Dumb Dog

Ever wonder how smart your dog is? Or, in my case, how dumb your dog is? Well now you can quantify it. The Dog IQ Test contains:

• A booklet of tests covering problem solving, learning ability and memory.
• A score guide.
• A results guide.
• A stop watch for recording your dogs' results.

Frankly, the test would be wasted on any dog I've ever owned. Results guide? Pulease. And it comes with a stop watch? A calender would suffice for my dogs.

They're not bad dogs, they're just terribly dumb. Susie, the smarter of the two current dogs, has exactly one trick, well half a trick. Though I should admit that I'm partially at fault for her failure to master it. See, I thought that after a long line of completely talentless dogs it would be nice to teach just one of them to roll-over. So my daughter and I set about teaching Susie. I would give the command, "roll-over", then roll her myself, then reward her with a treat. Lumber-kid and I took turns training her but it seemed to take forever. Then I realized: when I trained her, I'd roll Susie to the right. When my daughter was in charge, she'd roll her to the left. The result was that if you gave the command to roll-over Susie would flop to the ground and look confused. Well, she sort of comes preloaded with the look of confusion. But teaching her from this point is probably hopeless. We'll never know if she could have learned. So we pretty much reward her for any movement now when she attempts the trick.

Almost forgot though, she does do one other thing that sometimes passes for a trick. Have you seen those terribly disciplined dogs whose masters have taught to sit stone still while they balance a piece of meat in their nose or head? Well, we can get Susie to do that sort of. But in her case it's not discipline that stops her from going for the meat, it's just that she forgets that it's there. We usually put a nice sized piece of bologna on her head, then hold her still for about ten seconds. When we let her go she just looks around the room, "Say, do you smell bologna? I smell bologna." She'll go around the room wearing her bologna hat, searching for the source of the smell. The pay-off is when we let the other dog into the room. He trots up to her, pauses, then snatches it off her head. You can see the realization hit her, "oh yeah, I remember now.." but it's too late. We usually reward her with a new piece of bologna.