Intelligence

[sweet_ceana]

Although I can say both of my dogs are intelligent, their minds seem as different as a mathmetician and an artist. Unfortunetly my artist is a prima donna... Ceana lol Let me explain.

 

Ceana is not very people savvy. I would imagine she would be considered a fairly "hard" dog. It is almost as if she needs a reason and respect to listen to you. Once you have those things she will happily work with you and is a good listner and incredibly fast learner. If she does not feel she needs to respect you or that she has to work with you towards whatever it is you are doing (ie... frisbee or soccer in our house) she will walk all over you. My dear friend who dog sits for us on occasion learned this the hard way. Her recounting of their first weekend was pretty amusing.

 

When we play Ceana is more intense than Poke. She watches your every move and is a black and white ball of anticipation. The biggest difference I have noticed is in playing soccer. Poke follows me around a little, he has an akward stalking motion and usually resigns to going deep and waiting for me to kick after a few minutes of foot work. Ceana enjoys chasing the ball and catching it as well, but as I have gotten better with my foot work she loves to move with me as I play around the park with my foot work. We will run laps and switch directions and she follows my every move with an amazing intensity. She has gotten amazing at anticipating my body movements and can adjust to a change almost as fast as i make it. She loves being the "defender" and moving with me every which way across the feild. Her motions are incredibly fluid and her mind is so keen to movement. I wonder if this is from her breeding (she came from a farm and I have been told that it is obvious she came from working parents by other BC folk a lot more experienced and knowledgable than myself) or if it is just the way my pequliar little girl ticks?

She can also remeber where you hid a ball or a toy a week ago. When you ask her where that toy is she will go right to it with no hesitation. If you put it some where unkown to her she will scower the house looking for it in every hiding spot the toy has ever been.

 

Ceana seems to feel her way through life, as opposed to Poke, who is my little thinker. He is determined to master English, when he hears an unfirmiliar word he will cock his head and give you a look like "say it again please?" LOL Ceana is my paraphraser, she picks out the key points and moves on.

 

Poke is my little pleaser. If you can say it in a way that Poke understands he will do it for you. He constantly looks towards us for direction on what he should be doing. He watches Ceana and will learn to do whatever it is that she knows and he doesn't. He will stop and think about a problem, "How can I get the ball out of the hamper?", and try different techniques until he gets the end result he was looking for. Ceana will try 1 or 2 things max and get fraustrated. ( In the case of the hamper it is bark like mad to scare the ball out and ram the hamper) Poke is very keen on human emotion and knows when you need a good snuggle. He will submit to you when he is in trouble, but he won't even cower to his demon sister when she is on a rampage.

 

He is even keen on other dog's emotions. Poke can knock Ceana out of cujo mode in her crate or with a bone by turning her aggression into a game. ( i wish i knew how he does it, I am doing my best to learn his bomb diffusing methods) . He is a little ball of logic. He is always aware of cause and effect, and once he has been with us for a little longer I am sure he will be a great communicator. I find it intriguing how very different my two dogs are.

 

How does everyone elses' dogs tick? What ways do their little gears spin? What mind sets have you found useful for what?

[Greylite]

My boys are two very different dogs. Bandit comes across as being stupid if you don't know him when infact he is the smarter out of my two dogs. Spanky will do whatever you say at lightning speed. Bandit is thinking a few steps ahead and how he can avoid doing it. It took a lot of effort to get his respect but now that I have it we are two peas in a pod.

 

Dogs are like people. Each with their own individual identity.

[border_collie_crazy]

yup yup, Happy and Misty are both smart yet very differently so.

 

Happy is a mimicer, she watches very closly to what is happening and copies, this is how I taught her a lot of things. the basic clicker till the dog figers it out concepts is usless on Happy because she doesnt see the point, for heavens sakes just tell her what you want and she will do it lol. she also watches very closly to every little movement she then reacts based on that, for example: I walk into the bathroom with a newspaper, set it down and leave. Happy will think into the future, if I brought a newspaper into the bathroom, then that is the most likley place I will be headed in the next few minutes, so she will beat me there. she is highly observant in other ways as well, if I take a ball away from here today, and hide it somewhere, many months later she will randomly climb into the most bizare places in total confidence and...produce the toy that I dont even rememer hiding. you can always see her watching and studying too, I recall a few months ago I had Happy at a seminar and while the other dogs were maying more attention to the other dogs around them, Happy was sitting on my lap intently watching presentation..I think she was paying more attention then some of the people lol. her observance was also noticable in Flyball, she ALWAYS new if a start dog had a false start, and she always knew exactly which dog it was, she would be watching exactly what was going on and before the false was even called, she would be giving the false starter the death glare lol

 

Misty on the other hand isnt as observant, rather she enjoys figering things out for herself...then putting her own twist on the end lol. Misty is highly people orintated,almost everything she does she bases on the reactions of the people around her. because she likes to figer things our herself, she is also a lot more creative then Happy. while Happy just tries to catch then water from the hose, Misty figeres out how to change the water pressure..she will actually pinch the hose, then anouther dog will come up to the hose wondering where the water went...Misty will then aim and fire the high pressure in the other dogs face lol.