Intelligence...

Well, my human did a really interesting one this time…

Someone told her about a TV show featuring some guy that sounds like PONderson Cooper – who did a dogumentary about the intelligence of dogs.  They showed this border collie who has like 1,000+ words that he understands.  I’m not sure what all the hoopla is about – heck I understand 1,2,3,4,5…6…6…7…8…8….8….wait 9… OK.   So that dog knows a whole lot of words.  And he even understands something called verbs – which makes him REALLY smart.  I’m just impressed with the HUGE pile of toys he has – and he knows all the names.  I bet if I had ALL THOSE TOYS, I could be super smart too.  Just sayin’.

Anyway, after my human watched the show, she went to the website of the scientists on the show and found out that if you paid them some money, they would give you a bunch of exercises to test the intelligence of your dog.  So you guessed it- my human HAD to do it.  But she decided she would just test ONE of us.  So who do you think she picked?!!!!!!  FRODO!  She figured he had the most brains in the family so she registered him.  And then the testing began…

Almost every night this past week for about a half hour, she and Frodo went into the bedroom with a bunch of treats and with the door shut – and did a bunch of exercises.  Initially she tried to do it with Pax and I watching – but you can GUESS how THAT went.  Chaos.  We wanted the treats.  So after that, the testing was solitary.  Pax and I just looked at each other – and we WERE just a LITTLE ticked off that Frodo was getting treats for doing nothing.  Never mind that we had each been outside playing with our human before that.  And we also got treats.  I think we forgot that part.  Clearly we would not have scored highly on the memory part of the test.

So last night, they finished the last test – and got the final results.  Drumroll please….

Here is the summary directly from the Dognition test:

Frodo is a Socialite!

It's hard work making everything look so easy. In a culture obsessed with academic achievement, sometimes it is easy to overlook the fact that gracefully interacting and communicating with others requires talent. In Frodo's case, he takes this talent to a whole new level - it is definitely his genius.

Although Frodo is not as adept at independent problem-solving skills as other dogs, don't jump to any conclusions about his intelligence. Frodo relies on a very specific strategy - using you and other humans in his pack to get what he wants. Judging from his performance in the social games, we suspect that most of the time this strategy succeeds. 

Seriously????????????  Do you see that?!  Frodo – a SOCIALITE??????!!!!!  Mister “I- want-to-be-alone” and “don’t-come-on-my-property – or-I-will-bark-you-to-death” – is considered a SOCIALITE?!!!  And they don’t consider him a problem solver?!  PONdini?  The guy who can figure his way out of ANY enclosed area?????? 

My human got a 14 page report summarizing the results of each subtest area – Empathy (in which Frodo scored high – go figure), Communication (which was also high), Cunning (average), Memory and Reasoning (both average).  She thought that some of the test results may have been skewed by the fact that Frodo is obedience trained.  That may sound weird but she figured that Frodo responded to some of the tasks based on his previous training exercises.  One thing my human agreed with was the following statement:  “…Frodo can read you like a book. Maybe he seems to know where you are going before you do.”  Now THAT is the truth.  

So I’m not so sure about all this intelligence testing stuff.  As I have already talked about, we canines are clearly more intelligent than humans in so many ways.  I think these results are about as believable as the weather forecast.   Mind you, I AM kind of hoping that my human will do it with me – because I sure would love the treats! 

 ©  2014 Linda Wozniak