Re: [PyrNet-L] Wondering...

["Nils-Petter Ottesen" <ottesen@winit.no>]

Tony wrote:
> I recently saw a profile of Akita's in a dog magazine, and on the
profile of the 
> dog it listed them as "extremely smart". 
> What other dogs would fall into that category? 
> I assume Pyreness would be in there, but what other dogs are considered 
> to be very, or extremely, smart?
--------------------------

In the last issue of the newsletter of our local dog club (all breed),
there was a short summary from a scientific research on the issue
performed by a psychologist at a Canadian university, Professor Stanley
Coren. He released a book on the subject in May this year. In his book he
ranks 132 breeds, present in the USA and Canada, by their ability to
learn. He has constructed some sort of "template" to measure training
intelligence. Mr. Stanley used in his research 100 persons that normally
judge in obedience competitions, and asked them to rank different breeds:

1	Border Collie
2	Poodle
3	German Shepherd
4	Golden Retriever
5	Doberman
……
99 Akita Inu
……
115 Great Pyrenees

The dogs' receptiveness to training is not the most important ability to
look for when you get yourself a dog, the professor says. What's more
important is how the dog fits in with the lifestyle of its human family.
Dr. Peter Borchelt, who is an expert on animal training at The Manhattan
Medical Center for Animals disagree in the professor's list. According to
him, dogs are like humans, you can't judge them by breed you have to look
at each single individual.
---------- 

I'm not an expert on this issue (and I have not read Mr. Coren's book),
but when people are discussing intelligence among dogs, the definition of
the term "intelligence" is normally quite dull. In my opinion, what
Coren's research measures is not the intelligence of the dogs in general,
but their receptiveness to training. And in that scale, the PYR might
belong in position 115? I think an important factor in measure of
intelligence, is the dogs ability to handle situations that it has NOT
been trained for. What I find quite interesting in the story on Pyrs vs.
Bears on our WEB site
(http://www.adbsys.no/NPHK/index.asp?Language=English) is the fact that
the dogs that were found to be completely useless by the scientific
functional analysis, performed so well in real situations.  Is it possible
that a uniform method for measure of intelligence could give a similar
misleading result among different breeds? What's you opinion on this
issue?

Nils-Petter Ottesen
Raaholt, Norway

Visit the web site of the Great Pyrenees Club of Norway at
http://www.adbsys.no/NPHK/index.asp?Language=English