline test. Place several objects that your dog is familiar with in front of them.
2. Stay out of your dog’s line of sight, say, “Bring [name of toy/object.]”Track how many items they were able to recognize just based on their names. If they were able to identify many of the familiar items in this way, you can go to the next level to see how quickly they can learn the names of new objects.
3. Show the dog two new items, tell them the name of each object and let them play with them for a while.
4. After repeating the name of each toy four times, ask the dog to choose one of the two new toys. (Do not include any that are familiar, lest they choose a new one through the process of elimination.)
5. Do this repeatedly and keep a record of how many times the dog chooses the correct item when you asked for it by name.

In the study, the first two dogs were able to identify one of the new toys more often than by chance – but when the experiment was repeated with 20 other dogs, none of them demonstrated this level of skill when it came to quickly learning the name of a new object.

But does it really show anything?

It depends. The researchers pointed out that more work needs to be done before it can be determined whether some dogs are really talented in the intelligence department, or whether it is a product of training or their breed (or some combination of them).

For example, Hoole’s Notes that border collies and yorkshire terriers are known to be mentally motivated and can perform better on a test like this. On the other hand, dogs traditionally used for hunting or running – such as salukis and greyhounds – may not be interested in toys or in pleasing their humans, and refuse to cooperate with the training or testing component of the experiment.

But that does not mean that they are not intelligent: like humans, dogs are not all motivated by the same things. (Except goodies.)