Comments on: Do You Have A Smart Dog?

By: Colby

Colby — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:17:28 +0000

@Melanie, you make a very good point. Maybe the proper question should be "Do You Have A Trainable Dog?" .-= Colby´s last blog ..Guide Dog Training And Hosting In The UK =-.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:10:09 +0000

I feel it is very subjective…meaning a dog who did not need to yawn might feel it serves no useful purpose to mock or imitate his “master” so he would not do it.

I would rather have a dog that was “smart” enough to differentiate between strangers who posed a threat and those that didn’t, as opposed to one who was “smart” enough to jump though a hoop on command.

By: Colby

Colby — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:19:24 +0000

@Randy those sound like pretty cool mixed breed dogs. We think Linus might be a cross between an Australian Shepherd and a Black Labrador Retriever, but I guess we won’t know for sure unless we get him tested. Unfortunately, he’s not the biggest fan of water and my purebred Labrador Retriever hates the water.

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:35:45 +0000

Right on. i have a german sheppard/golden retriever cross and hes about 3 half months old and of course super smart and comming together fine. my last dog was a flatcoat retriever/aussia sheppard who was amazing to from her being a lightwight medium size dog that loved water and anything outdoorsy so hoping this one will follow suite

By: Colby

Colby — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:02:12 +0000

I added a short update to the bottom of the post. Here it is just in case you’re subscribed to the comments of this article:

UPDATE: I was playing with Stetson yesterday blowing out of my nose at him and everytime I did it he did the same thing back to me. It seemed very similar to the experiment in this article. Does that mean that Stetson was empathizing with me or just playing a game??? Another thought I had this week was regarding a dog training book I read a while back on dog tricks. One of the tricks was teaching your dog to sneeze. It was a while back, but I remember the idea was to sneeze at your dog and in response he would sneeze back at you. Again an example of your dog showing empathy. I tried this with my dog Linus several years ago and it just freaked him out. He didn’t want any part of it and just left the room and didn’t want to be around me for several minutes.

By: Colby

Colby — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:12:25 +0000

@Grace, that means you must empathize with your dog!

By: Grace

Grace — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:48:05 +0000

I found your article very interesting. Whether or not my dog will yawn after I do, I don’t know, but I am pretty sure she understands English. I think she’s pretty darn smart. My Lucy is a Lab Retriever. Actually it is the other way around. She starts yawning and then I follow.

By: Esther

Esther — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:10:24 +0000

Hahaha! Having no knowledge of this study, I’ve done this with my parents’ dog and he would yawn here and there, but I think it’s just coincidence. I would even try yawning right after he yawned, but he would just end up staring at me. I don’t think it means that he doesn’t have empathy.