Now I know that everyone thinks that their dog is the cutest, best, smartest dog that ever lived…but a few months after we brought Oscar home, I really was convinced that he was some kind of dog genius. 

He learned all of the basic obedience commands and some impressive tricks.  He learned words we weren’t trying to teach him (food, treat, cat, etc.), that we’re usually going to ditch him right after we take a shower in the mornings and he even learned to manipulate us (okay, that probably wasn’t that hard). 

So, imagine my shock when I discovered that Oscar’s breed (the regal Brussels Griffon - originally bred as stage coach dogs in Belgium) ranked only 59th out of the 79 breeds ranked in a commonly referenced Ranking for Obedience/Working Intelligence by Breed!!  There must be some mistake…

Okay fine, I’ll give you the Border Collie, the Poodle, the German Shepard - everyone knows that these breeds are very smart.  But surely, the Brussels Griffon must be #4…or at least in the top 10.  But 59th!?!?  No…

Then I started to scroll up the list and see who was ahead of him (and this is where I’m going to upset some people) and I found our cousin the Affenpinscher (at 37), the Pug (at 57) and the Yorkshire Terrier (at 27)?!?!   Now I love all three of these breeds, but I can’t believe that any one of them could possibly hold a candle to my baby in terms of brains!

Fortunately, Oscar can’t surf the web, so he remains blissfully unaware of his breeds pitiful intelligence, but I took the news pretty hard.  A colleague of mine tried to console me by reminding me that there’s always more variation within a group that between groups.  A ha!  That’s it…there must be must be some dummies bringing the whole group down and Oscar is some type of super-prodigy. 

Another colleague helpfully told me that they heard that the true test of an individual dogs intelligence was to throw a towel/blanket over their head and see how quickly they find their way out.  With renewed optimism, I returned home to prove Oscar had smarts.  I confidently covered him with a large towel and then…nothing.  My formerly flesh and blood pet had turned into a statue.  I called his name, told him to come, even tried to bribe him with the T-word (treats). 

Finally, I pretended I was leaving…I loudly opened the door and stomped towards it saying, “see you later, Oscar”.  Suddenly - the statue came to life, but to my dismay he didn’t heriocally come bounding out from under the towel.  Instead, he staggered abruptly to one side and ran (smack!) into my dresser.  I rushed to untangle and sooth him, chastising myself for ever submitting him to this stupid test.

So, since then, I have been puzzled as to why Oscar seems so smart when all indications point so him being somewhat of a dummy.  Everyone who see his trick repertoire comments on how clever he is - are they just humoring us?  And sure, it usually takes a number of repetitions before he figures out exactly what you want him to do, but is it just my persistent training that makes him seem like some sort of doggie-mensa candidate? 

Well, unfortunately for poor Oscar, while I was writing this post, I came across yet another Dog IQ Test, so of course, I had to torture the little guy one more time.  Now I skipped Test #2 - I just assumed he’d get the lowest score because I didn’t want to subject him to the whole towel thing again…and I’m happy to report that Oscar came in just 3 points shy of genius!  He totally didn’t get why I was smiling at him for Test #3, but he nailed the four remaining tests.

So, it just goes to show…If at first you don’t like the results of the dog intelligence search you do on the Internet, search, search again.

Is your dog and Al-bark Einstein?  Or is he or she a little slow on the pup-take?