Training Muse: Intelligence and Training

One of the common questions people ask is about canine intelligence.  Sometimes they've read a book, or watched a television show, or seen something on the internet comparing various breeds and ranking intelligence.  Something along the lines of Border Collies are smart and Afghan Hounds are dumb.  It seems to me, most of the time, the line between intelligence and "trainability" gets blurred. 

Intelligence, according to Websters, is:

"the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations"

A dog who is quick to pick up a new behavior is considered intelligent.  Of course, since we can't ask the dog to explain what she understands about the new behavior, the ability to respond to a command with the desired behavior is how we determine the dog knows the behavior.  So we now have added a criteria to canine intelligence: the ability to repetitively demonstrate the behavior.  The ability to repetitively demonstrate a behavior is what, customarily, is called trainability.

Trainability is what most people desire in a dog.  Show me the same behavior each time I ask you to do so.  It certainly makes dog training easier and makes dogs with a high "trainability quotient" good companions.  But is it really intelligence?

A sled dog who refuses to "mush" across a snow covered field is not demonstrating his understanding of the mush command.  And each time he attempts to turn left or right rather than go forward, he is disobeying a command.  Either he does not completely understand the command "mush" or he is choosing to disobey.  Either one lowers his trainability quotient.  Does it make a difference if you factor in the field he's being asked to mush across isn't a field at all but rather a not very well frozen lake?  So his trainability quotient may be lowered but his intelligence is just fine.

Is a competition obedience dog who has been carefully and systematically trained to jump the broad jump in a straight line while the handler stands next to the jump less intelligent when she cuts across the jump to get to the handler more quickly?  Or is that the intelligent decision while the dog who never cuts across is more trainable?

Trainability relates to how easily the dog can be taught to respond to a command AND the dog's willingness to do it repeatedly.  The second part is what separates it from intelligence.  Of course it is difficult to tell if a dog understands a command without repetition and, if during the repetition, the dog shows inconsistency it is natural to assume the dog does not completely understand the behavior.  Certainly sometimes that is true, especially if we have not put the time in to break the behavior into small steps, systematically train the behavior and carefully proof the behavior in different environments.  But sometimes, a really smart dog will demonstrate a behavior to us once or twice.  If we then ask them to repeat the behavior we may not get anything, or we might get a different behavior.  It doesn't always mean the dog doesn't understand, sometimes they just don't wanna'.  And that doesn't make them dumb.

So enjoy the Beagles, Borzois, Basenjis, Great Danes, Irish Wolfhounds, Clumber Spaniels, Afghan Hounds, SharPeis, Shih-Tzus and all the rest.  They are highly intelligent canines.  They all can learn and demonstrate complex behaviors.  Learning to motivate them is the key, and quitting while you are ahead doesn't hurt either.