I knew when I first got him that he was probably going to be very smart. He's a Papillon, ranked #8 on the dog breed intelligence list, and the only toy breed in the top 10. I was excited to have such a smart breed, and only envisioned teaching my dog tons of amazing tricks, the best dog in the land. He did not disappoint my expectations, teaching him tricks is a breeze- for example, I just recently taught him how to "Sit Pretty/Beg", which took a grand total of twenty minutes to teach and master. He has a wide vocabulary as well, knowing the names of several different objects. I do agility with him and he learns faster than I do! However, he did exceed my expectations for intelligence in several unpleasant ways.
It was an upsetting day the day I learned that he had figured out how to open the basement door, thus unleashing himself upon the entire household, and while he was still very much badly behaved. This was a problem, because he could no longer be contained in the basement, where I could keep an eye on him. My dad and brother attempted to fix the door so that he'd be unable to open it, and it worked- for a while. He's figured out how to open the door again now.
I used to leave treats in my coat pocket in preparation for walks, but he soon discovered how to extract things from pockets. I started leaving his treats on the table, but then he figured out how to get on top of tables, as detailed in my earlier post about his sandwich-thieving ways. I had to find a new place to store them- and, of course, never abandon food (or a drink!) on a table anywhere, a hard lesson to learn. Many sandwiches were lost to his insatiable gluttony, and I still catch him in the act of drinking from my bedside glass of water (even though he has a perfectly nice doggie bowl of water literally right outside the door).
At the time these things drove me absolutely bonkers, I was sure that door-opening and table-climbing was the worst that he could ever do. Then he learned how to open his kennel, and the other things paled in comparison. So I switched kennels, and fortunately, he's only figured out how to open the one, but it's a matter of time before he figures out the others.
When I and one of my aunts visited my grandparents, my dog came along, along with her two. My grandparents have a fenced-in yard. Somehow, no matter what measures we took (including buying plywood boards from the store and nailing all possible gaps, uprooting half the rock garden, creating a thorny barrier of branches, and entreating various deities), my dog managed to escape (with my aunt's along for the ride most of the time). We never actually did manage to find a way to prevent the great dog escapes, that's a story for another post, though.
Oh, and I also can no longer leave food in my backpack, because he's figured out how to open zippers. AND he can climb chain-link fences.
However, after proving time and time again how wickedly cunning he is, he sometimes just does things that make me question his intelligence.
He, like other dogs, likes to stash toys and bones away. Many a time I've caught him industriously shoving tennis balls under the basement couch, his favored hiding spot. Somehow, no matter how often he does this, he fails to recall the fact that he cannot get them out from under the couch. Upon discovering (again) that he can't reach the item he's hidden under the couch, he begins whining and galloping back and forth on top of the furniture, then jumps to the floor to try to get the item again- and when this inevitably fails, he repeats the process, his vocalizations getting louder and louder until someone (usually me) goes over and grabs his object of desire out for him. This, of course, is made more complicated by the fact that he has a vast trove of toys squirreled away under that couch, and he is very, very specific about which toy he wants, refusing all until the correct one is found. He bounds off happily with his prize, but oftentimes will just stuff it back under the couch again half an hour later, to my chagrin.
We don't have a fenced in yard (and given previous experiences with fences and my dog, I doubt very much it would be effective), so instead we have a long tether in the backyard, so he can run around to his little heart's content within the safe boundaries of our garden. The garden has a couple little bushes, barely more than twigs in the winter, and some stakes, and other small obstacles. He patters around happily until he inevitably snags his leash on one of these miniscule barriers. The simplest solution would, of course, just going back the way he came, or just giving a bit of a tug. These concepts have escaped his grasp, however, and I often have to go outside to rescue him from the little twigs. Upon discovering he has snagged himself on a plant, he immediately begins howling like he's being murdered, which, granted, is an effective way to get help quickly, as no one wants to subject the neighbors to his cries for very long. I have tried many times to direct him back around the object, and while he easily does it when I point and tell him to go back around, he somehow never remembers how to do it when he gets stuck again.
I have one of those rubber Kong toys for him, the ones you can fill with food. He knows that when I pick up that Kong, he is going to get fed tasty food in his kennel, so he eagerly goes running for his kennel (or the nearest kennel, though that is corrected easily enough with a simple "wrong kennel" command) whenever I start preparing the Kong. He knows that: a) He only ever gets fed with his Kong toy in his kennel; b) There's always awesome stuff besides his regular food in the Kong, like peanut butter and real meat; c) To go to his kennel immediately when the Kong is being handled- and yet, he is still shocked and appalled whenever I close the kennel door and lock it after giving him the Kong. He's smart enough to immediately run for his kennel without being asked whenever he sees me pick up his Kong toy, and yet, not smart enough to remember that whenever I feed him his Kong toy in his kennel, I close and lock the door on him.
He has a traveling kennel that I cart him around in on a semi-regular basis. Whenever I start getting ready to go anywhere, he anxiously runs into his carrier, then runs back out and does it again (loudly) if the door is not locked immediately behind him. He knows that if he goes in that kennel, he gets to go out with me- but apparently forgets this as soon as he's in the kennel and locked in. If the carrier case is not picked up right away, he begins screaming, flailing about like we're going to leave him behind in that kennel. The kennel he automatically goes to anytime I get ready to leave, because he knows that when he's in that kennel, he goes with me.
For every ten times I am blown away by how smart he is, there's one time I'm confused about how dumb he is. Unfortunately, logic is not his strong point- being too smart for his own good is. I don't know why I expect more, he is just a dog, but he's a dog who's just so darned intelligent most of the time that his moments of doggish bafflement seem odd in comparison. Then again, perhaps this is where he wants me- baffled. The longer I know him, the more I suspect that my dog is secretly a criminal mastermind.
UPDATE: SPEAK OF THE DEVIL, HE JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO OPEN HIS NEW KENNEL LAST NIGHT. FML.
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